China Mobile's operating revenue reached CNY481.2 billion during the latest reporting period, a year-on-year increase of 3.9%; but its net profit was CNY82.6 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 9.7%.
At the same time, its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization were CNY176.3 billion, a decrease of 5% compared with the same period of last year.
China Mobile said that the Chinese mainland mobile communications sector has reached a high saturation stage and the development of traditional communications services have come to a bottleneck. Meanwhile, the competitive impact from the mobile Internet sector is more obvious. During the first three quarters of 2014, China Mobile's voice and SMS and MMS services continued to decline. The total call time decreased by 0.3% over the same period of last year and the short message usage decreased by 20.2% over last year.
By September 30, 2014, China Mobile's users reached 799 million. Of those, 4G users reached 40.95 million, marking a quarterly increase of 27.01 million and a growth rate of 194%. The number of its 3G users was 244.46 million, a decrease of 5.94 million compared with the previous month. At the same time, its mobile data traffic increased by 98.6% compared with the same period of last year.
China Mobile's report also revealed that due to policy changes, the company's revenue growth further slowed. Its operating revenue increased by 3.9% year-on-year to CNY481.2 billion; while its average revenue per user was CNY63, representing a decrease over last year.
