China Mobile ended September with 622 million 5G subscribers after a net addition of 23 million 5G customers during the third quarter
In sum – what to know:
Revenues edge up 0.4% – China Mobile posted CNY794.7 billion ($111.6 billion) in operating revenue for Jan–Sep 2025, reflecting slight year-on-year growth.
Profit rises 4% y-o-y – Net profit reached CNY115.4 billion, supported by steady service revenue gains and cost efficiency.
5G base expands – The operator added 23 million 5G users in Q3, maintaining its lead with over a billion total mobile subscribers.
China Mobile, the world’s largest operator in terms of subscribers, recorded operating revenues of CNY794.7 billion ($11.6 billion) in the first nine months of the year, up 0.4% compared to CNY791.5 billion in the same period the previous year, the telco said in its earnings statement.
The company’s net profit surged 4% year-on-year to CNY115.4 billion. Also, the operator reported that revenue from telecommunications services was CNY683.1 billion in the period, up by 0.8% year-on-year.
The telco noted its Ebitda was CNY265.4 billion, up by 0.9% year-on-year.
The telco ended September with a total of 622 million 5G subscribers after a net addition of 23 million 5G customers during the third quarter. In the mobile segment, the telco reached a total of 1.009 billion subscribers at the end of September 2025.
As at 30 September 2025, the telco’s total number of wireline broadband customers reached 329 million, with a net increase of 14.20 million in the first three quarters of the year; of which, the number of household broadband customers reached 288 million, with a net increase of 9.76 million in the first three quarters of the year.
In the field of AI, China Mobile had said it has positioned itself as a provider, aggregator and operator, accelerating pace in AI innovation and scale application.
AI is already ushering in a new era of technological and societal transformation, and its fusion with human activity — what China Mobile calls “carbon-silicon symbiosis” — will define the next wave of industrial development, said Yang Jie, chairman of China Mobile, during his keynote address at the MWC Shanghai 2025 event.
The boss of China Mobile opened his keynote by framing AI as the latest technological force following what he called the “Internet+” and “5G+” eras. He said we are now entering the “AI+” era, in which artificial intelligence serves as a strategic driver of economic and industrial transformation. With AI capabilities now matching or surpassing human-level performance in areas like language understanding and image classification, the executive emphasized the growing role of “silicon-based life” — a metaphor for intelligent machines.
The executive also described a future where sensors, processors, memory and control systems will work together like a nervous system. Integrated into smart devices, vehicles and robots, these silicon-based agents will become ubiquitous and serve as decision-making tools embedded across society. According to Yang, these intelligent systems will eventually outnumber humans, becoming vital parts of the social workforce and knowledge economy.
In his speech, the China Mobile executive also argued that the digital and physical worlds are on a path of deep convergence. In this futuristic scenario, AI agents will always be online and will increasingly map and simulate the real world, expanding the scope of human activities in production, communication and research. This fusion, Yang noted, will accelerate innovation cycles and improve economic efficiency, paving the way for an “intelligent economy.”
