China Mobile reports better-than-expected net profit
12 August, 2018
China Mobile, one of the big three state-owned telecom operators, has reported a net profit of 65.6 billion yuan (US$ 9.62 billion) for the first half of 2018, equivalent to a net profit of 360 million yuan per day, The Paper reported.
The 4.7% year-on-year increase of the net profit is beyond the expectations of many institutions. Operating income also reached 391.8 billion yuan, a rise of 2.9% from a year earlier.
According to the financial report, 75% of China Mobile’s revenue in the first half of the year came from its mobile business.
Of that, revenue in the personal mobile market hit 268.2 billion yuan, with the number of mobile customers exceeding 900 million, of which 74.7% are 4G users.
Shang Bing, chairman of China Mobile, said the biggest pressure comes from unlimited data packages.
As unlimited data packages have become the market mainstream, the value of data is also rapidly declining. The resulting impact on China Mobile is relatively large, as they account for a large share of data in the domestic market.