What do you think of the mobile phone value-added service industry?

With the advent of 3G era, the mobile communication industry has gradually evolved from a simple product economy format to a service economy format, and mobile value-added services will replace simple mobile communication products and become a more important source of industrial profits in this era.

At present, the basic mobile value-added services mainly include SMS, MMS /E, WAP, JAVA/BREW, IVR and so on. With the further development of business requirements, the end-to-end (handheld terminal to wireless service platform) mobile value-added service architecture based on open application platform will inject new vitality into the development of mobile value-added service industry.

Overview of mobile value-added services

1. Mobile value-added service market

-By the end of 2003 10, the number of fixed-line telephone users in China had reached 255 million, an increase of 409170,000 over the end of last year; The number of mobile phone users reached 257 million, an increase of 50.933 million over the end of last year. China has become one of the countries with more mobile phone users than fixed phone users in the world. By 2005, there will be 300 million mobile communication users in China. This means that in the next few years, every five people in China will have a mobile phone, and the penetration rate will increase from the current 13% to 20%, and the market growth space is still huge. It took nearly 14 years for China mobile communication users to go from zero to140,000, while it only took10.5 years from the first10,000 to the second10,000. In the face of these figures, any forecast is conservative, and China mobile communication is in a period of rapid growth.

Short message service is the most important and mature basic wireless data service at present. In 2002, the business volume of short messages in China exceeded 90 billion, among which the business volume of short messages in China exceeded 75 billion, and the average daily sending volume of short messages was as high as 260 million. According to the "Research Report on Internet SMS in China in 2003" recently released by Shanghai iResearch Market Consulting Co., Ltd., the market size of SMS content service providers (SP) in China in 2003 exceeded 5.4 billion yuan, and that of SMS SP in China in 2004 will exceed10 billion yuan. Another professional organization estimates that the whole short message market in China will reach 30 billion yuan in 2004, and the short message service provided by SP accounts for 30% of the whole market. After 2004, the growth rate will decline, but it will still maintain a market share of more than 50% every year before 2006. Monternet is a wireless data service brand launched by China Mobile. At present, there are 400 companies providing content for Monternet. Among them, there are 5 companies with annual income exceeding 654.38 billion yuan, 654.38+05 companies with annual income exceeding 60 million yuan, and 30 companies with annual income exceeding 24 million yuan. Take TOM, a well-known domestic wireless data service enterprise, as an example, its short message service income accounts for 80% of its total income, and its monthly income exceeds130,000 RMB.

As another mobile telecom operator in China, China Unicom has also launched its own wireless data service brand Unicom Unlimited with its high-quality, high-speed and reliable CDMA 1X network, including color e, interactive world, broadband in the palm, China Unicom in the letter, magic set, satellite positioning and other services.

2. The status of basic mobile value-added services

Generally speaking, the basic mobile value-added services in the market can be divided into five categories: SMS, MMS /E, WAP, JAVA/BREW and IVR.

SMS is the earliest, most recognized and relatively mature wireless value-added service. However, as a mature market, the growth space of SMS market is limited. In addition, the market competition between SP and SP is becoming increasingly fierce, and the technical limitations of SMS as a way of carrying information are too small. It can be predicted that SMS will no longer be a hot spot in the future development of wireless value-added services, but SMS and other services can provide services closer to the needs of consumers.

MMS/Color E was originally a 2.5G logo service promoted by mobile operators in recent years. However, due to the lack of supporting terminals, high prices, high service charges, weak interactivity and other reasons, the development of MMS/E services has been tepid, far from reaching the expectations of the industry. But MMS still has some advantages in providing one-way high-quality content.

Two years ago, China Mobile was frustrated in promoting WAP services, mainly due to two reasons: slow network speed, long billing time and high rate. However, with the establishment and commercialization of the operator's 2.5G network (GPRS/CDMA 1X), the WAP access rate has been greatly improved, and correspondingly, the charging method based on network traffic is more acceptable to users. WAP service faces the opportunity to restart. Now WAP services launched by SP include online games, information browsing and content downloading. Among them, online games and content (pictures, ringtones) download are popular businesses at present.

JAVA is the mainstream direction of wireless data service in the future, and the mobile value-added service architecture based on open application platform has also been adopted. Because JAVA business is still in the stage of market introduction and market cultivation, it is unlikely to make a large-scale profit in the near future (at least until 2004). In the next few years, JAVA will surely become the absolute highlight of wireless value-added services.

IVR, namely voice value-added service, is a new service launched by mobile operators in 2002. IVR business has standardized industry management, huge user base and broad market prospects.