(Telecompaper) China Mobile reported a drop in first-quarter profits, as over-the-top data applications eroded voice and SMS revenues and competition on the saturated mobile market intensified. While quarterly revenues were up 7.8 percent year-on-year to CNY 154.8 billion, EBITDA fell 5.9 percent to CNY 57.6 billion, and the EBITDA margin dropped to 37.2 percent from 42.6 a year ago. Net profit declined 9.4 percent to CNY 25.2 billion. Despite adding 13.88 million new customers in the three months, for a total 781.08 million at the end of March, China Mobile saw voice traffic drop by 4.8 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2013, to 1.04 trillion minutes. Average voice traffic per customer fell over the same period to 456 minutes per month from 476, hurt by a growing number of low-usage customers with multiple Sim cards and competition from OTT apps. SMS traffic fell by 6.6 percent on a sequential basis to a total 153.0 billion messages. Mobile data traffic was the one growth area, expanding by 17.4 percent compared to Q4 to 190.1 billion MB. The operator counted over 225 million 3G users and 2.79 million 4G customers at the end of March. On an annual basis, mobile data traffic was up 83.4 percent in Q1, while voice traffic increased only 0.6 percent. This all led to a decline in ARPU to CNY 62 per month in Q1, from CNY 68 in Q4.