(Yicai Global) March 11 -- Fifth-generation wireless-enabled mobile phones made up almost 70 percent of all shipments in China last month as more consumers adopted the new technology.

Shipments of phones that support the faster wireless standard reached 15.1 million units, rising by more than six times from a year ago and making up 69.3 percent of the total, the China Academy for Information and Communications Technology said in a report published today.

And the direction is up. Sales of 5G phones will exceed 280 million this year, wireless carrier China Mobile predicted in a white paper released yesterday.

In January, the number had been even bigger at 27.3 million units while 5G handsets accounted for 68 percent of all shipments, according to the research institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The Chinese New Year holiday may have been one of the reasons behind the diminished figure in February.

Many have decided to upgrade their old devices. China's smartphone shipments more than tripled last month to 21.3 million units from a year ago, explained by the low base of last year as the Covid-19 pandemic was most severe in China last spring. Domestic brands accounted for almost 90 percent of the total. In the first two months of 2021, the country's shipments more than doubled to 60.9 million units.

Last year was slow. In 2020, mobile phone shipments in China declined by 20.8 percent to 308 million from 2019 as the pandemic reduced consumption. 5G phone shipments made up 52.9 percent of the total.

Editor: Emmi Laine