(Yicai) March 22 -- China Mobile, one of the nation's three big mobile network operators, will lower its spending on fifth-generation wireless infrastructure by around 20 percent this year from the year before as the new wireless standard has started to give back instead of requiring massive investment.

Capital expenditure on 5G networks will tally CNY69 billion (USD9.55 billion) this year as the time for returns has begun after the investment peak ended, the Beijing-based company announced during its earnings conference yesterday.

China Mobile earned CNY131.8 billion (USD18.2 billion) in net profit last year, up 5 percent from 2022, and revenue rose by 8 percent to exceed the CNY1 trillion (USD138.4 billion) mark for the first time, according to the annual report released the same day.

Going forward, the wireless carrier will spend more on computing power, capacity, and infrastructure this year despite a decline in its total capital expenditure. China Mobile poured CNY28.7 billion into research and development last year, up by 59 percent, to come up with innovations in 5G, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, cloud, Big Data, and edge computing.

The firm had 991 million users last year, and 795 million of them were 5G users, up by 29 percent to make up more than four-fifths of the total.

One of the rising segments is the cloud business as such revenue surged by 66 percent to CNY83.3 billion and the annual target will be CNY150 billion within the next three years, per the company.

Data consultancy IDC wrote in a report that China Mobile Cloud’s market share in the field of public cloud ranked fifth domestically in the third quarter of last year, advancing by one slot. Its revenue from the business jumped by 75 percent as Alibaba Cloud’s market share dropped by almost 6 percentage points, snatched by Huawei Cloud, Tianyi Cloud, and China Mobile Cloud.

The competition is tightening as Alibaba Cloud announced on Feb. 29 that the cloud arm of the e-commerce giant will lower the prices of core products by 20 percent on average with the biggest cut of 55 percent.

Shares of China Mobile [SHA: 600941] climbed by 1.5 percent to CNY104.22 (USD14) as of 2.11 p.m. while its Hong Kong-listed equity [HKG: 0941] was 0.5 percent up at HKD67.15 (USD9).

Editor: Emmi Laine