Tencent’s profit rose 69 per cent year-on-year during Q3, with smartphone games making up a significant chunk of its revenue and as its messaging app WeChat hit 980 million monthly active users.

The Chinese tech giant’s total revenue hit CNY65 billion ($9.8 billion) in Q3 2017, an increase of 61 per cent year-on-year, while net profit hit CNY18 billion.

Smartphone games revenue surged 84 per cent to CNY18.2 billion thanks to titles including Honour of Kings.

Reuters noted Tencent is now Asia’s most valuable company, with a market capitalisation of $472 billion.

Meanwhile Tencent Video, its answer to YouTube, became China’s biggest video streaming service in terms of subscriber base, with 43 million subscriptions.

Ma Huateng, Tencent chairman and CEO, said: “We believe this success reflects our increasing investment in self-commissioned video content, our improved selection of licensed video content, and our scheduling and audience management initiatives.”

Tencent is readying several survival-themed mobile games, a genre becoming incrasingly popular in China.