BEIJING, May 3 -- China's software and information technology service industry logged strong expansion in the first quarter (Q1) of this year, reporting double-digit growth in terms of revenue and profits, official data shows.

The total profits of the sector soared 13.8 percent year on year to 318.8 billion yuan (about 44.86 billion U.S. dollars) during the period, while the combined revenue climbed 11.9 percent to 2.8 trillion yuan, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The sub-sector of information technology services raked in 1.84 trillion yuan of revenue in Q1, up 12.9 percent year on year and accounting for 65.7 percent of the whole industry.

Specifically, the combined revenue of cloud computing and big data services rose 11.9 percent year on year to 304.7 billion yuan.

The data also reveals that revenue from software products increased 9.4 percent year on year, while that from the information security field marked a year-on-year growth of 11.6 percent in the same period.