China Unicom booked profit and revenue gains in Q1, driven by its IoT and cloud units, as its mobile business saw growth slow.

Mobile service revenue increased 2.2 per cent year-on-year to CNY42 billion ($6.5 billion), less than the 8.8 per cent annual growth it registered in the opening period of 2021.

Unicom added 79.1 million 5G package subscribers in the recent period for a total of 171 million.

The company didn’t disclose ARPU or mobile subscriber numbers but released totals combining mobile, fixed, broadband and IoT connections.

IoT sales grew 40.7 per cent to CNY2.1 billion as connections hit 313 million, while cloud revenue more than doubled to CNY9.1 billion. Industry internet revenue, driven by uptake of new 5G applications, increased 34.8 per cent to CNY19.4 billion.

Net profit grew 20.6 per cent to CNY4.6 billion, with operating revenue rising 8.2 per cent to CNY89 billion.