Japanese mobile carrier KDDI said Monday that its profit in the fiscal third-quarter nearly doubled from a year earlier thanks to strong sales of smartphones, including Apple’s iPhone.
The country’s second-biggest mobile firm said it earned 100.49 billion yen ($1.12 billion), up from 54.22 billion yen a year earlier, while logging a 7.5 percent increase in revenue to 969.98 billion yen.
For the first three quarters of its fiscal year that ends in March, KDDI said net profit slipped 7.3 percent from a year ago to 180.25 billion yen, mainly due to one-off costs, on slightly higher sales.
The company, which became the second Japanese carrier to offer iPhone after smaller rival Softbank, clipped its net profit forecast for the fiscal year to 235 billion yen from 250 billion yen, but upgraded its operating profit outlook to 505 billion yen from 500 billion yen.
Sales were expected to come in at 3.63 trillion yen, it said, stronger than a previously forecast 3.58 trillion yen.
The upward trend reflected strong handset sales and data plans, it said.
“Data communications revenues increased in line with the shift to smartphones,” the company said.
Japan's KDDI third quarter profit nearly doubles
