| Written by Junelyn Han,
on May 22, 2008
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QQ is by far the most popular instant messaging service in China, with almost 320 million active accounts, according to owner Tencent. And while major international competitors have tried and failed to break QQ's dominance, one service in particular is worth a closer look: China Mobile's mobile-IM platform, FeiXin (Fetion).
Since its release in 2006, the service had around one million active users by the end of 2007. More importantly, China Mobile had 400 million users overall--a huge pool of customers to pull from.
Any China Mobile user can register for the service. The service is free of charge for PC users sending SMS to China Mobile users--up to 600 messages per day. Messages from phones to PCs are charged at the standard RMB 0.1 rate for SMS; phone users can choose between an SMS interface or a more traditional instant messaging window (if the phone can support this function).
Would China Mobile’s subscribers like to use this? I think so. SMS is the most popular form of communication for many Chinese people. During peak times, such as Chinese New Year, operators have recorded as many as 12 billion SMS sent every day. Much of Tencent's revenue over the past ten years has been paid by the mobile operators, in exchange for the mobile value-added services (MVAS) that Tencent provides, and the company would have difficulty giving up such a steady revenue stream without anything to replace it.
Because it already handles most of the SMS sent in China, China Mobile is in a strong enough position to challenge QQ's dominance. I don't think Fetion is a threat to QQ in the near term, but with China Mobile's backing, it is certainly positioned to become QQ's biggest competitor in the future.
China Mobile's move into instant messaging is further proof of its increasingly aggressive expansion into what was formerly the terrority of wireless value-added services (WVAS) providers such as Tencent, Sina, and Kongzhong. In fact, the operator and Tencent had previously partnered on a similar service a few years ago. The name? Fetion QQ, of course.
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