BEIJING, July 31 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- MoSell, a leading mobile marketing solution business in China, announced today that it has seen continued growth recently in its mobile commerce ("m-commerce") business. The Company, via its MoSell Shopping Mall, is now well on it's way to tapping in to the market potentials here in China. Already cited as the Chinese Rakuten, the Company is very optimistic about its future.
The size of the Japanese mobile commerce market exceeded USD5 billion in 2006, in what is the fourth year since its inception. Rakuten, the leading m-commerce service provider in Japan, since 2002, achieved a staggering JPY3.5 billion in sales revenues from its mobile shopping mall in June 2006, a 158% increase on the same period of 2005. Hiroshi Mikitani, the CEO of Rakuten, remarked that the increase clearly indicates a stage of rapid growth in the use of cell phones for shopping, beating even that of e-commerce figures, and more importantly, beating their own expectations.
In China, MoSell is happy to report that things are little different. Mobile phone user numbers are approaching 500 million, but with less than 120 million subscribers purchasing phones with real internet capabilities there is a low market penetration rate of only 25%.
As a result, many Chinese mobile internet companies are searching for ways to tap in to the huge potential existing in China's m-commerce market. MoSell Shopping Mall is the first shopping mall to work across the PC and Mobile networks, and with the guided leadership of mobile internet veteran Tara Liu, CEO of MoSell, they have seen the practice of localizing matured Japanese and Korean internet applications fill in the holes in China's local networks.
In 2005, China saw the inception of mobile marketing. From the winter of 2005 to the spring of 2006, a newly organized sales team, fronted by Tara, visited many high profile clients including Parkson, Starbucks and McDonald's. However, the team soon realized that it would take a long time before these clients could make a decision, as it needed front-line managers to regional directors to accept mobile internet applications, mobile marketing and m-commerce.
Starting 2006, web-enabled cell phone-based marketing entered its rapid growth stage. Many industry-related enterprises and the mass media started to stand up and take notice of the advancing wave that surrounded the development of mobile advertising and mobile marketing. Traditional advertising agents soon followed, persuading world-class advertisers like BMW, Toyota and Nokia to now dare to try to make a move on m-commerce. As a result, mobile marketing saw its advantages over traditional advertising methods become more and more distinct, and in return, these advantages, together with the revolutionary change in customer relations' management caused by mobile CRM, drew broad attention and interest from more and more prospects interested in utilizing m-commerce.
Then, in 2007, MoSell's mobile marketing manager found it much easier to gain the interest of clients. This is because most of the marketing managers of Beijing's 180 large department stores had received mobile phone ads, and about 80% of them even used the SMS platform to send out short message ads to their own members. These well-educated clients quickly understand and appreciate the advantages of WAP, helping to shorten the development period needed for m-commerce.
By means of sales channels, conferences and promotions, MoSell swiftly expanded the m-marketing practice in a very short period of time: about two months. This was partly because of the successful implementation of campaign in the spring of 2007 to promote mobile marketing in cooperation with 10 big shopping malls in Beijing. This covered 18 fields including real estate, automobiles, finance, retail, leisure, travel, fashion, health care and entertainment, covering almost all aspects of a person's daily life. This highlighted MoSell's ambition to duplicate the successful experiences in mobile marketing shopping malls into broader business areas. With regards to regional expansion, MoSell also made efforts to introduce its business in other regions that included Shanghai, Guangdong, Tianjin, Chengdu and Zhengzhou.
However, another key local player soon entered the m-commerce arena. UF Software, a Shenzhen listed company headquartered in Beijing, whose main business is financial software, announced its decision to enter the mobile commerce market from Wuxi in Southern China. Wuxi is highly regarded as the centre of e-commerce in China. On January 30, 2007, and in cooperation with Japanese NTT DoCoMo, UF Mobile Commerce Joint Venture was established. UF Software invested USD8.42 million in the new JV, while NTT DoCoMo invested USD5 million.
October 2006 had already seen UF Software launch the UF mobile Shopping Street, a mobile marketing service aimed at SMEs in Wuxi. UF's strategy was, by using this service as a breaking point, to establish a virtual commercial center on the mobile internet to collect customers and retailers, with the goal of pooling together tens of millions of registered members and some one million retailers.
Inevitably, MoSell Shopping Mall will compete with UF's mobile Shopping Street for market share. But, MoSell also brags its own advantages. auyou.com, an affiliate of the China Youth Travel Service (CYTS), had registered with the UF mobile Shopping Street, but also wanted to register on the MoSell Shopping Mall. The marketing manager of auyou.com appreciates the experience levels provided by MoSell in constructing mobile shopping mall applications across PC and mobile networks, since MoSell (M-Shop Pro!) integrated thirty technical support modules and tackled many support issues that UF Mobile m-commerce services failed to solve. In the current state, Tara prefers to think of MoSell as a mobile marketing solutions company, more so than an m-commerce company, as UF Mobile likes to be known. This is mainly because Chinese mobile operators do not require web-enabled phone manufacturers to install Explorer software with SSL certification.
And despite the increased competition, Tara remains optimistic about MoSell's future, even thanking her competitors. She believes that the promotion of inviting nationwide channel agents across 31 provinces by MoSell and its competitors will not only facilitate more and more traditional distributors to open their doors to m-marketing and m-commerce, but will also awaken more businesses to the potentials of this relatively new means of mobile marketing. With its lower networking costs and increased likelihood of accelerating the flow of information among cities and towns throughout China, Tara expects to see m-commerce become far more popular than PC-web based e-commerce.
About Beijing MoRank Tech Co., Ltd.
Beijing MoRank Tech Co., Ltd., the leading mobile marketing solution
ASP in China, was founded by Tara Liu, a female veteran of the Chinese Internet business that returned from Japan in 2004. As early as 2005, "MoSell Marketing Experts" team completed the Chinese localization of mature Japanese wireless applications. MoSell then became the first company in China to provide mobile marketing solutions based on WAP 2.0 in 2005.
MoSell strives to convince traditional dealers to get involved in mobile Internet applications at a low cost by providing powerful mobile marketing platforms and thoughtful M-CRM services, with a particular focus on acquiring new customers and retaining the old customers of traditional Chinese retailers.
For further information, please contact:
Xin Liu
PR Officer
Tel: +86-10-5900-3394
Fax: +86-10-5900-3324
Email: xin_liu@mosell.net
