Voice calls in China have declined for nine consecutive months, while mobile data traffic has almost doubled over that period.

Mobile call minutes in China dropped 2.6 per cent from January to September and SMS traffic fell 7 per cent compared with the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

Meanwhile, total mobile data traffic consumption increased 99 per cent to 2.79 billion gigagbytes during the nine-month period, C114.net reported. The average mobile internet usage per month jumped 88 per cent to 350.5MB from a year ago.

The country’s three mobile operators are all facing slowing growth as mobile penetration nears saturation and social media apps continue to divert users away from operator voice and text services.

Market leader China Mobile’s subscriber base rose 3 per cent to 823 million since the beginning of the year. While revenue increased 6.5 per cent, the downward trend in voice and SMS/MMS services continued, with usage down by 1.2 per cent and 6.4 per cent respectively in the first nine months of the year.

China Telecom’s service revenue edged up just 1.9 per cent during the same period, but its user base rose 7 per cent to 194 million (after falling in 2014). Mobile voice minutes dropped slightly in two of the last four quarters, with Q3 minutes up less than 1 per cent than a year ago.

China Unicom’s mobile service revenue fell 8 per cent in the first nine months of the year, as its total number of mobile subscribers fell 3.3 per cent to 287.6 million. The company doesn’t release quarterly voice usage data.

According to GSMA Intelligence, China’s SIM penetration reached 92 per cent in Q4 of last year, up 4 points from a year earlier. The three operators have a combined total of 1.3 billion mobile connections.