Portio Research, which specialises in analysing the mobile and wireless industries, has forecast there’ll be 6.5 billion mobile subscribers worldwide by the end of 2012.

By the end of 2016 it expects the total to have reached almost 8.5 billion, which represents a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 7.3% between the end of 2011 and 2016.

Technology company Huawei has published financial results for the first half of 2012.

Sales revenue was up 5.1% year-on-year to CNY 102.7 billion (£10.38 billion), while operating profit reached CNY 8.79 billion. That’s a 22% drop from the same period in 2011 but an increase from the previous six months.

HTC Corporation has celebrated its 15th anniversary today with the official opening of its new global headquarters in Taipei.

The ceremony was hosted by Cher Wang, HTC’s chair, along with Chief Executive Officer Peter Chou. Wu Den-yih, Vice President of the Republic of China, was among those attending.

Earlier this year we reported that China Telecom’s European subsidiary planned to launch an MVNO on the Everything Everywhere network, targeting Chinese residents and businesses in the UK.

The deal would be the first MVNO outside China launched by a Chinese telecom operator. 

The network, which is called CTExcelbiz, is being officially launched today in London. It’s a ‘pay as you go’ service and will will offer Chinese language voicemail services along with bilingual Chinese/English customer service. Calls between CTExcelbiz users will be free.

A new research report from Berg Insight estimates that 108 million mobile network connections were being used for machine-to-machine communication at the end of 2011, a 37% increase on the previous year.

Asia-Pacific was the strongest regional market, with a year-on-year growth rate of 64%, while Europe saw annual growth of around 27% to 32.3 million connections.