Earnings: China Mobile Revs Up 22 Percent; Huge Gains In Non-Voice Services

China Mobile (NYSE: CHL) today posted a sizeable hike in its operating revenue in the first half of 2007, to RMB166,580 million ($22 billion) an increase of 21.6 percent over the same period last year. Total subscribers as of June 30, 2007 are 332,378,000,000, as the company shifted its focus to more growth in rural markets.

Boost in non-voice products: Value-added services revenue grew by 35.5 percent to RMB41,915 million ($5,516,220,306). In total VAS makes up 25.2 percent of China Mobile’s total operating revenue. A number of services are very new, so are currently experiencing all the rapid growth associated with that:

–Even if ringtone revenues are leveling off in some markets, there is no sign of this happening yet in China, as the VAS that saw the most growth was China Mobiles “Color Ring” ringtone service, which went up to RMB5.027 million ($661,708,569) — a whopping growth off 90.3 percent of the first half of last year. WAP revenue was up by 45.8 percent to RMB4.435 million ($583,781,535); MMS was up by 76 percent to RMB713 million ($93.8 million).

Mobile music also saw huge growth: In a market rife with piracy, China Mobile and other operators are being wooed big-time by record labels who believe they may be the one last outpost against their ongoing copyright infringement wars. It looks to be paying off for now: CHL’s mobile music service picked up 31 million customers in the last six months, bringing the total number of subs to 48 million. Premium subscribers now number 22 million.

Other mobile data services: Mobile Paper, CHL’s mobile information service which links it up with newspaper publishers, now has 15 million paid subscribers, picking up 10 million in the last six months.

No further word on the 3G licences: Some analysts expect these now may not be issued until 2009, rather than before the Beijing Olympics, writes Reuters. China Mobile has a deal to provide mobile comms exclusively for the event.

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