Rising handset costs and tough competition continue to plague KDDI, which posted a 16.8% decline in Q2 profit on Friday.

 

Japan’s second integrated telco said quarterly earnings had fallen 16.8% year on year to 71.92 billion yen ($820.4m).

 

Consolidated operating profit was also down 8.8% to 129.30 billion yen, with revenues increasing 1.4% to 866.02 billion yen.

 

The firm’s CDMA mobile business continued to struggle, with net profits and operating income tumbling 21.7% and 12.6% respectively. Mobile revenues were up by just 0.1%.

 

ARPU also fell 7.9% to 5,160 yen due to falling voice ARPU on the back of the company’s Simple Course promotion.

 

Meanwhile, fixed-line operating losses reduced to 5.4 billion yen, approximately half of the previous year, thanks to a 5.7 billion yen gain from the sale of shares in Jupiter Telecommunications.

 

The company left its full-year forecasts unchanged.