Mobile Games China
Mobile Entertainment Company - Mtone Wireless Corporation - announces to release a new SMS game service for mobile phones, named Cell Phone. The SMS game is named after international-famed film director feng Xiaogang’s movie, Cell Phone, of which Mtone is a co-sponsor. This announcement has been made a day after the release of the film.
As of estimates, China has rapidly growing market for the China’s SMS even 25 times larger than the country’s movie industry. With nationwide operations, the China Mobile is the largest provider of mobile phone services in China. In 2003, approximately 250 million people were subscribing to the services of China mobile which continued to increase and reached up to 402 million by 2007.
The Vice President of China Mobile, Lu Xiangdong, stated, ‘SMS has become a hot and growing industry. In 2002 alone, China Mobile’s customers sent over 78.3 billion messages, and is expected that the number of messages sent will soar aggressively.’ Talking of latest features on Mobile Phones, he commented that games with enhanced functions and interactivity have become new trend among SMS subscribers. Subsequently, new technology is being poured into the market aggressively.
The CEO of Mtone, Victor Wang also anticipates continued strong profits for SMS messaging. According to him, a new consumer demographic is emerging in China, known as ‘data high end users,’ who spend a significant portion of their income on SMS. This demographic is growing rapidly and represents a significant revenue source for the mobile industry’.
‘China Mobile hopes that the release of the ‘Cell Phone’ game service, from Mtone Wireless, will mean nothing less than a breakthrough for the SMS market’. Said Lu Xiangdong. He further added, ‘We would like to congratulate Mtone on the debut of this exciting new game service. We have enjoyed a very fruitful collaboration with Mtone, and our shared understanding of the development and prospects of the SMS industry have shaped our partnership. Establishing a value chain with SPs such as Mtone is a win-win situation for both parties’.
China-owned MTone Wireless Corporations has its headquarters in Santa Clara, California. Mtone is committed to offer SMS subscription-based services to China’s mobile market. SMS users may enjoy a variety of Mtone services that are in demand in a growing mobile market in China, such as ‘Bubble Boy’ and ‘The Legend of the three Realms’. The former is a virtual pal service, and the later is an exciting SMS RPG game that creates an entirely new mobile social network.
Targeting the younger generation who take sending short messages as the ‘cool way’ to communicate than making phone calls, Mtone looks forward to come up with new sms services of different modes. The company introduced its first commercial wireless stock trading and information service in China in 1998. At present, with more than 5 million subscribers, Mtone dominates over the companies offering mobile phone entertainment services in China.
