(Associated Press via NewsEdge) Sina.com, China's most popular Web portal, said its fourth-quarter profits fell 15% due to higher expenses and a drop in revenues for mobile services.
Sina reported earnings of $11.7 million down from $13.8 million in the same quarter of 2005.
Sina reported strong online advertising growth, with revenues in China up 44% from the year-earlier quarter. The company said online ads account for 63% of its total revenues.
'We see great potential for online advertising growth in the next two years,' CEO Charles Chao told analysts in a conference call.
Chao said Sina expects ad revenues to grow strongly as advertisers roll out campaigns for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
China has the world's second-biggest population of Internet users after the US with 137 million people online, though it trails the US, South Korean and other markets in financial terms.
Sina is China's most popular content-oriented Web portal, offering sports and entertainment news, games and other services. It has expanded into online video and a blog service.
Chao said traffic for Sina's blogs jumped by 10 times last year to more than 120 million page views per day, though the company has yet to begin earning revenues from the service.
In mobile services, fourth-quarter revenues fell 28 % from the same period of 2005 amid regulatory and billing changes that have hit all of China's mobile services.
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