China Mobile stutters in Q1, eyes AI

• China Mobile’s years of high growth appear to be over
• Its Q1 revenues hardly grew while its margins shrank
• Now, like many other telcos, it’s turning its attention to opportunities in AI

As the world’s largest mobile network operator with over 1 billion mobile subscribers, financial and operational updates from China Mobile are closely watched by industry observers, and the latest set of figures suggest the giant operator might have hit a ceiling.  

The operator’s first quarter results were something of a mixed bag, with modest revenue growth and a decline in operating profit. 

In Q1, operating revenue grew by just 1% year-on-year to 266.5bn yuan (CNY) ($39.1bn), while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) dropped by 5% to CNY 76.7bn ($11.25bn). Pre-tax profit was also down by 4.4% at CNY 37.6bn ($5.5bn). 

At the same time, the operator was able to increase the number of mobile subscribers by 3.76 million in the quarter to almost 1.009 billion, and the number of 5G customers rose by 26 million to 668 million. 

The total number of integrated broadband network customers rose to 333.12 million, representing a net increase of 3.90 million since the end of 2025. 

China Mobile focuses on three principal businesses, namely its traditional communications business, computing services and AI. While revenue from its principal businesses increased by 1.1% to CNY 219.9bn ($32.25bn), revenue from “other” businesses rose by 12.7% to CNY 46.6bn ($6.83bn).

As ongoing growth in mobile and broadband connectivity becomes harder to find, China Mobile is increasingly turning its attention and capital expenditure focus to AI infrastructure and associated services, and has plans to ramp up its spending on AI datacentres and domestically developed GPUs starting this year. 

– Anne Morris, Contributing Editor, TelecomTV