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SCMP Reporter

A large untapped market for short-messaging service (SMS) projects in China is driving the expansion plans of wireless applications specialist Mobileway.

'With the help of partners, we are seeing business start to pick up in China,' said Goh Yong Kwang, area director for North Asia at Mobileway Asia-Pacific.

He said high-profile projects that Mobileway had undertaken for operators of global system for mobile communications (GSM) networks and other large organisations in Hong Kong had helped boost the company's profile in the mainland.

'Although they are looking at MMS [multimedia-messaging services], organisations in the mainland want to use available SMS-based resources at their disposal,' he said.

'That is where we can help.'

According to London-based research firm Teleconomy, China's SMS market will treble in revenues to US$1.2 billion by 2006 from US$360 million last year.

It said China was the world's No 1 mobile-phone market, followed by the United States. The country's main GSM carrier, China Mobile, has more than 100 million subscribers.

Mr Goh said China Mobile was already a customer of Mobileway, whose key partners also included Sohu.com and Siemens China.

'SMS is a technology that is currently underutilised, works on existing infrastructure and appliances, and is clearly priced,' he said.

'Our mission is to further develop this market in China ahead of still-untested MMS applications.'

Last month, Mobileway unveiled a project in Hong Kong that could potentially be expanded to the mainland.

Its mobile transaction tracker system has been tapped for use in the 'verified by Visa' mobile authentication service introduced in the SAR by Bank of China International.

Launched last month by Visa International and Bank of China in Hong Kong, the service is the first to use text-based SMS for payment authentication, according to Mr Goh.

In January last year, Mobileway landed its biggest SMS deal in Greater China by helping launch an international inter-operator SMS environment for the SAR's large GSM carriers.

'Mobileway equips Hong Kong mobile operators with the channels to relay messages across geographical boundaries and across networks previously impenetrable to mobile users in the territory,' Mr Goh said.

'We manage the global transportation of all Hong Kong's two-way SMS traffic.'

This was made possible through Mobileway's direct connections with about 100 wireless operators worldwide, which covered 90 per cent of the world's population, he said.

In other markets, Mobileway has been developing new businesses using the MMS platform, which enables users to send photographs, musical attachments or even video clips with their text messages.

Last week, Mobileway teamed up with mobile content provider Rivals Digital Media (RDM) to launch what the two companies described as the first billable consumer MMS service in Britain.

Called the Football Look-a-Likes service, it enables football fans to compare the faces of famous football stars with other celebrities and send pictures of the two to their friends via MMS phones.

According to a Mobileway spokesman, Chelsea manager Ken Bates looks a bit like Papa Smurf, while Gian Franco Zola looks a bit like 1970s sitcom character The Fonz.

The game has proved popular with British soccer fans, according to the company.



Mobileway moves to get message across in mainland