South Korean cellco SK Telecom has posted a 16.8% jump in Q2 net profit, while NTT DoCoMo’s net grew just 3.5%.
SKT reported a 16.8% year on year growth in net profit to 364 billion won ($307.4m) thanks to smartphone sales of 1.2 million, but this was below consensus estimates.
Sales were also weaker-than-expected with voice revenue contracting 3.6% to KRW1.92 trillion due to the introduction of second-based billing, all-in-one packages for smartphone users, and diverse bundling packages.
Mobile data revenue grew 6.3% to 713 billion won.
The company is targeting year-end smartphone subs of 3 million, up from an earlier forecast of 2.5 million subs.
Meanwhile, higher operating costs curtailed net profit growth to 3.5% for DoCoMo.
The firm said its net stood at 142.15 billion yen ($1.6b) in Q2 on flat revenues of 1.1 trillion yen.
ARPU fell 4.6% year on year to 5,901 yen due to falling voice ARPU, but was up compared to Q1’s 5,060 yen.
The company plans to spend 300 billion yen rolling out its LTE network in the three years to March 2013.
It plans to switch on its LTE service in December under the just announced brand name Xi (pronounced “crossy”).
MORE ARTICLES ON DOCOMO, EARNINGS, JAPAN, KOREA, SK TELECOM, SMARTPHONES