Page 28 - China Mobile Limited - Annual Report 2012

China Mobile Limited
Annual Report 2012
24
Business Review
Among data businesses, wireless data traffic enjoyed rapid growth. In 2012, the Group strengthened operation of data traffic
by optimizing the business process system for managing data traffic, and uplifting the scale and efficiency of data traffic,
hence gravitated healthy growth of traffic volume and revenue. Poised on the revenue growth frontier, wireless data traffic
hiked 1.04 trillion megabytes, up by 187.6 % from the previous year. Revenue accounted for RMB68.3 billion which rose by
53.6% to reach 12.2% of the Group’s operating revenue.
The Group’s applications and information services developed fast. In 2012, revenue reached RMB53.9 billion, up by 11.2%
from the previous year, among which, revenue of key businesses such as Mobile Mailbox, Mobile Reading, Mobile Video and
Mobile Gaming sufficed scale and trended well. Location-based services and Mobile Animation also demonstrated robust
development momentum.
SMS and MMS revenue for 2012 was RMB44.2 billion, down by 4.8% compared to the previous year. Due to substitution by
Internet businesses, point-to-point SMS and MMS revenue slipped while corporate SMS and MMS spurred in popularity,
which slowed down the revenue slide.
Strategic Transformation
To adapt to the changing industry ecosystem, the Group proactively transformed its strategies and embarked three key
development pillars, i.e. to drive Four-Network Coordination, enhance basic network capabilities and develop mobile Internet
business.
Through Four-Network Coordination, the Group maintained overall competitive advantage in networks, and continued to
improve its network capabilities and coverage. As at the end of 2012, 2G base stations reached 810 thousand, maintaining
a reasonable network utilization rate and a leading position in voice quality. 3G base stations of the parent company reached
280 thousand, covering cities at county-level or above and some towns and villages, achieving contiguous coverage for large
and medium cities. Network utilization rate was up by over 10 percentage points from the prior year. WLAN access points
mounted to 3.83 million. WLAN traffic increased by 274.0% compared to the previous year. TD-LTE scale trial was launched
and approximately 20 thousand base stations were constructed in 15 cities, where the technical performance of TD-LTE was
thoroughly validated with favorable customer experience. Among the trial cities, networks constructed in Hangzhou,
Guangzhou and Shenzhen achieved pre-commercial standard. Multi-mode-multi-frequency handsets, mobile voice and
inter-operable solutions availed to accelerate the development of the TD-LTE supply chain. TD-LTE/LTE FDD integrated
network services were launched in Hong Kong, which created favorable conditions for the international development of TD-
LTE.
The Group strengthened the planning and deployment of basic network resources and enhanced capabilities to compete in
full service. The Group continued to garner basic resource reserves, including metropolitan area transmission networks,
public Internet and broadband access networks. IDC development was accelerated by introducing Internet hotspot
resources, and on-net traffic increased to 75%. Efforts were focused on the development of fiber broadband access
capability for corporate customers. In terms of products, corporate IP-VPN lines, IDC, unified communications and high-end
family broadband started to form a core series of products, leveraging synergy with its parent company to pilot-launch
100MB family broadband services.