Games, WeChat boost Tencent profit to $949 million

China's Tencent Holdings Ltd., which operates online games and the popular WeChat messaging service, said Wednesday its quarterly profit rose 59 percent due to strong growth in its mobile business.

The company based in the southern city of Shenzhen earned 5.8 billion yuan ($949 million) in the three months ended June 30, or 0.63 yuan (10.2 U.S. cents) per share. Revenue rose 37 percent to 19.7 billion yuan ($3.2 billion).

Tencent and other Chinese Internet services are spending heavily to expand mobile services as the country's Web surfers shift to going online wirelessly through smartphones and tablet computers.

Tencent's online games revenue rose 7 percent over the previous quarter, driven mostly by higher revenue for smartphone games integrated with WeChat. Revenue from social networks rose 15 percent over the previous quarter, also driven by mobile services.

"We deepened user engagement on mobile across our social, games and media platforms," said chairman Ma Huateng in a statement. "Our online advertising business grew particularly strongly."

Tencent also has expanded into online video, taxi hailing services and online finance. It bought a $215 million stake in March in JD.com, the country's second-largest online sales platform.

© 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.