Historical reasons
The appearance of mobile phone newspaper is not accidental. It is the product of the rapid development of science and technology, the rapid development of telecommunications technology and the challenge of traditional media, and the result of the marriage of traditional media and telecommunications media. There are several conditions for the birth of mobile newspaper:
First of all, the traditional media is facing severe challenges and its survival is becoming more and more critical. Only by entering multimedia can we have a broader living space and development opportunities.
Since the beginning of 2 1 century, the competition in the media market has become increasingly fierce and even cruel. Nowadays, new technologies are changing with each passing day, and the challenge of online media to traditional media is increasing day by day. It is not only a constant integration, but also a ruthless game. The popular view in the industry is that the media operation in China has encountered an inflection point, and the advertising business volume of newspapers and magazines has declined seriously. Among them, the situation of newspaper industry is more severe. According to insiders, March 2005 was a watershed in the downward trend of newspaper advertisements. Since then, the monthly year-on-year growth rate of newspaper advertisements has declined, and the year-on-year growth rate in June has been less than 3%. With the advertising, readers' enthusiasm for reading newspapers is also decreasing. According to a survey, from 2003 to 2005, the average daily reading time of Beijing readers decreased by 2.2 minutes, Shanghai readers decreased by 3.6 minutes, and Guangzhou readers decreased by 3.5 minutes. In sharp contrast, the revenues of Netease, Sina and Sohu in 2004 have reached US$ 654.38+0.9 billion, US$ 200 million and US$ 654.38+0.3 billion, respectively, and the advertising amount is also rising. This shows that the traditional newspaper industry is facing severe challenges and there is no way out without reform. Isn't multimedia the first choice for survival?
Secondly, in the periphery of the traditional newspaper industry, fresh blood is active, and many emerging media have strong vitality. The emerging mobile communication media operated by China Mobile and China Unicom are envied by traditional media with their huge customer base. According to the announcement of the Ministry of Information Industry in June this year, by the end of May, there were more than 420 million mobile phone users in China, with an average of 30.3 mobile phones per 100 people. In the first five months of this year, the total number of SMS messages sent reached 654.38+067.95 billion, and the market scale reached 40.7 billion yuan in 2005. Such a huge customer base and such a huge market scale have rapidly formed in just a few years. Why not ride like this? At present, the traditional media has seen the light in the predicament, which is really "another village with a bright future". Traditional media, with its strong content supply advantages, and mobile communication media, with its huge customer base advantages, have brought "win-win" hope to both parties.
Finally, the mobile newspaper itself has infinite charm, and the mobile media needs to focus on development. There have been many theoretical discussions about the media function of mobile phones in academic circles. The earliest application of its information dissemination function is the short message dissemination of sudden news events. At 22: 32 on February/KOOC-0/2003, after the American space shuttle Columbia crashed/KOOC-0/6 minutes, Sina.com sent the message to thousands of customers by mobile phone short message, which initiated the mobile phone news dissemination in China. Until 23: 50, CCTV interrupted the news of the "Columbia" crash, which was more than an hour later than the short message; The paper media will publish news the next day, and its speed is not calculated by hours, but by "days". The pros and cons can be seen at a glance.
Operator mode
One is MMS mobile newspaper mode. This mode is similar to the traditional paper media, that is, newspapers send news to mobile terminals in the form of multimedia messages through telecom operators, and users can watch them offline.
The other is WAP website browsing mode. This mode is that users who subscribe to mobile newspapers browse information online by visiting the WAP website of mobile newspapers, which is similar to the way of surfing the Internet.
At present, most of the mobile newspapers that have opened services adopt the first mode, because the second mode needs more technical support and mobile terminal support, and has not been widely used at present.
profit model
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Judging from the current practice of mobile newspapers, mobile newspapers mainly achieve profitability through three means.
First, charge a monthly fee to users who customize multimedia messages; For example, the monthly subscription fee for mobile users of China Women's Daily is 20 yuan.
Second, users are charged by time for browsing WAP websites. For example, the lowest price set by Chongqing Unicom for its mobile newspaper users is 40 minutes (600k)5 yuan.
The third is to learn from the profit model of traditional media and obtain advertisements by attracting users.
Media characteristics
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1, which strengthens the timeliness and can realize the instant dissemination and reception of information.
The carrier of mobile newspaper is mobile phone, which users can carry with them at any time, so the editor of mobile newspaper can send the news to the user's mobile phone at the first time. Compared with TV and computer, it is not limited by location, and it also saves the time for users to contact the media. Especially in case of unexpected events, mobile newspapers can realize the dynamic dissemination of news like websites. Users can not only know the news results at the first time, but also pay attention to their development process at any time, so that users can feel the news events personally.
2. The interaction is improved, and the feedback in the communication process is truly realized.
One of the disadvantages of traditional media is the lack of effective instant interaction with the audience, which greatly affects the effect of communication. Users of mobile newspapers can interact effectively with the editors of mobile newspapers through short messages, which can not only get the news as quickly as possible, but also get the news they want most. Through interactive feedback, each user can customize news, and the editor of mobile newspaper can send the news that users need to watch most, which truly reflects the humanization and personalization of communication.
3. The multimedia advantages of mobile newspaper.
The news reported by mobile phone is not text news in the sense of short message, but a multimedia data packet. This multimedia data packet contains pictures, words, sounds, animations, etc. , which can cover all the contents of the 4 th and 8 th editions of newspapers. In this way, users can not only watch and listen, but also understand the news more deeply with pictures and animations. Fully mobilize the audience's audio-visual organs and realize multi-dimensional reading of news.
Shortcomings and shortcomings
Mobile newspaper has advantages and disadvantages, which restricts the development of mobile newspaper to some extent. Specifically, there are the following problems.
1, restrictions on mobile terminals.
At present, there are more than 200 million mobile phone users in China, but mobile phones supporting MMS and WAP browsing are not popular among mobile phone users, and only about 20% of users have MMS phones.
2. The impact of subscription price.
The monthly price of MMS mobile phone newspaper ranges from 10 yuan to 25 yuan, and the annual price is around 240 yuan. Compared with the traditional media pricing of tens of yuan a year, mobile newspapers have no advantage in price. For example, before April 2005 1, Zhejiang Hangzhou Daily mobile newspaper was a free experience stage, with more than 65,438+million subscribers. April 1 to February 1 is the preferential period, and 5 yuan subscribes in that month. At present, it has 1 10,000 users.
3. The influence of reading habits.
It is understood that a mobile phone that can send and receive multimedia messages can only display about 100 Chinese characters on one screen, while the layout of a newspaper is usually more than 5,000 words. After reading a newspaper, readers need to turn over about 50 pages, which is very troublesome to read. People are used to widescreen and browsing reading, but they need to adapt to the process of frequent page-turning reading in a narrow visual range.
development prospect
1. From copying traditional media to exploring new ways of reporting.
At present, there are not many original contents in mobile newspapers, most of which are copies of traditional paper media. In the long run, mobile phone retribution combines its own media characteristics and audience positioning, and explores its own "personalized" content report from the aspects of article structure, expression and language style.
2. In the profit model, from subscription fees to advertising fees.
At present, due to the immature market operation means, mobile newspapers basically use the mode of charging subscription fees to make profits. The disadvantage of this is that some interested people are discouraged by high fixed fees. At present, some mobile newspapers have begun to explore the mode of relying on advertising for profit, that is, learning from the "double sales" mode of traditional media. However, it should be noted that the space-time ratio of news and advertisements must be well coordinated, otherwise the users of mobile newspapers will be excluded.
3. Media ecology, from market occupation to mutual benefit.
The "harmonious" media ecology formed by the competition, coordination and integration of newspapers, radio, television and Internet is now facing the trend of being broken by mobile newspapers. As a new media, mobile newspaper must have a process of competing with traditional media for attraction and market. However, fair competition is the premise of promoting the development of various media. Just as under the impact of the Internet, newspapers go deeper and faster, and TV strengthens the visual impact, the appearance of mobile newspapers will also prompt various media to strengthen their own characteristics and move towards mutual benefit and win-win.