Five Asian mobile operators are among the top 12 mobile operators in the world according to the latest ranking by GSMA Intelligence.

China’s big three were all in the top ten, with India’s Bharti Airtel 11th and Japan’s SoftBank 12th.

The ranking is calculated by adding together each operator’s ranking in mobile connections and mobile revenue for Q2 (the lowest number is on top).

China Mobile was number one in both categories, with 790.6 million mobile connections and annualised revenue of £66.4 billion. China Unicom was third overall with 295 million connections (third), despite ranking just 10th in terms of revenue (£21.5 billion). China Telecom was in tenth overall place – ninth with 180 million connections and 12th with revenues of £16 billion.

With 287 million connections Airtel was ranked 4th in terms of that KPI, but with revenues of just £7.9 billion it was 18th in the the revenue listing, giving it an overall placement of 11th. Twelfth-ranked SoftBank was 20th in connections (105 million) but was fourth in revenue (£43 billion).

Looking further down the ranking, Asia had another four operators in the top 25. NTT Docomo was 19th, KDDI was 23rd, Indonesia’s Telkomsel was 24th and Axiata Group was 25th.

View the full analysis here.