(Yicai) Aug. 15 -- Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings said its profit soared 82 percent in the second quarter of the year, mainly thanks to a jump in income related to its gaming business and video accounts.

Net profit was CNY47.6 billion (USD6.6 billion) in the three months ended June 30, the Shenzhen-based company announced yesterday. Revenue rose 8 percent to CNY161.1 billion (USD22.5 billion) in the period from a year earlier.

Income from value-added services, mainly games, climbed 6 percent to CNY78.8 billion, with that from international and domestic games jumping 9 percent to CNY13.9 billion and CNY34.6 billion, respectively, Tencent noted.

Tencent will continue to invest in platforms and technologies, including artificial intelligence, enabling it "to create new business value and better serve user needs," it pointed out, without providing performance guidance.

Video accounts' total user time spent surged from a year earlier after Tencent enhanced recommendation algorithms and provided more local content, according to the company. Transaction capabilities are systematically strengthened to deliver seamless shopping experiences to users and boost merchants' sales, it added.

Revenue from online advertising soared 19 percent to CNY29.9 billion, driven by income from video accounts and long-form videos, Tencent said. That from the social network segment climbed 2 percent to CNY30.3 billion, thanks to an increase in music and long videos paying members, mini-games platform service fees, and gaming virtual items sales.

Monthly active users of Tencent's main social media apps Weixin and its international version WeChat increased 3 percent to 1.4 billion as of June 30. Mobile device MAUs of ICQ-like instant messenger QQ remained at around 571 million.

Tencent's net profit rose 1 percent in the second quarter from the prior one, while its revenue jumped 14 percent, it added. For the first half, its profit surged 70 percent to CNY91 billion, and revenue rose 7 percent to CNY320.6 billion.

Tencent is using high-performance computing infrastructure to strive for more AI-related budget inputs from customers, executives said at an earnings conference call. It also launched more solutions regarding computing chips and models, they added.

Many customers in China do not have the resources to build their own AI infrastructure, and there is a growing need for leasing computing power, the executives noted. Tencent has applied AI to content push to achieve commercial value and to games, which can be used to build new gaming modes that enable players to battle with machines, they said.

Regarding App Store commissions, "there's been some misunderstandings there about the nature of the current situation, which is that today, we don't monetize many games on iOS through in-app transactions," said James Mitchell, chief strategy officer of Tencent. "It would be in our interest and Apple's interests, but more so for the game developers and the users' interests if that monetization were made available.

"But we want to make it available on terms that we think are economically sustainable and that are also fair," Mitchell noted. "And so that's a discussion that's underway. And we hope that the discussion leads to a positive outcome because it will be a win-win-win.

"Over time, both through regulatory reasons and business reasons, there is a trend toward the app store take rate, reducing over time," Mitchell said.

Shares of Tencent [HKG: 0700] fell 0.5 percent to HKD372 (USD47.74) each as of lunch break in Hong Kong today, after earlier dropping by as much as 2.4 percent.

Editors: Xu Wei, Martin Kadiev