Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd., the country’s second-biggest mobile-phone company, reported nine- month profit that missed analysts’ estimates, as the company increased spending on its high-speed wireless services.

Net income was 9.34 billion yuan ($1.37 billion), the Beijing-based company said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange today, without providing comparative figures. The carrier was expected to post profit of 9.53 billion yuan, the median of three analysts’ estimates in a Bloomberg survey.

Unicom this month began commercial operations of its third- generation mobile-phone services, and started sales of Apple Inc.’s iPhone handset in the world’s biggest communications market by users. The carrier will boost marketing spending to meet rising competition from other high-speed wireless services from China Mobile Ltd. and China Telecom Corp.

“China Unicom plans to offer substantial handset subsidies to attract high usage customers,” Paul Wuh, a Samsung Securities analyst, wrote in an Oct. 19 report. “Unicom needs to spend more to better compete against China Mobile,” according to Wuh, who rates the stock “sell.”

Unicom said it lacked year-earlier earnings figures for some fixed-line businesses that were acquired from parent China United Network Communications Group Corp. this year. Nine-month sales totaled 114.9 billion yuan, compared with the 115.2 billion yuan median estimate in the Bloomberg survey.

Unicom gained 9.43 million mobile-phone users in the first nine months, compared with the 51.1 million that were added by China Mobile, the world’s biggest phone company by subscribers, and 18.9 million at China Telecom, the biggest domestic fixed- line phone company, which entered the wireless market last year.

In October 2008, Unicom acquired China Netcom Group Corp., the dominant provider of fixed-line and broadband services in northern China, as part of a government-led industry reorganization. Under the revamp, Unicom sold one of its two mobile-phone divisions to China Telecom.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Lee in Hong Kong at wlee37@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 30, 2009 06:56 EDT