Alibaba will also enter the battle of the IM market in China. They have a plan to collaborate with China Mobile.

WeChat already have about 500 million users, and Yixin also got the good start last week. So the IM market in China is becoming more and more hot, but it seems that Alibaba, who is the giant of the EC market in China, also would like to enter this battle by re-promoting their IM tool 'Laiwang'.

There are the two verifications for this.

1. Alibaba CEO sent the internal email to start the bounty system of using 'Laiwang' to the all of staff last week.
According to the leak, their bounty system is for encouraging to use 'Laiwang' to their staff, and it is said that the most potent person can get 100,000 RMB (= 16,210USD) bonus.

2. Alibaba started to consult with China Mobile the chance of collaboration in this market.
According to the insider, Alibaba recently started to consult the possibility of collaboration with China Mobile by this 'Laiwang', and it may be that they would like to follow the success of Yixin.


Alibaba already acquired 18% share of Sina Weibo on April, and they already started to accelerate their social media solutions. But they may would like to get the killer tool of IM to accelerate more this area, so I think that its action is very natural.

But its Sina Weibo also have their IM tool 'Meyou', and a company that Sina invested before also recently publish the IM tool 'WeMeet'.

Alibaba and Sina will go to the each way in this area, or also will have the collaboration as same as Weibo... We have to continue watching their actions as ever.


Source => TechWeb, BiaNews

[Graph] The summary of the 3G market in China. 3G user in China was 280 million people in the first quarter.

All of 3 big career in China published their achievement of the first quarter, so I would like to introduce the current status of 3G users in China.

According to their report, the total number of mobile users in China was 1.145 billion people in the first quarter, and the number of 3G users in China was 0.28 billion people in the first quarter.

The following picture is the market share of total user number.

China Mobile has totally 726.31 users, so they dominate 63.34% of the Chinese mobile market. But compared to the last July, their market share decreased 1.87%.

That's one of the reason is related to the increase of the 3G user ratio. The 3G user ratio in the last July was 16.8%, but its ratio was up to 24.5% in the first quarter. The market share of 3G user is more competitive than the market share of total user number as follows.

In China, China Mobile already started LTE test on some places. Will it be happen something change in the era of LTE? We have to keep watching the trend as ever.


Source => CNII, TechWeb-1, TechWeb-2

All number of the Chinese mobile SMS was 0.5% growth in the first quarter, but 1-to-1 SMS was 10.9% negative growth.

I reported "Chinese mobile SMS was substantially negative growth in 2012" before, but MIIT published the new report about it a few days ago.

According to the report, the total number of Chinese SMS was 232.14 billion cases in the first quarter, and it was 0.5% growth compared to last year. But the number of 1-to-1 SMS was 124.74 billion cases, and it was 10.9% negative growth compared to last year.

In China, there are two main use pattern of SMS. One of them is used as the marketing tool by a company, and they send the marketing information to many people via SMS. And another one is used as the method of 1-to-1 communication, many people send their update information via SMS to friend, family and so forth.

As a result, it can be said that mainly 1-to-1 SMS was affected by WeChat or other similar services at this time. But 1-to-N SMS may be also possibly affected as same as 1-to-1 SMS in near future, because Tencent is providing the marketing tool of WeChat, and its marketing method is becoming popular day by day in China.



China Mobile and China Telecom already started each countermeasure, but after seeing this results, they must also start the other countermeasure that is including "charge the special fee for WeChat".

We have to continue watching the action from both side.


Source => TechWeb, MIIT

China Mobile also started to provide "Public Platform" for the Feixin corporate accounts.

Few days ago, I explained the new action of China Telecom challenging to WeChat.
And at this time, China Mobile also started the new action. It is that they started to provide "Public Platform" for the Feixin(It's their SMS service.) corporate accounts.

The name of this platform is as same as Weixin's, and the UI of this platform is also almost same.

The feature of this platform providing is also almost same as Weixin's, but there is a one interesting feature. It is a questionnaire survey feature.

 


Another difference is the method of applying "Verified Account". As I explained before, you have to get 500+ followers to become a verified account  on WeChat, but about Feixin, you have to get 100+ followers. But about feixin, you also have to submit the operating license in China to become a verified account on there.
*It seems that they don't target to the foreign companies at this time.


China Telecom started to provide the similar apps to WeChat, and China Mobile started to provide the similar platform to WeChat. Well, how about China Unicom?

We have to keep watching their next actions.


Source => LeiPhone, Public Platform of Feixin

China Mobile still dominate 65％ of Chinese mobile whole market, but 3G market is in the situation of competitive.

Big 3 career(China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom) released the report of each mobile user condition in China as of  June 2012.

According to these report, recent market share of Chinese mobile user is as follows:

User number of each mobile career as of June


China Mobile   : 683 million


China Unicom  : 219 million


China Telecom : 144 million





Actually China Mobile still dominate 65% of Chinese mobile market.


But on the other hand, we can find the different result on the data that is focusing 3G users.

The number of 3G users each mobile career as of June


China Mobile  : 67.079 million


China Unicom : 57.53 million


China Telecom : 50.96 million



China Mobile have 38.21% share of 3G market in China, but its number is much less than whole market share. And China Unicom have 32.77% of market share, China Telecom have 29.03% of market share, so it can be said that focusing 3G market in China is in the situation of competitive.


The one of reason is related to each method of 3G communication. As you know, each 3 careers adopted the method of 3G communication is as follows:

- China Mobile    TD-SCDMA
- China Unicom   W-CDMA
- China Telecom  CDMA2000

W-CDMA and CDMA2000 are the communication method that is adopted by many companies in the world wide, but TD-SCDMA is the standard that is used only in China.

So in case that foreign mobile device companies would like to enter Chinese market with China Unicom or China Telecom, there are no need to customize their mobile devices basically. But in case that they would like to enter Chinese market with China Mobile, they have to add or change to TD-SCDMA chip on their mobile devices.

It is also the fact that China Mobile have less kind of 3G mobile devices compared to China Unicom and China Telecom.


This year or next year will start LTE service in China, but China Mobile have a plan to advance the standard of TD-LTE. China Unicom and China Telecom have not decided that they adopt which standard at this time. So we have to keep attention this trend the same as always.


Original article => Sina blog