China Mobile sees reversal in ARPU trends!

Given the fact that telecom industry in India has followed the trend in China with a time lag, I think this is very encouraging news for Indian telecom sector as well.

  China Mobile Ltd, the Hong Kong listed subsidiary of China Mobile Corp., has reported that its full-year revenues for 2009 rose by 9.8% to RMB452.1 billion (US$66 billion). Net profit was also up, by 2.3% to RMB115.2 billion (US$16.8 billion). EBITDA rose 5.9% to RMB229 billion (US433.5 billion), with EBITDA margin reaching 50.7%. The total customer base at the end of 2009 reached 522 million, of which 65.03 million were net additions. The contribution to total revenue from value-added business increased substantially, including revenue generated from Mobile Music, which again exceeded RMB10 billion.

In 2009, the average minutes of usage remained steady at 494 minutes, and monthly ARPU rose slightly to RMB77, countering a general downward trend over the past few years. Looking into the future, the continuing impact of the global financial crisis on the Chinese economy, the change in the competitive landscape, the increasing mobile penetration rate and the convergence across telecommunications, Internet and Radio & TV Broadcasting networks all pose fresh challenges to the Group's future development. The company added that it will maintain its policy of overseas expansion and will also continue development in LTE services for the Chinese market.

 

China has 338 Million internet users !!

The state-run China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said that its Internet statistics show that Internet users in China are up by an estimated 40 million from the end of last year. The internet user base has reached reaching 338 million users by June 2009 and the country has achieved a density of 25.5 percent, which is above the global average of 23.8 percent. By the end of June, there were 3,061 million websites registered in China, 16.25 million domain names and 205 million IP addresses.

In China, internet service providers include companies like Baidu, Alibaba group and Tencent.
Many of these Internet service companies have carved out niches using their market knowledge to satisfy consumer demand for music, news, instant messaging and search functions with the other four popular services being in way of online gaming, videos, email and blogging. As reported in Telecommunications online, Tencent Holdings achieved a total revenue of CNY 5.38 billion (US$787.9 million), an increase of 77.5 percent increase over the same period last year. It had a cash position of CNY 7.7 billion (US$1.1 billion) at the end of first half 2009. Noted for its instant messaging service, it reportedly has 990 million user accounts of which 448 million are active.

Also reporting positive results is China’s leading Internet search provider, Baidu, which attained a turnover of CNY 1.1 billion (US$161 million) for its second quarter in 2009, representing a 36.7 percent increase year-on-year. As for the online auction provider Taobao, the country’s equivalent of eBay, it had a favourable first half year of 2009 recording revenue of CNY 80.9 billion (US$11.8 billion) and it reportedly has set a target of CNY 200 billion (US$29 billion) for the whole year. Taobao is part of the Alibab group which also has interests in online payment and business-to-business platforms in 240 countries.

According to the CNNIC, the number of Chinese shopping online grew in the first six months with 14 million more shoppers to reach a total of 87.8 million. Online shoppers, however, only account for a quarter of Chinese Internet users, compared to two out of three in South Korea, the United States and Europe. Security risks of shopping on the Net may be one withholding factor.

I presume the things will not be much different in India