download (14).jpg (Photo : Reuters)
Sales from the telecommunications industry in China declined by 4 percent, down from 89.1 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) last month.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Chinese telecom sector also observed sluggish revenue growth during this year's January-October period.
The overall revenue reached 975.5 billion yuan, which is a 4.7 year-over-year increase. But the mentioned growth rate is a 0.9-percent decrease from Q1 up to Q3's registered rate.
The telecom sector's revenue slowed due to declining net profits from the 4.5-percent year-over-year decrease of voice services. Furthermore, the fall of short messaging services (SMS) also affected the telecom firms' revenues due to the growing trend of online instant messaging services by Internet companies such as Tencent through its WeChat app.
China Mobile, one of the leading telecom operators in the world, announced in October its plans to improve its own instant messaging service called Fetion, which was popular in 2007, but lost to WeChat in terms of the quantity of its active users.
On the other hand, non-voice services from the telecom industry, which include Internet and data connection services, saw revenues reaching 56.5 billion yuan during the January-October period, equal to a 12.4-increase year-over-year.
The non-voice businesses are responsible for around 58 percent of the telecom industry's overall profits.
As of Oct. 2014, the country's registered mobile phone users reached a total of 1.28 billion, with 835 million accessing the World Wide Web using such device.
