Tencent profit soars as Chinese tech major wins on smartphone games

China's most valuable tech company's earnings soared last year as its games rose in popularity and advertising and digital content sales boosted revenue.

A visitor stands in front of an advert for Tencent in Fuzhou city, south-east China's Fujian province. Mobile games helped the tech juggernaut boost its earnings by 43 per cent.

The Chinese technology major Tencent reported a profit boost on Wednesday, helped by the growing popularity of its mobile games.

Net profit for 2016 was up 43 percent year on year from 28.81 billion yuan (Dh15.36bn) to 41.09bn yuan.

Revenues from online games increased by 25 per cent to 70.84bn yuan, mainly driven by successful smartphone offerings such as Honour of Kings.

Tencent expanded its presence in the gaming sector last year, when it paid US$8.6bn for a majority stake in Supercell – the maker of online game Clash of Clans.

Overall revenue was up 48 per cent at 151.94bn yuan, driven by smartphone games, advertising, digital content sales, and payment related services, the company said.

Tencent operates China’s biggest messaging service WeChat through which a variety of businesses including gaming, advertising and social networking have flourished in recent years.

The firm has also sought to make its instant messaging platform QQ more interactive, adding facial beautifying tools, painting-style photos, and animated video stickers, it said on Wednesday.

Looking ahead, the company said it wanted to expand the popularity of its major smartphone games, as well as adding new “genre-driven” PC games in 2017.

It would also develop its capabilities in emerging technology, including cloud services, it said.

* AFP

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