China Telecom continues to see a boost in its bottom line, and much of it is due to the iPhone. The world’s third-largest wireless provider posted its second-straight quarterly profit, as iPhone subscribers helped boost data usage numbers.
Net income rose 21 percent to 5.52 billion yuan ($902 million) in the second quarter, from 4.55 billion yuan a year earlier, the Beijing-based company said in a statement today. That beat the 5.25 billion-yuan average of five analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
The company is benefiting from an increase in users of third-generation mobile services, and increased sales of data packages to download content such as games and movies. The company saw an increase after introducing the iPhone last year.
Sales in the second quarter rose 14% to 79.7 billion yuan, the company said.
The second quarter saw the company’s mobile unit adding 9.26 million 3G users, bringing it to 87.3 million. That is half of its total wireless subscriber base of 174.5 million. China Telecom ranks behind China Mobile and China Unicom in wireless users.
