KDDI Corp. said Thursday its group net profit for the first half soared 320 percent from a year earlier to 85.86 billion yen.

The nation's No. 2 telecom carrier attributed the robust results to efficient capital investments, cost reduction and improved profitability in its mobile phone units.

Group operating profit in the April-September period came to 158.23 billion yen, over 2.5 times better than a year earlier, while pretax profit more than tripled to 148.24 billion yen.

But KDDI, which operates the au and Tuka mobile services, posted group sales of 1.39 trillion yen, down 0.5 percent, due to decreased revenue from its fixed-line telephone services, company officials said.

Revenue from its au cell phone business rose 7.2 percent to 864.7 billion yen, with the number of new subscribers in the first half coming to 1.21 million, beating market leader NTT DoCoMo Inc.

Total subscribers for au came to 15.26 million, accounting for 19.4 percent of the domestic mobile phone market.

However, its average monthly revenue per user fell to 7,510 yen in the first half from 7,610 yen a year earlier, due to decreased voice communications, the firm said.

KDDI President Tadashi Onodera said the company will remain competitive in the mobile phone market by offering next month the new cdma 1x Win mobile service, which provides high-speed data access at competitive prices.