BEIJING - MILLIONS of Chinese mobile users rushed to download the Beijing Olympics theme within hours after it was performed at the opening ceremony, state media said on Tuesday.

The song, entitled 'You and Me' and sung by British soprano Sarah Brightman and Chinese singer Liu Huan, was downloaded 5.7 million times within 26 hours from 10.00 pm last Friday, the China Business News reported.

China Mobile, the country's largest mobile operator who immediately launched the theme song globally via its wireless music platform, said no other song had ever been distributed so fast to so many people, the report said.

By comparison, after China launched another Olympic-related song, 'We Are Ready", it was downloaded only 500,000 times within a month.

China has the world largest number of mobile subscribers.

The government said last month the number of cellphone users in China had reached 601 million, meaning on average nearly one in every two Chinese owned a mobile. -- AFP