Beijing Olympics by the numbers

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Aug 18, 20082 mins

China is posting records away from the sporting events at the 2008 Olympics, including its use of technology

If nothing else, China is a country of superlatives: biggest, largest, oldest, most. As China racks up gold in Beijing with just under a week to go in the Olympics, the medal count isn’t the only place where China posts the top numbers.

Here’s a rundown of the IT records that have fallen in Beijing.

[For more news about IT at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, check out InfoWorld’s special report. ]

Olympics:

Number of accreditations issued for media, athletes, officials and other participants: 400,000 (approximate)

— Number of pages accessed per day from INFO2008 Olympic information system: 1 million (approximate)

— Pieces of IT hardware used at Olympic venues: 30,000

— Number of servers: 1,000

— Number of network and security devices: 1,000

— Number of desktops and laptops: 10,000

— Number of printers: 4,000

— Number of results system terminals: 5,000

— Total testing time for IT equipment, in hours: 200,000

— Number of 3G phones distributed to Games organizing committee staff: 15,000

— Number of Olympic venues: 75

— Number of Olympic cities: 7

— Number of sports: 28

— Number of events: 302 over 18 days

China technology in general:

Number of mobile phone users: 601 million (June 2008, world’s largest subscriber base)

— Number of China Mobile subscribers: 407 million (June 2008, world’s largest operator)

— Number of Internet users: 253 million, (June 2008, world’s largest online population)

— PCs sold in China per year: 23 million

— Number of registered accounts for China’s QQ IM service: 783.4 million (March 31, 2008)

Sources: Atos Origin , Lenovo, Tencent, Xinhua News Agency.