China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile operator, saw Q3 net profits plunge by nearly 9 per cent year-on-year, with the company pinning much of the blame on OTT services.

Chairman Xi Guohua said the group experienced “severe difficulties and challenges from increasingly complex competition”, including “greater impact from OTT products”.

Comparing the first nine months of 2013 with the prior-year period, the picture doesn’t look quite as bleak. Net profit is down a more modest 1.9 per cent, to CNY91.5 billion ($15 billion).

And buoyed by strong 3G subscriber growth, operating revenue reached CNY463 billion over the first three quarters of 2013, 9.4 per cent up on the same period last year.

At the end of September, China Mobile had 170 million 3G subscribers, a net increase of 31.6 million over the previous three months.

ARPU, however, is not going up – no doubt reflecting lower prices to ward off competition and the rise of OTT services.

In the nine months to end-September 2013, China Mobile’s ARPU averaged out at CNY66 per month – exactly the same amount as the year previously.

The ARPU performance may well have been worse if China Mobile hadn’t managed to bump up total voice usage by 3.1 per cent, year-on-year, for the first three quarters of 2013.

Wireless data traffic also continues to skyrocket, up 1.2 times over the same period.

At the end of September, China Mobile had a total of 755 million mobile subscribers, a net increase of 15 million over the previous three months.