A mascot walks past an exhibition stand during the Alibaba E-Commerce Expo in Sydney, Australia, Aug. 30, 2019. (Xinhua/Bai Xuefei)

BEIJING, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- The revenue of China's software and information technology (IT) service industry reported stable growth in the first eight months, official data showed.

The software and IT service sector raked in a total of 4.49 trillion yuan (about 634 billion U.S. dollars), with a year-on-year growth of 14.9 percent, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

Profits of the sector expanded 9.4 percent year on year to 554.2 billion yuan in the first eight months.

Software exports gained 3.9 percent on a year-on-year basis to 31.1 billion U.S. dollars.

Boosted by robust growth in cloud, big data and e-commerce platform services, the revenue of IT service saw a 16.9-percent growth to 2.65 trillion yuan in Jan.-Aug. period.

The MIIT data also showed a 5.2-percent year-on-year increase in the number of employees in the software and IT service sector to 6.35 million. The average salary level rose 7.5 percent during the period. ■