China Mobile said that the first six months of 2013 brought “positive momentum for the Group’s development”, off the back of economic growth in the country and a robust demand for information and communications services.

But the world’s largest mobile operator also said that it faced a number of challenges, “including slower macro-economic growth, more complex competition in the information and communications industry, greater impact from over-the-top products on the traditional communications industry, and more intense horizontal competition due to the continued increase in mobile penetration”.

Noting that it is “currently embedded in the strategic transformation phase”, China Mobile warned that it is “experiencing growing demand in resource allocation and increasing pressure on short to medium term profitability”.

The company announced a profit attributable to shareholders of CNY63.12 billon ($10.32 billion) for the six months, up 1.5 per cent year-on-year, on revenue of CNY303.1 billion, up 13 per cent.

Revenue from telecoms services increased 6.8 per cent year-on-year to reach CNY284.7 billion. While voice revenue decreased by 1.2 per cent to CNY175.1 billion, data revenue increased by 25.5 per cent to CNY95.4 billion.

It ended the period with a total customer base of 740 million, up 8.4 per cent. The company’s 3G services also finally appear to be generating some momentum, with net additions of “approaching 50 million” taking its total past 137 million.

It said that approximately 66 million devices supporting its TD-SCDMA 3G technology were sold during the half, a 1.5 times increase year-on-year, and that “basically all new 3G customers use smartphones”. The company noted a “growing TD device supply chain”, including the launch of two own-brand smartphones.

China Mobile noted the “steady development of our Four-Network Coordination”, stating that “we strictly controlled our 2G network investment while maintaining network quality”, and advanced its 3G network construction with “a significant increase in coverage and capacity with the number of 3G base station reaching 361,000 and network utilisation rate reaching 25 per cent”.

The  company also said that its WiFi access point total reached 4.10 million with its network utilisation rate “constantly improving”, while it “furthers our efforts to fully embrace the development of TD-LTE by initiating the nationwide construction of over 200,000 base stations, to provide continuous coverage for the main metropolitan areas in 100 major cities”.

While the Chinese authorities have yet to issue 4G licences, the company said that “the government encourages proprietary technological innovation and fully supports TD-LTE as a new generation of wireless broadband technology, which will help speed up its industrialisation, commercialisation and internationalisation”.

Rival China Unicom, which is generally favouring the more widely-deployed FDD-LTE version of the 4G technology, recently said it is set to begin TD-LTE pilots, in the belief that the government will favour this flavour of the technology when licences are issued.