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SCMP Reporter

WHAT CAN YOU do with cartoon characters such as Tom & Jerry and Fred from The Flintstones on your mobile phone?

Use a bit of imagination and you can do anything, or so Raymond Yang believes.

The newly appointed chief executive of Shanghai-based wireless data and applications provider Linktone has a lot of suggestions on how to use Scooby Doo to his best advantage on mobile games and applications - and make money at the same time.

Last week, Linktone sealed a deal with AOL Time Warner's Cartoon Network, giving it the first rights to distribute and offer the Cartoon Network's favourite characters through China's mobile market.

For AOL, this was the first deal that allowed the American media giant to distribute its content to the mainland's 230 million mobile users, promoting the company's cartoon content.

For Linktone, the deal means potential future revenue from the cartoon applications, but more importantly, it makes Linktone's brand more internationally recognised.

'It tells people that Linktone is  a different company,' said Mr Yang.

The Informer chatted with him about the future potential of China's wireless data market.

Q: What's the significance of this deal?

A: People here are considering SMS (short-messaging services) and MMS (multimedia messaging) space as the fifth media.

If you look at that from a data point of view, it's definitely a new channel for content in digital format for the huge user base and potential market in China.

There are more than 230 million phone users in China and the number is growing.

They are potential SMS and MMS users, that's why both parties are very excited.

Q: How much can you do with these cartoon characters on a tiny mobile-phone screen?

A: I would not emphasise SMS because it's more for text content and is like a little pixel that you can put a little cute figure on.

I'm looking more into the future of multimedia messages that you can create lots of nice beautiful colour screen savers, icons and in particular cartoons with.

For example, if you create four to six frames of a Tom & Jerry cartoon, you can download that to your handset from M-Zone (China Mobile's wireless-data platform) or you can pay certain monthly fees to receive a cartoon each day.

So in the morning, when you wake up, you receive a nice cute little cartoon.

This could be a very interesting and attractive product for us.

We can also offer some games with these cartoon characters, together with sounds that you can play with, or create greetings or cute little apologies for boyfriends and girlfriends using a range of cartoon characters.

There are a lot of things you can create if you just use your imagination.

Q: But with the low penetration of 2.5G handsets, you can't offer too much, can you?

A: We're offering some multimedia applications.

Pretty much everybody is looking at this year as the beginning of the pick-up (of multimedia applications) because we've seen some smaller players, including ourself, already generate small revenues from those services.

We expect next year, particularly by the end of the year, very big potential.

Q: What signs make you think that next year will be a major one in terms of the demand for multimedia 2.5G mobile data or related applications?

A: This is related to the handsets. If you have more MMS, colour screens and Java-enabled handsets in China, it will definitely provide you with a very good base for these 2.5G applications.

Today, there is probably about 20 million to 25 million MMS-enabled handsets in China.

By next year, our estimation is the penetration of MMS-enabled handsets could be somewhere between 20 and 25 per cent of China's more than 300-million mobile subscribers.

That means there will be about 75 million users with MMS handsets.

Q: Will AOL Time Warner throw in some resources to help develop cartoon content for wireless applications, or will it just license Linktone to use its content?

A: They will give us some ideas and templates that they've had success with in other Asian countries so we can look at these models and create our own games or formats.

Q: Which cartoon character will be used when you launch the first batch of products in October?

A: The ones we're going to start with are Tom and Jerry.

They're very popular in China, ranked top-two cartoon characters in our survey. People in China like them very much. Interestingly, it's not limited to six-year-old kids but young people and even people in their 30s still like them.

We can have cat and mouse games, people can choose to be Tom or Jerry and play with other players to catch each other.

We have people in-house who are very good at developing games.

Q: What kind of applications are you planning to develop with Chinese characteristics using Cartoon Network's content?

A: Fortune telling is very popular here.

People may not seriously believe it but you tell them that we're able to tell them about their love affair ... when it's about love ... people jump on that.

They love these kinds of services.

We have already partnered with some Taiwanese companies that have developed very good games and methodologies; we'll twist those to make them suitable for mainland people.

Maybe we can have Johnny Bravo to tell you this and that.



Linktone bets on cartoons for its mobile phones in China