Mobile Usage in China Shows Clear Opportunity for FMC
AppTrigger’s new survey reveals highest growth in “Internet-like” services amongst mobile users
BEIJING, China – August 11, 2008 – AppTrigger, Inc., the leading provider of telecom application connectivity solutions, today unveiled the results of its first Chinese Mobile Services survey. The survey revealed strong adoption of Internet surfing and Instant Messaging on mobile handsets, and offers some insight into what new services may receive more welcome amongst China’s growing population of mobile users.
The study conducted by AppTrigger polled 1,100 respondents in a field survey and an online questionnaire. Some of the services that see high adoption rates among respondents include:
- 44.6% subscribe to Color Ring Back Tones
- 41.7% surf the web from their mobile using WAP
- 37.8% use chat and presence service Fetion
However, many other mobile services, including Voice Mail, Mobile Secretary, Instant Financial Messaging Systems (FMS) and GPS-based services, report only a small percentage of adoption with less than 10% of respondents claiming to use these services.
“China just announced to restructure its telecom industry; three operators China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom will have full telecom services licenses offering wireless, wireline and broadband services to the Chinese consumer.” said XJ Wang, an analyst at Yankee Group. It’s a totally new game now due to the change of the market landscape. Although China Mobile still dominates the mobile market, its market position will be challenged by new Unicom (Unicom + Netcom) and China Telecom (with CDMA network). Technologies enabling Internet-like applications and service fix-mobile-convergence will be key for Chinese operators to differentiate themselves in the next 2 to 3 years.”
Despite signing millions of new subscribers each month, mobile penetration at the end of 2007 remained below 50%. Among respondents, 56% reported paying less than RMB100 each month for their mobile services, and just under over 10.8% chalk up more than RMB300.
Yet all this may be set to change with the restructuring of China’s operators into three competitive giants that will have the capability to provide broadband, fixed line and mobile services, and the imminent launch of nationwide 3G networks.
Mr. Joseph Lo, AppTrigger’s Vice President for North Asia and Japan, notes, “While China still represents a fertile ground for growing subscriber numbers, there are already discernable patterns in the types of services that will succeed in this market. This can be an opportunity for forward-thinking operators to differentiate themselves early and separate from the pack.”
One such pattern is the adoption of “Internet-like” services such as web browsing and instant messaging. China’s online population is the largest in the world, and usage levels are comparatively high. With mobile broadband via 3G, and the recent reshuffling of access networks, China’s operators have even more opportunity to extending the Internet experience from the desktop, onto the mobile.
Mr. Chris Todd, CEO of AppTrigger, spells out the opportunity, “Creating new services and bringing them to market is often costly, time-consuming and extremely risky. Services that look irresistible on paper can easily turn out to be expensive mistakes. By taking existing services that have been highly successful, like Instant Messaging has been for the Internet, and porting them onto another access network, operators are able to extend their Total Average Revenue Per Application (TARPA), with significantly lower risk.”
AppTrigger flagship Ignite™ Ignite Service Broker (Service Broker) addresses the lack of interworking between legacy and next generation networks, and provides a compelling solution to the competing architectural agendas between vendors. The Service Broker is a new network element that negotiates and manages connections between the application and services layer, and the underlying network layer, enabling service providers to maximize available revenue from existing services while making it easier to introducing new applications.
For more information about how the Service Broker can help ignite mobile business, please visit www.apptrigger.com.
About AppTrigger, Inc.
Headquartered in Richardson, Texas, AppTrigger has offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, London and Buenos Aires. With deployments worldwide, AppTrigger is dynamically changing the telecom application delivery marketplace by empowering its customers to insulate their revenue-producing applications from the challenges of the ever evolving fixed-line, mobile, and IP networks. AppTrigger’s Ignite Service Broker provides a purpose built unique combination of media, signaling, call control, and a family of APIs for multi-network, converged application deployments. In an environment of ongoing network evolution, AppTrigger delivers time to market advantages, reduces application deployment costs, and provides feature transparency across disparate networks. For more information, please visit www.apptrigger.com.
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