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China Mobile Market Overview
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The ROA Group estimates that the number of mobile subscribers in China reached over 374 million by the end of December 2005.
Currently, the Chinese mobile market is growing in rapidly and mobile operators are being engaged in fierce competition to create
new demand. As a result, the annual growth rate is projected to amount to about 9.7% after 2005. Backed by this growth trend, it
is expected that over 595 million Chinese people - 44% of the total population - will subscribe to mobile communications service by 2009.
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The number of GSM (global system for mobile communications) users will reach nearly 341 million in 2005. After peaking at 380 million in 2008, it
is expected to decline gradually from 2009 with rapid evolution into 3G. As for CDMA (code-diviaion multiple access), the number of subscribers
reached 32.72 million in 2005 and will go up to 73.7 million in 2009.
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ARPU and Value Added Services
The Overall ARPU (average revenue per usr) in 2005 is projected to be 79.0 RMB (Renminbi) and those of China Mobile and China Unicom would reach
91 RMB and 56 RMB respectively, showing a decline compared to the previous year. Even though the operators efforts resulted in an increase in call
volume, ARPU growth fell short of expectations due to a low growth rate compared to the increase in the number of subscribers. Therefore, mobile
service providers will be committed to raising the Overall ARPU by enhancing data services (ringback tones beijng a key value added service) and
releasing various rate plans, which is predicted will to lead to 83.6 RMB of Overall ARPU in 2009. The annual growth rate of Data Subscribers is
expected to go up to 13.9%, which will result in about 73.4% of subscribers using Data service in 2009 (as of the end of 2005, about 60.9%
of subscribers use Data service).
Value added service are increasingly becoming an important revenue driver for China¡¯s telecom operators. They are actively promoting new
services to increase ARPU and enhance customer value.
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China Ringback Tones Market Overview
According to Reuters, "ringback tones -- the sound a caller hears in the seconds they wait for another person to answer -- is big business in
China". "China Mobile said in March that "new" businesses, consisting of data and content, grew 59 percent and accounted for a fifth of revenue
in 2005, versus 15.5 percent in 2004. Within that total, ringback tone revenue was one of the fastest-growing segments, quadrupling to 3.42 billion
yuan ($427 million) in 2005 from just 848 million yuan the previous year."
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Ringback tones were first introduced to China in 2003 in an ad hoc manner by a number of provincial telecom operators and is currently
in its takeoff stage. According to Lu Xiangdong, deputy general manager of China Mobile, its subscriber base for ringback tone services grew
from 1 million at the beginning of 2004 to more than 40 million by the end of the 2004. This number dramatically increased in 2005 fo an
estimated 120 million RBT users according to combined statistics compiled from the 2005 Annual Reports of the four major telecom operators.
According to Lu Xiangdong, deputy general manager of China Mobile, its subscriber base for ringback tone services grew from 1 million at the
beginning of 2004 to more than 40 million by the end of the year.
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China Mobile alone claims to have had 90 million RBT users in 2005, 36.4% of their 246 million subscribers, which generated US$425 million in revenues.
According to various forecasts, China¡¯s commercial RBT penetration rate could reach over 50% by 2008, driven both by ringback tones becomming part of the
normal mobile lifestyle and advertising sponsored ringback tones.
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Copyright @2006 Ring Back Tone Holdings Limited All rights reserved. |
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