Competition in the mobile space is growing as more and more devices and services debut. This is also true on a global scale, and perhaps China in particular. China Mobile Ltd., the world’s largest mobile carrier, reported today that its first-quarter net profit rose 5.4 percent to 26.86 billion yuan or $4.12 billion, which is high yet still below analysts’ expectations.

“China Mobile said its net profit for the three months ended March 31 rose to 26.86 billion yuan ($4.12 billion) from 25.48 billion yuan a year earlier. The average forecast of five analysts polled earlier by Dow Jones Newswires was 27.06 billion yuan.”

China Mobile’s slowed down growth is attributed to the intensifying competition with China Telecom Corp. and China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. The company has the largest number of 3G users amongst these three, yet it has a limited access to 3G devices it would normally be able to offer to customer. Nevertheless, the company is still expanding its user base, and the addition to subscribers from more rural areas or ones with low service usage caused average user revenue to fall from 70 yuan to 67 yuan year-over-year.

China Mobile had quite a bit of developments today, including the fact it just broke a world record. The company said today its customer base exceeded 600 million people shortly after it has reported its earnings, and we’ve also learned that the carrier has entered a new agreement with Alcatel-Lucent. The joint venture with the telecommunications hardware maker is meant to produce a product designed to reduce the size of base stations.

Competition in the mobile space, though, is not the biggest concern regarding this area in the Chinese market. The govermnet-owned national television broadcasting network CCTV reported that that Chinese mobile users are facing more severe mobile security challenges than eve. The report states that the 850 million mobile in china are vulnerable to all kinds of cyberattacks, and that this has “led China to become the most optimal market for a mobile security company to succeed.”