China Mobile Limited, the largest phone carrier in terms of subscribers worldwide, has announced that its total number of subscribers has already reached by 621.85 million as of July 2011, including 37.597 million 3G subscribers. In the month of July, 3G subscribers rose by 2.57 million while total users increased by 5.06 million. For the first half of 2011, the company has increased its total subscribers by 37.834 million.

The Hong Kong-based company has experienced steady growth over the past year. According to the company’s earnings report for the second quarter of 2011, the company has increased its profit by 7 percent, attaining a net income of 34.4 billion yuan ($5.4 billion) from 32.2 billion yuan of the same quarter last year. Revenue also increased by 9 percent to 131.9 billion yuan.

China Mobile still dominates the Chinese market despite tough competition with China Unicorn and China Telecom. Much of the company’s revenue comes from voice calls. However, the company’s data services have helped in maintaining its lead over China Unicorn. China Mobile has its own app store which garnered 260 million downloads for the first half of 2011. The carrier has been using popular titles, such as Rovio’s Angry Birds, to help fuel the adoption of its app store.

Looking ahead, China Mobile sees collaboration with Apple as a major opportunity. The company is still having talks with Apple for bringing Apple’s 3G devices to help boost the carrier’s 3G network. China Mobile’s 3G network has been found to be incompatible with the iPhone and both companies hope to find remedies. Currently, the company offers subsidized iPhone devices for its 2G network and managed to attract 7.4 million users.

China Mobile is also holding large-scale testing of 4G networks using the LTE TDD (Long-Term Evolution Time-Division Duplex) standard for the goal of bringing faster 4G networks in China.