It is a wider battle that is signaled by these IM offerings.
Shanghai. April 3. INTERFAX-CHINA - In this week's guest column, Ma Jihua, an independent telecom analyst, argues that the competition between China Telecom's Tianyi Live and China Mobile's Fetion instant messaging services is part of the wider battle for control of mobile Internet services between the two companies. Translated from the original Chinese by Zhang Danwei.
At odds with its former marketing strategies, China Telecom kept the release of its Tianyi Live instant messaging (IM) service low key. There has also been little fanfare around the operator's cooperation with Microsoft over the service, in contrast with the publicity surrounding the negotiations between another Chinese telecom operator, China Unicom, and international tech giant, Apple.
We could say that it was very smart and courageous of China Telecom to abandon the idea of developing its IM service alone. Cooperating with another giant allows it to pool resources to compete with other operators.
As the saying goes, my enemy's enemy is my friend. China Telecom is second to China Mobile, while Microsoft's Live Messenger is behind Fetion in the Chinese IM market. China Telecom and Microsoft's common enemy is China Mobile. China Telecom wants to increase its middle and high-end user base - something that cooperating with Microsoft allows it to do - while Microsoft can use China Telecom's subscriber base to gain ground on Fetion.
The cooperation is also good for users.
As China Telecom's promotional material says, you will need just one number to use all of China Telecom's services - including Tianyi Live. This makes Tianyi Live more than just an IM service to China Telecom. Rather, it is an integral part of the operator's marketing strategy. This is about far more than having a popular IM service just for the sake of competing with rival IM services.
To date, the only successful IM service offered by a telecom operator in China has been China Mobile's Fetion. This is because the first requirement of a successful IM service is having a large enough user base - something China Mobile has with 70 percent of telecom subscribers in China, and the attraction of being able to send free SMS text messages from Fetion. Once people start using an IM service and building their contacts on the network, they become increasingly stuck to that service.
Obviously, other operators do not have such large user bases. However, even for China Mobile, only one-fifth of its more than 100 million Fetion accounts are active. This means China Mobile still has to work hard at developing new services to retain customers and attract new ones.
The prospects of the cooperation between China Telecom and Microsoft are still uncertain. For China Telecom, it is more important to focus on long-term development than just short-term gains over Fetion.
The combination between Tianyi and Live is of course Internet-oriented. Using the slogan "Internet handset," Tianyi Live can help China Telecom to increase its competitiveness as it battles with other operators and Internet companies in the mobile Internet field.
So it is a wider battle that is signaled by these IM offerings from operators for control of the mobile Internet as a whole.
The above is a personal opinion piece by the author. Its publication in no way implies that Interfax shares the views expressed in the article.
About the author: Ma Jihua, who used to work in Beijing United Marketing Research Co. Ltd., has long experience in telecom and IT research and analysis. His focus is on operators' development of distribution channels, data services marketing and special market research such as rural markets and campus markets. Ma's blog is at http://mrpad.blog.sohu.com/
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