Photo/Zhang Xiaoqing

Oct. 23 (NBD) – China Mobile (00941.HK) on Monday published financial report for the first three quarters of 2018, revealing its first operating revenue decrease since 2014.

According to the report, the telecommunication giant's operating revenue for the January-September period stood at 567.7 billion yuan (81.9 billion U.S. dollars), marking a year-over-year decrease of 0.3 percent. Net profit was 95 billion yuan (13.7 billion U.S. dollars), up 3.1 percent from the same period of last year. 

China Mobile said in the report that the cancellation of data roaming fee, which has been implemented starting July 1, has significantly contributed to the revenue decrease. 

Meanwhile, its two competitors - China Unicom and China Telecom - have been offering various kinds of large-data, low-tariff packages, triggering a rapid decrease in data value and placing great pressure on China Mobile. China Unicom, for example, cooperated with Tencent to offer packages that grant users free data for Tencent's apps. The packages have now attracted more than 100 million users and significantly boosted China Unicom's revenue and profit, according to the company's latest financial report. 

China Mobile is thus caught in a dilemma of growing user numbers or increasing average revenue per user. As the report shows, the carrier has built a mobile customer base of 916 million as of September 30, of which 695 million are 4G users. In the first three quarters, the company's handset data traffic saw a year-over-year increase of 172 percent. Handset customer DOU reached 3,132 MB, marking an increase of 156 percent from the previous year. However, the average revenue per user per month (ARPU) of mobile customers continued to face a strong headwind, dropping to 55.7 yuan (8.0 U.S. dollars), compared with 58.1 yuan (8.4 U.S. dollars) for the first half of 2018.

NBD noticed that China Mobile has started promoting its own large-data packages. In June, it announced comprehensive strategic cooperation with Baidu, offering customized discounted data plans together with an Internet firm for the first time. 

According to mid-term reports of China's three top carriers, China Mobile was still the largest mobile telecommunication provider in China in terms of revenue, followed by China Telecom and China Unicom.

Email: limenglin@nbd.com.cn