Application Stores Get Heated for Mobile Operators

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  With the spread of 3G technology in China, the applications for smart phones are getting more and more popular. The mobile operators all find a big cake from the application stores.
  
  In spite of being late for half a year, China Telecom still became the second mobile operator that launches the application store in China. On March 17, China Telecom’s application store named “SkyWing Space” was officially opened.
  Another operator, China Unicom is also preparing for the launch of its own application store – “Unistore” and the date approaches. How to compete in the 3G era? It seems that the operators have found the same answer – to get engaged in the mobile phone applications. However, the operators are looking for a way to enter the competition with their own unique styles and features.
  
  Homogeneousness
  
  “SkyWing Space” (www.139store.com) was the second important project China Telecom finished for the 3G after the foundation of 3G-related network. As introduced by China Telecom’s vice general manager Sun Mingkang, right now the company’s network has already covered all the major cities and more than 20,000 towns in China. In some cities the users could enjoy the 4Mb cable broadband.
  SkyWing Space is a platform providing the mobile phone application with downloading and similar services. It is quite like China Mobile’s Mobile Market in function and design, which was the first application store launched in China. They even share the same logo- a shopping trolley.
   We found out that SkyWing Space is designed and developed by China Telecom’s subsidiary company in Sichuan. This operation of the store is taken by China Telecom’s public custom department.
  At present, the customers can get the services of videos, music, games, news, financing, books, traveling and communication from SkyWing Space. Since it is newly opened, all these services are free to be downloaded and used. But in the future China Telecom will charge for the services. As for the profit distribution, China Telecom will adopt the internationally popular pattern, in which the developers of applications will get 70% of the revenue of product sales.
  China Mobile uses the same profit distribution pattern and it has already begun to charge for the services of its Mobile Market.
  In contrast to Mobile Market, SkyWing Space is open to all customers of China Telecom, including the mobile phone users, broadband users and IPTV users (IPTV is a cable TV service launched by China Telecom).
  At the moment there are more than 500 kinds of applications and services available in SkyWing Space and more than 5,000 developers launched their products in this application store. However, the access is still quit limited compared with the App Store for iPhone users. China Telecom is striving to provide more services for its customers. It has started cooperation with Microsoft and Qualcomm, enabling the users to download the software of Microsoft and Brew MP from SkyWing Space.
  According to He Zhiqiang, market director of China Telecom, the company wants to establish a similar cooperation to support the users of Linux, WebOS and Symbian.
  
  Operators Swarm in
  
  Why can application stores trigger the common interests of mobile phone operators in China? In addition to the huge success of App Store, the operators also hope to rely on the value-added data services to earn more profits.
  Chang Xiaobing, board chairman of China Unicom, said during the National People’s Congress that China’s telecom industry has already made its step into the 3G era in which the mobile phones will not only be used for callings and short messages. The only way 3G technology can be used to its best advantage is the development of different kinds of applications.
  The development trend of telecommunication industry is also forcing the operators to focus on the application development. The operators can not gain the same profit out of traditional services like communication as before. The number of cellular phone users is increasing, but the revenue of this field is decreasing because of lower and lower fees of communication. That’s a challenge all operators have to face.
  Wang Jianzhou, president of China Mobile, said that many people queried about how China Mobile could keep expanding at a fast pace. Apart from the increasing number of users, the most important reason is the increase of data and information services, said Wang.
  Chang Xiaobing thought that the best way to improve a mobile operator’s competitive power is to dig up the potential of non-communication businesses and increase their contribution to the profit. Though the proportion of non-communication businesses’ revenue only accounts for a small part of the whole company’s, Chang Xiaobing believed that these businesses will sooner or later play the main role in a mobile operator.
  For today’s mobile operators, most of the revenues come from the communication services. The value-added data service is still not the most important one. Therefore, the operators that can trigger and develop customers’ interests in data and application services can be found at the top of the 3G competition and the advantage is much bigger than others brought by the disparity of customer population and network quality.
  However, the Chinese mobile operators are still in the initial phase of building application stores. There is still a long way ahead waiting for them.
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