China Mobile announced its half-year financials today. China’s most popular telecom company is doing quite well — that’s not exactly a surprise — but do you know just how totally it is dominating its competitors?
In the past year, China Mobile made 61 billion RMB (about US$9.6 billion) in profits. Yup, that’s not revenue, it’s profits, in half a year. How does that compare to competitors’ financial sheets? Pretty damn favorably. For the first half of 2011, China Mobile’s profits were six times more than China Telecom’s, and twenty-four times more than China Unicom’s. Ouch!
And where are all those profits going? Right into the pockets of the government, as China Mobile is a state-owned and state-operated company.
Of course, all three companies are still making billions in profit, so it’s all relative, especially compared to their beleaguered comrades in the internet industry, most of whom are making only meager profits or still losing money. But this is not good news for other telecom carriers, especially for China Unicom, which stands to lose a good portion of its business if China Mobile really becomes an official iPhone carrier, as rumors have been suggesting may happen this fall when the iPhone 5 is released.
China Unicom is also the only one of the three telecom giants that has seen their profits slide since H2 2010.
[Via Sina Tech]
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