China Mobile is one of the most successful companies in the world in recent years, with 493 million users. In 2008, it created profits of more than 400 billion yuan for shareholders. On August 3 1 day, the OPhone mobile phone was jointly launched with the terminal manufacturer. /kloc-In August of 0/7, it launched the "Mobile Market"-it was aimed at Apple. Back in June 5438+10, who would have thought that the 3G war in China would be like this?
This telecom operator with the largest number of users in the world believes in the principle of "all-inclusive". Looking back at the products it launched in the value-added field-Fetion of mobile QQ, Monternet of WAP website, and 139 mailbox of blackberry mail push service, it took back the control of SP, not to mention the layout of Phoenix TV, and it always wanted to put more profits into its pocket. Greed, yes, is greed, which is the biggest feature of China Mobile, an enterprise that believes in state capitalism.
But Apple is obviously such a company. In the global telecom market, Apple, an innovative company in Silicon Valley, is no longer a manufacturer of electronic gadgets with minimalist design. For more than a year, arrogant Apple has loved and hated those poor telecom operators. Apple is more explicit and straightforward in terms of greed and take-all. "All people who like iPhone >; & gt users are all my (Apple's) users, not your (operator's) users. Because although users use the operator's network, all the content is downloaded from my online program store, and the money is paid to Apple. " Apple CEO Steve? Jobs once angered global operators, including China Mobile. He believes that operators are pipelines. These pipes can only follow the trend.
But China Mobile said "No" to Apple. A few months ago, China Mobile terminated its negotiations with Apple and began to implement its own OPhone plan similar to the iPhone. China Mobile wants to play the role of "Apple" in China after building an "online program store" which is almost the same as Apple's App Store. Of course, rules can also be copied from apples. You know, China Mobile has nearly 500 million users, and it is qualified to direct companies that covet the concept of "500 million" except Apple.
Observers who once thought that China Unicom could make a comeback with the iPhone must reconsider this market.
This was originally one of the few opportunities for Unicom. Compared with China Mobile, which has 493 million users, China Unicom, which has a smaller scale and only 65.438+400 million users, has been looking for an unexpected opportunity to win-Unicom seized it. On August 28th, after a long negotiation, China Unicom announced that it had reached an agreement with Apple to jointly sell the iPhone in Chinese mainland. On September 28th, both parties will bring the 3G version of iPhone to China.
At least at this time, Unicom, which started at the latest, is still considered to have got the best deck of cards.
Like other countries in the world, iPhone has a large number of fans in Chinese mainland. According to unofficial statistics, more than 6,543,800 pirated iPhones have been circulated in the mainland market. Now, China Unicom expects to use this star machine to pull more competitors' users into its own network.
The goal of China Unicom is to compete for younger, more technical, more consumer-oriented and more brand-conscious users, which China Mobile is eager to get.
For many years, GSM users, the most valuable group in China's mobile customer base, have been described as "businessmen who have only junior high school education and are middle-aged. They don't use the data application function of their mobile phones very much, but they will make phone calls day and night, and the monthly phone bill can reach 1000 RMB ",but in the coming 3G era, video calls, Internet services and mobile online games are all addicted.
This user group is the basis for China Unicom to turn losses into profits, and most importantly, it is also the basis for winning the future.
Who will turn a blind eye to the future? Three days after Unicom announced its cooperation with iPhone, we saw that China Mobile and Apple, the two most arrogant companies in the world, began to face competition. The day before, Wang Xiaochu, Chairman and CEO of China Telecom, announced the plan of China Telecom to launch 3G version of BlackBerry and smart terminal Palm.
Now, the most fashionable smartphones in the world, including Apple's iPhone, Blackberry and Palm, are all gathered in China market, and China Mobile hopes its OPhone can compete with them.
For telecom operators in China, the rules of the game have changed.
Their favorite "price war" has lost its effectiveness: in the second quarter of 2008, the net profits of China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom decreased by 19%, 2 1% and 6% respectively compared with the previous quarter. Previously, in the face of the increasingly fierce competition after telecom restructuring and 3G licensing, the three operators successively competed for the big price reduction of voice charges-in the case that voice services have always been the mainstream business, this led to a decline in profitability.
For China operators, how to form an operator-led business model has become the key to improve their profitability, and Apple's dominant position in the industrial chain is obviously worth learning-this company almost effortlessly brought the competition focus of mobile phone players from terminal size and price to the track of software services.
Everyone knows that Apple is the inventor of the "App Store". Since its launch a year ago, it has accommodated more than 654.38 million+60,000 software programs submitted by developers, resulting in more than 654.38 million+50 million software downloads. AdMob, a mobile advertising analysis company, predicts that the App Store will bring nearly $200 million in revenue to Apple every month, which means $2.4 billion a year. And this whirlwind of iPhone developers can even be compared with the. Com "was the entrepreneurial craze.
This is the problem. Is the iPhone about the future, or is the huge mobile application behind the App Store dominating the future?
China Mobile released the online program store "Mobile Phone Market" on August 17, and China Telecom also announced that the construction of its online software store has basically ended, and a beta version will be launched as soon as September. However, it seems that Unicom, which got the iPhone, naturally didn't get the App Store. Chairman Chang mentioned more about Unicom's own online software store strategy, which will "build an open platform, and will definitely combine the advantages of WCDMA to open all operating systems and application systems in the industrial chain, not just the iPhone".
This has become a fatal problem-if Apple App Store can't enter China with Unicom's iPhone, Unicom's desire to improve ARPU (average income per user) and improve the user structure with iPhone will be greatly reduced. This is equivalent to giving up an online store with more than 60,000 applications. But also shut out the developers who covet China's 690 million wireless market users with more than 654.38 million+in the world.
The worst news for Unicom is that Apple China claims that the cooperation agreement with Unicom is not exclusive-we can't forget that Apple has always been arrogant and powerful in front of operators.
At this time, on the other hand, China Mobile, which is arrogant and unwilling to be Apple's "pipeline", has the opportunity to cooperate with Apple on the iPhone. Its online program store "Mobile Market" has 9,000 registered developers and submitted more than 2,000 applications. Compared with the App Store, it is insignificant, but it is enough to express its determination to "control everything" as well. China Mobile's self-built online program store takes the Apple App Store as its sole target, and it even updates the sales monitoring report of the App Store regularly in its "developer community". More importantly, it wants to hit the trend of "Apple has the final say" and firmly control the right to speak in its own hands. Since iPhone changed the rules of the game and transferred the right to speak from operators to terminal manufacturers and software developers, China Mobile was the first operator to regain control through "take all".
It hopes to "take all the profits from software sales and internet data tariffs" in the future era of smart phones. Even Nokia, which has been independently promoting Internet services around the world, has set up its own Ovi zone in China Mobile's online software store, which is controlled by China Mobile.
China Mobile's ambition to "control everything" is also reflected in the OPhone it uses against the iPhone. Every smartphone named OPhone-whether it is dopod, Samsung, LG, Motorola or Lenovo-must be customized with Internet data services such as China Mobile Music Walkman, Fetion, 139 mailbox, Monternet and mobile navigation. They are firmly embedded in China Mobile's OPhone platform and are called "open mobile systems", which cannot be deleted or blocked like other software. In this way, China Mobile controls the entire interest chain from the underlying operating system to the Internet application, and then to the software store.
In just half a month, from August 2007 17 to August 20081,China telecom industry, once regarded as a symbol of monopoly, has dramatically become the most competitive market in the world. Behind the star terminal wars such as iPhone, Blackberry and future OPhone, there is a competition between arrogant Apple and arrogant China Mobile Company, which is the struggle for the right to speak in the future telecommunications industry.
Behind OPhone
As the first operator in the world to dominate the online program store, what did China Mobile learn from Apple, an industry disruptor?
OPhone, a good name, simple and direct enough. At the beginning of 2008, when Lenovo Mobile put forward this idea, the cooperation between China Mobile and it was about to officially begin. In the past few months, China Mobile has clearly told the other party what it thinks-this operator intends to develop an open mobile phone operating system, and what Lenovo Mobile needs to do is to develop a suitable terminal for it.
But it's not just the Lenovo mobile phone that just appeared on August 3 1. Prior to this, the name created by Lenovo Mobile has become more extensive-it is a collection of a series of mobile terminals that adopt the OMS operating system of China Mobile and deeply customize the data service of China Mobile. The lineup includes many brands such as dopod, Philips, LG, and even Dell, which launched mobile phone products for the first time in the world.
It seems that China Mobile has been ready for a long time, and started its own OPhone plan after six months of negotiations with Apple's iPhone.
Now, the shadow of Appleism can be found in any OPhone: easy-to-use design, resistive full touch screen, neatly arranged icons representing "Internet applications"-not to mention the name.
Of course, for China Mobile, what is more noteworthy is its clear label on OPhone, which is involved in every link from design, research and development to testing. "Even such small details as the selection of the color of the side keys are displayed together." Chen Wenhui, vice president of Lenovo Mobile, said that the R&D team with China Mobile Research Institute has put forward more than a dozen solutions for this mobile phone.
In May, Lenovo O1-just like G 1, which changed its name to the world's first OPhone mobile phone-began to test among friendly users, and the test scale was considered to be unprecedented in China market. They must confirm that this product, which is highly anticipated by both parties, can run the new operating system stably and efficiently, enough to undertake the mission against the iPhone destined to be put into Unicom's arms together with other OPhone.
The OMS operating system adopted by OPhone is an open source system developed according to the underlying code of Google Android, which is jointly completed by China Mobile Research Institute and Boss Communication. In terms of interface design and presentation, China Mobile put forward detailed specifications, specifically, where to present what kind of services: such as Fetion, 139 mailbox, music walkman and other data services, and its icons are arranged in the most prominent position on the mobile phone desktop.
Among these icons, the most special member is called Mobile Market, which is the online application store of China Mobile. At the beginning of June, dopod, a smart phone manufacturer, received a request from China Mobile to test the compatibility of the mobile phone market with Magic in dopod, and at the same time, solved the problems of interface design and easy operation.
HTC, the parent company of dopod, is the first company in the world to develop GPhone (a mobile phone equipped with Google's Android operating system), and has almost become the global spokesperson of Android. Dopod is obviously the best choice for China Mobile to test the maturity of OPhone and mobile market.
At the mobile market conference on August 17, people first saw this dopod Magic-oriented to the mobile market-it was the only OPhone model that provided mobile market function demonstration, and it made its debut before other OPhone models. Zhang Guoxiang, product director of dopod Market, believes that the mobile market is the most important application function of all products of OPhone.
This is, of course, the purpose of China Mobile. Since the last round of telecom bubble burst, telecom operators have mastered the right to speak in the mobile industry instead of network equipment vendors. As the world's first leading online program store operator, China Mobile has already made its own planning and preparation.
In May this year, a QQ friend of Zhu Lianxing, an application developer of China Mobile's wireless data service company Zhuo Wang Technology, suddenly appeared. His purpose is to ask Zhu Lianxing if he can develop some application software for China Mobile's upcoming mobile market. This is the first time for Zhu Lianxing to deal with China Mobile, although it seems a bit casual.
Zhu Lianxing's 139.me is a young software development team. Since last year, it has been developing third-party applications for App Store, the online program store of Apple iPhone. At present, 10 apps have been sold on the App Store. Among them, the best-selling online game is called "Colorful Aquarium" (Colorful Aquarium >: & gtBox)-it is just a gadget that people use iPhone to "feed" virtual aquarium animals to pass the boring time, but it costs $2.99 and has been downloaded 600,000 times in two months. According to the sharing agreement between Apple and the developer, it brought at least $654.38+$5,000 to Zhu Lianxing's team.
However, in the face of more than 60,000 applications on sale, 65,438+million registered developers and 65,438+0.5 billion software downloads in Apple App Store, Zhu Lianxing's contribution is only a drop in the ocean. At that time, it was thought that Apple and China Unicom would officially bring the iPhone to China soon-maybe one or two months at most. Zhu Lianxing has also done some things for this. Recently, a software that is being tested internally-discount information tool-has been developed in Chinese for the first time.
Should I join the mobile market camp of China Mobile? Zhu Lianxing is willing to give it a try. It took him two weeks to develop a software based on Windows Mobile operating system-a practical tool to provide information service for driver's theoretical examination. To his disappointment, no one told him why his software had not been approved.
As of August 24th, Mobile Market was officially launched for a week, and its registered developers have exceeded 9,200, including 2 100 people who submitted ideas and uploaded more than 6,000 different types of online applications. A seemingly huge team of developers seems to have formed, and perhaps China Mobile is a little at a loss.
One thing that can't be ignored is that these more than 6,000 application resources are distributed in different operating systems and many different brands of mobile phones. For the developer of the mobile market, before deciding to develop a program, he must first determine whether the program is suitable for Symbian, Windows Mobile or OMS platforms, and whether it can be compatible with different models of Nokia, Samsung or Motorola-compared with the iPhone with a single platform, its cohesion and scale effect will be discounted.
At present, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, dopod, Lenovo and other 109 terminals can support the development of the mobile market, including Nokia, which has been planning to independently operate the mobile Internet service Ovi in China. Lin, global vice president of China Mobile, said that all smart phones customized by China Mobile will have built-in mobile market clients, including the current mainstream 2G mobile phones and the future 3G TD-SCDMA mobile phones.
There is no doubt that China Mobile has the ability to win over mobile phone manufacturers. It also understands that it is necessary to put down its posture and strive for developers like Zhu Lianxing to join its own team-and before Unicom gets everything done. Once iPhone users in China can download various local applications and programs from the App Store, the one-sided situation of those developers may get out of control.
Zhu Lianxing now thinks it's better to wait and see the market reaction before making a decision. "From a technical point of view, it is not difficult to convert our existing applications to the OPhone platform, so as long as we see a market, we will do it." He told China Business News.
Zhou from Nanjing seems to have more confidence in China Mobile. The "Super Ruler" he developed is being sold in the mobile market, and his price is 3 yuan. Like Apple, Nokia, Microsoft, etc. China Mobile and the developer split it 3: 7. Users download "Super Ruler" once, and they can get 0.9 yuan's income by moving-not including the Internet traffic fee generated during the downloading process.
China Mobile seems to regard Apple as its biggest "enemy"-whether it is a development store or a star mobile phone. But in fact, it wants to learn something from the subversive in this industry: like the iPhone, to achieve the perfect combination of operating system, interface, interface, mobile phone appearance and online service, which is what China Mobile really wants.
"In the past, many people complained that China Mobile's service was not good. In fact, this is not the case, but in the past, people could not get close to these services in terms of interface design and presentation. " Zhang Guoxiang thinks that dopod magic has made great progress in this respect.
It is worth mentioning that the naming of "Magic" has another secret meaning for dopod-the second GPhone released by HTC in early 2009 was code-named "HTC Magic". "dopod Magic" is its GPhone in Chinese mainland, although it is a deeply customized model with China Mobile. "Many people are wondering when we will bring G 1 to China. Now everyone finally understands that we didn't intend to bring it in from the beginning. " Zhang Guoxiang said.
It is reported that under the premise of operator subsidies, the price of a dopod Magic will be around 3,000 to 4,000 yuan. At present, these products are on their way to local dealers, and will be sold in China Mobile Business Hall, Gome Suning Dixintong and other direct retailers and some agents.
Both Lenovo Mobile and LG said that the negotiations with operators on the purchase price, subsidy policy and purchase quantity have not been settled, so they still cannot be disclosed. Chen Wenhui, vice president of Lenovo Mobile, said that Lenovo O 1 plans to go public at the end of September. At present, all promotion plans such as advertising have been completed. He described the plan as enabling consumers to have a "comprehensive understanding" of O 1.
There are rumors that Unicom will provide a subsidy of about 2,000 yuan for each iPhone. According to the report of China Business News, China Mobile may offer the same conditions, and provide a subsidy of up to 2,000 yuan for prepaid customers and contracted customers who use OPhone-nearly half the price of most brands of OPhone.
I hope I can help you.