China Mobile recorded double-digit growth in revenue for the first nine months of 2021, on the back of rising mobile ARPU, strong uptake of 5G services and continued momentum in the enterprise market.

The operator added more than 200 million 5G package customers in the year to end-September for a total of 331 million, with the number using compatible devices rising to 160 million.

China Mobile first disclosed 5G network customer numbers in April.

ARPU was up 2.6 per cent year-on-year to CNY50.10 ($7.83), its second consecutive gain after falling for more than two years.

Net profit rose 6.9 per cent to CNY87.2 billion, with operating revenue growing 12.9 per cent to CNY648.6 billion. Telecoms service revenue increased 9 per cent to CNY572.9 million and product sales 55.4 per cent to CNY75.8 billion.

In a statement, chairman Yang Jie noted its enterprise division demonstrated strong momentum following the group’s efforts to integrate its data and ICT service offering into its cloud and network platforms.

He said enterprise revenue reached CNY48.9 billion, “maintaining very rapid growth”.

China Mobile ended September with a total of 956 million mobile subscribers, up by 10 million. It added 46 million LTE users to take the total to 816 million.

Average monthly mobile data usage rose 35.2 per cent to 12.3GB.