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Communications & Networks |
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Mobile Instant Messaging Bottleneck
In China April 15, 2008 In 2007, China's mobile instant messaging (IM) market reached 1.37 billion Yuan, up 92.9% over 2006. Mobile operators like China Mobile entering the market have significantly fueled market growth. CCID Consulting expects to see greater growth in the future.
Drivers for mobile IM Growth Chinese mobile IM market grew faster in revenues and users than PC-based IM segments in 2007. Mobile IM revenues grew almost 43% faster than the overall IM market (which includes PC-based IM). Mobile phone operators focus on IM market, leveraging their wireless presence and customer base. China Mobile enjoys wireless dominance in China, and was able to parlay their Fetion IM offering to dominate the IM market. Fetion and Fetion QQ users reached 40 million. Together with China Unicom's UMS IM offering, these two mobile phone operators take up 76% of China's mobile IM market.
Source: CCID Consulting, january 2008 In China, mobile operators and mobile IM service providers (SPs) cooperate to bring mobile IM to market. SPs provide value-added offerings, like mobile IM technologies and ring-tone downloads. For mobile IM, operators provide the vast resources, marketing reach, and user base, while mobile IM SPs provide the necessary IM technologies and services. Telecom operators also see the mobile IM opportunity, but targeted more to the enterprise, a strength they have in terms of a user-base. China Telecom has launched its own mobile IM product, and has targeted corporate users, for example. However, there are three bottlenecks that must be addressed. The Chinese mobile phone user is very savvy, and they use voice and text messaging seamlessly, for example. However they need better awareness of mobile IM's features, benefits and differentiation. Many mobile phone users are not accustomed to mobile phone internet. The current 50 million mobile IM users are still a small percentage of the China's 500 million mobile phone users. Another bottleneck is the mobile phone device itself. Mobile IM, because it is Internet-based, has the potential to have lots of additional functionality, some like PC-based ones. More, new functionality is needed to provide operators and SPs increased profit potential. Mobile phones currently in China cannot support such Internet functionality, be it screen size, user-interface, applications, or underlying operating system. The last issue is the network. The timeline of 3G is still not yet finalized; so many services that require high quality transmission will simply not be available. Only when these three bottlenecks can be adequately resolved will there be sustainable growth and profitability from Chinese mobile IM. For more information Please contact us for these and other China-related data, information and products. Unless otherwise specified, all information provided is sourced from CCID Consulting. |
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