TENCENT, China's largest Internet company by market capitalization, yesterday said first-quarter profit rose 37 percent from a year ago to 4.04 billion yuan (US$656 million), fueled by robust growth in online gaming and advertising income.

Its revenue in the three months ended on March 31 climbed 40.4 percent to 13.5 billion yuan, Tencent said in a stock exchange filing.

The online game income surged 35 percent from a year ago and contributed 55 percent to the overall revenue in the period. With an extended product range its e-commerce income surged more than 1.5 times to 1.9 billion yuan.

"We're planning to strengthen our open platform strategy and to encourage more third-party software developers to extend their services to mobile devices," Tencent President Martin Lau told a conference call with analysts yesterday.

Its WeChat app, the smartphone-based software allowing users to send text and voice messages, more than tripled its monthly active users home and abroad to 194 million from a year ago, Tencent said. It has more than 300 million registered users early this year.

WeChat has 40 million registered users outside China.