The Short Names

China Mobile’s profit dropped in the second quarter for the first time in a decade, reports Bloomberg.

The world’s largest phone company by market value said it recorded a net income of 30.1 billion yuan ($4.4 billion), falling from 30.6 billion yuan a year earlier. China Mobile was expected to post a profit of 31.1 billion yuan, according to a Bloomberg survey.

Still, the carrier managed to add 15.96 million users in the three months ended June 30, compared with 22.5 million a year earlier. In total, China Mobile has nearly a half a billion subscribers. But the giant’s efforts to promote a homegrown Chinese 3G standard have made little progress. So far, 3G subscribers have only passed the one-million mark and growth looks slow moving forward, reports Network World.

As mandated by the government, China Mobile is rolling out TD-SCDMA, a Chinese-developed network technology that is not being used anywhere else in the world. China Mobile plans to offer 3G in 238 cities by the end of the year (up from 38 today), and hopes to have between 50 million and 80 million 3G subscribers by the end of next year.

But in general, 3G growth has been slow in China because not very many users are demanding data services, and all of the carriers are having trouble rolling out attractive 3G devices. That’s particularly difficult for China Mobile because only a fourth of the 3G handsets sold in China in Q2 supported TD-SCDMA, according to Chinese research outfit Analysys International.

It probably doesn’t help either that unconfirmed reports are saying that China Unicom has signed a deal with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) to bring the iPhone to China on an exclusive basis. Previously, China Mobile was considered in the lead to win the deal.

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