| Opel Ampera popular in ye old continent, likely to meet sales goals unlike Volt Mar 30th 2012, 19:32 To say that Chevy's Volt hasn't had the smoothest inaugural year would be an understatement, but over on the other side of the pond, things couldn't be going more swimmingly for its badge-engineered cousin, the Opel Ampera. Sales are reportedly brisk with over 7,000 Europeans preordering the electrified hatchback, prompting the company to push its 2012 sales target from 8,000 to 10,000 units -- matching the figure Chevy had initially set, and then missed for its variant here in the US of A. That got us thinking, are Europeans the electrified forward-thinking mavericks we think they are? Or have they simply fallen prey to the Ampera's far better looks? Decide in the comments below. Opel Ampera popular in ye old continent, likely to meet sales goals unlike Volt originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink  Autoblog, Inhabitat |  Plug-in Cars | Email this | Comments | | China officially tops one billion mobile subscribers Mar 30th 2012, 19:08 We heard last year that China was approaching 900 million mobile phone subscribers, and it looks like it's now finally hit the big one. The country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology confirmed today that, as of the end of February, there were more than a billion mobile subscribers in the country (1.01 billion, to be specific). As the AFP notes, that's individual subscriptions, which includes users with more than one phone, but any way you slice it that's a whole lot of cellphone users. Of those, 144 million are on 3G networks, which is fully double the number from April of 2011. Not surprisingly, much of that growth comes at the expense of landline phones, which have dropped a further 828,000 in the first two months of the year to 284.3 million. Internet use also continues to be on the upswing, with more than half a billion people having internet access of some sort, and 154.96 million having broadband access (up nearly five million during those same two months). China officially tops one billion mobile subscribers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | AFP, China Daily | Email this | Comments | |
