Thursday, August 15, 2013

China Mobile: Data Traffic Up 129%, Data Revenue Up 62%, Profit up 1.5% 1H2013

China Mobile, the world's largest mobile operator, reported operating revenue for the first half of 2013 reached RMB 303.1 billion (US$49.58 billion), up 10.4% over the first half of 2012, while revenue from telecommunications services was up 6.8% to RMB 285 billion. Net profit increased 1.5% to RMB 63.13 billion.

Some operational highlights for China Mobile in the first half of 2013:


  • Customers over 740 million, up 8.4% from 683 million at 1H2012.
  • Data services revenue rose to 33.5% of revenue from telecommunications services.
  • Wireless data traffic revenue up 62.2% while wire data revenue grew 129% over 1H2012.
  • TD handset sales were up ~1.5 fold
  • 3G customers are now over 137 million.
  • 3G base stations reached 361,000
  • The company plans to deploy >200,000 TD-LTE base stations in 2013.
  • Wi-Fi APs reached 4.10 million
  • WLAN offload accounts for 75% of data traffic -- a low cost bearer
  • Growing TD device supply chain 595 new TD handset models available, virtually all smartphones
  • So far, China Mobile has 25 TD-LTE trial devices, >100 models under development, of which 15 handsets intended for commercial use.
  • China Mobile plans to procure < 1 million TD-LTE devices this year.
  • Voice usage was up 3.7% to 2,061 billion minutes.
  • China Mobile's transmission network increased by 23,600 of fiber route miles since last year.
  • China Mobile's app store has 336 million cumulative registered customers. There were 506 million application downloads in 1H2013.
  • In 2013, China Mobile aims to realize a 15% decrease in power consumption per unit of business.

Looking forward, the company says its top challenges include China's Slowing macroeconomic development, rising mobile penetration, increasing notable OTT headwinds, and ntensifying competition among operators.

An investor presentation in English is posted here:
http://www.chinamobileltd.com/en/ir/webcasts/pre130815.pdf