Report on Integrative Strength of Car-loaded Mobile Digital TV Media Operators in China Published in Beijing Following Six Months of Research
BEIJING, June 20 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- TOWONA Media Company announced today that the Company has been awarded the number 1 spot in a recent report on the “Integrative Strength of Car-loaded Mobile Digital TV Media Operators in China.” This, the first report of its kind to study public-transport-loaded TV media operators in China, was jointly issued by three authoritative institutes, namely the Public Opinion School of Renmin University, Mediach.com and the magazine agency of Advertising Panorama. The purpose of the report is to reflect the reality and industrial structure of the media market by way of processing multi-dimensional research on all mobile TV giants. Simultaneously, the report implies that mobile TV media is now considered an independent and full-fledged field that is widely focused on by professional research institutes. The report, which was developed over six months, has given a pedestal to giants such as TOWONA Media (360.04 pts), Bus-online (237.91 pts) and VisionChina Media (233.49 pts), who topped the first three positions.
The Report, which was firstly published in China’s Public Transport Digital Media Forum, was sponsored by almost all authoritative media magazines, including China-ad, Medias, Advertising Pointer, Advertising Panorama and Media, and was co-sponsored and whole-course reported by Hexun.com, a famous financial and economic portal, and Mediach.com, a leading media portal.
The report systematically studies the integrative strength of car-loaded TV operators from six dimensions, including operating status, number of resources, number of share resources, market value of enterprises, scale, and brand value, as well as 15 studying indexes, like operation line, number of advertisers and scale of reach across industries.
The Report states that TOWONA is predominant in aspects, like operating strength, resources, scale and market value, holding leading positions in terminal resources to income level.
According to the report, TOWONA’s car-loaded mobile TV has become a predominant advertisement media and more and more recognized by brand-typed customers from home and abroad. The view from across the industries saw that on average less than 10 different industries utilized advertisements on the Transport Digital Media Advertising Web. However, the average number of TOWONA’s customers from different industries soared to above 30 in 2007. Whole advertisement releases for FMCGs (Fast Moving Consumer Goods), communications and press, health medicines, foods, home appliances and IT products are all increasing. Among them, industries like home appliance malls, digital consumer products, health medicines, communications products, foods and wines released an increasing amount of advertisements.
Up to January 2008, passengers in more than 50 cities across China could watch mobile TV programs on public transportation. Therefore, the predominance of media was soon recognized by enterprises and advertisement agencies, which has led to soaring prices. From the second half of 2007, big customers of TOWONA that released adverts costing more than RMB5 million have started their selective release, and by the end of 2007, RMB10 million customers appeared.
At present, TOWONA’s customer group stands at more than 3,000 customers, involving several top-rank companies from China and abroad, creating a firm base for TOWONA. Its main customers include China Mobile, China Telecom,
Coca-Cola, Dell, Haier and Nike.
From the Company’s first steps in 2003 to the first quarter of 2008, TOWONA’s 27 branches and 10 offices have covered the whole of China, of which more than 95,000 terminal TV screens (both from agencies and/or their own) in 55,000 public transport units form the mobile TV advertisement network bestrewed in 30 cities. The bus lines of TOWONA are considered a solid resource, with more than 200,000,000 people per day. Bus-online also gets relatively good achievement in its expansion throughout the country, but in some regions, it suffers in the number of medias and quality of signals. VisionChina Media realizes a spot-typed expansion, in some extent, but it doesn’t form an independent web. Ended in December 2006, VisionChina Media acquired operation rights of digital mobile TV advertisements in 14 cities such as Chengdu, Zhengzhou, Changchun, and Shenzhen etc. With limited resources to release advertisements solely or freely in cities, it mainly releases advertisements via advertising sales agents.
Since 2007, many investments are absorbed in the area of car-loaded TVs in China, which promoted a quick boom, expansion and development of the industry. After evolvements in three stages, the competition upgraded itself from channel and resource competition to investment competition, and finally to the integrative strength competition in early 2008.
After listing on NASDAQ in November 2007, the financing sum of VisionChina Media was far lower than expected. After three rounds of financing, TOWONA has successfully seen an investment of US$9.5 million. Most of the media enterprises have now changed their goals to the expansion of resources and industrial integration. TOWONA is found to make its claim in cities like Beijing, Suzhou, Wenzhou, Nanning, Harbin and Hohhot, which would further consolidate its advantages in terminal resources. The goal of 2008 for TOWONA is to make mobile TV media cover all big and medium-sized cities, in order to widen gaps between it and its rivals. By enlarging scale operations through encircling the ground to encircle screens, the giant will at the same time promote the integration of the whole industry.
According to data from the “Blue Book for the Development of Car-loaded Mobile TVs in China 2007,” the market distribution of car-loaded TVs will reach to 600,000 in 2008 due to the Beijing Olympic Games, which highlights an increase of more than80% year-on-year, and in 2009 the number will be over 1,000,000. The potential market value of car-loaded mobile TVs is RMB10 billion, which will be further increased once mobile TVs and car navigation systems can be integrated.
The booming new media will no doubt experience a period of “survival of the fittest”, when survival would be as a result of those companies leading the pack in terms of scale and business model. As the market evolves from competition focused to focusing on integrative strength, the prosperous era of the car-loaded TV market will come true along with the constant perfection of TOWONA and other operators.
