By Wang Xin
With the continuous promotion of the application of third generation (3G) technology for commercial purposes and telecom restructuring, the trend that commerce is transferring or expanding from the Internet to the mobile Internet is more evident. However, how can such a multitude of enterprises and merchants grasp the commercial opportunities?
Rapidly expanding business
Ms. Li is a boss who deals with tea wholesale in Chengdu. Previously, her clients were basically from Chengdu or other areas in Sichuan Province at the most. However, due to the impact of "5.12 Earthquake", the demands have decreased sharply in quantity in the recent period, leading to bad business. But recently, such a situation has been broken up.
"I often receive inquiries from clients in other areas, such as Beijing, Guangdong, even Northeast China", Mrs. Li said. "At the beginning, I didn't know why those clients from other areas emerged suddenly; later, I recalled that I had once registered a mobile real name of 'Famous Tea Wholesale' in a commercial center named as 'Mobile Mall' on a mobile phone. Since then, mobile-phone users in various areas could use mobile phones to surf on the Internet or send and receive short messages, and see about my shop and feature products whenever and wherever, so my business has expanded to the whole country at one blow."
In the eyes of Ms. Li, her business expansion is rather of the connotation of "unintentional success". However, in fact, behind such a fact beyond intention is the surging wave of the transfer of commerce to mobile Internet. Data from CCW Research shows that mobile commercial business is developing rapidly in China at a compound annual growth rate of more than 30 percent. In 2008, the market scale will amount to over RMB30 billion yuan. In this April, the third generation (3G) technology was put into commercial application in China officially. Recently, the curtain has also been drawn open for telecom restructuring, the environment and resources of the mobile business industry will be further optimized. Various parties are driving the development of mobile business.
Mobile marketing to play a decisive role in the future
Zhang Yong, an expert on mobile business from China Academy of Telecommunication Research, stated that the new economy starting from now would be embodied in a commercial mode taking the mobile e-commerce as a core ultimately. Mobile marketing, by such features as being accurate, efficient, prompt, and interactive, is becoming a new marketing mode that enterprises and merchants are practicing actively. Certainly, what attracts enterprises and merchants more is the amount of mobile-phone users in China, which nearly amounts to 600 million, far more than over 200 million, that of netizens. Enterprises and merchants have considered the mobile Internet as the decisive marketing key in the future.
The mobile real name applied by Ms. Li is just one of various mobile marketing applications. As introduced, her registered mobile real name "Famous Tea Wholesale" is similar to the doorplate number of a shop; as long as one wandering in the mobile commercial street searches for "Famous Tea Wholesale", he/she can enter into Mrs. Li's virtual mobile shop directly and select teas. The quality and price of various teas have been introduced with both pictures and words in the shop. The mobile real name makes the sales semi-diameter of Ms. Li expanded from Chengdu to the whole country.
In fact, some enterprises with an acute eye on new marketing modes have begun to register their mobile real names with the company name, the trade name, or the product name, etc. so as to launch the mobile marketing. For instance, ZTE Corporation, China's famous communication enterprise and manufacturer of 3G mobile phones, has registered three mobile real names, i.e. "ZTE communication", "ZTE mobile phone" and "ZTE".
Nevertheless, as the deployment of mobile marketing is convenient and flexible with low costs and the application is convenient, the mobile marketing is very suitable for the application in small- and middle-sized enterprises (SMEs) and it is very likely to become the decisive key in the future. Nie Hailin, a Deputy Director of Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Commerce, expressed that with mobile e-commerce, an innovation had been realized in the field of e-commerce application on the basis that progress has been made in both communication technology and information technology; thus, it had been made more convenient for SMEs to develop e-commerce more promptly and it will be significant for elevating the strength of SMEs. Song Ling, President of China Electronic Commerce Association (CECA), also believed that mobile e-commerce applications were the crux for SMEs to realize their industrial upgrading and sustainable development.
Actually, SMEs' passion towards mobile marketing is increasingly rising. It is reported that among the projects having been deployed, the mobile real name project as a new-type application in mobile marketing has won favor from enterprises and merchants. Such mobile real names as "Recruit students", "Mother-and-baby supplies" and "Tickets" have been registered out.
Expand the marketing space
As the 3G-technology commercial application market is becoming increasingly hot, lots of enterprises start to make attempts and conduct mobile marketing, hoping that by use of such a marketing mode, it is possible to help enterprises to develop the marketing space and seize the competition opportunity. The selection of mobile marketing depends on the application value ultimately. The selections of different applications will surely lead to different values obtained.
With a view on commonly seen mobile marketing applications in the current market, such as wireless website, short-message website, short-message real name, and information name address, all of such applications focus on the "name". Behind the "name", there will be a company profile similar to "name list of enterprises" in most cases: there is neither in-depth commercial applications nor commercial platforms to support the expansion of their values.
The characteristic of the mobile real name is embodied in the support of the commercial platform for innovations in the mobile commercial street. Behind respective mobile real names are respective mobile shops, which are isolated from one another but all established in the mobile commercial street as a large-scale mobile e-commerce platform with integrated functions while involving many hotspot industries, such as restaurant, entertainment, education, IT, and tourism. At present, over 350 thousand enterprises and merchants have been stationed in the street and there has shaped up the strong atmosphere of a "commercial circle". Just based on the clustering effect of the "commercial circle", the mobile real name has opened the value space, thus being highly expanding and having gestated new commercial modes and opportunities.
Such a mode is similar to the commercial mode of Baidu.com and Google.com in the field of Internet, i.e. search with key words, and it has integrated certain characteristics of the commercial circles on the Internet including Taobao.com; moreover, the convenience of mobile phones and the immanence of the mobile Internet shall be added to the list. It is imaginable that simply in terms of the user scale, the commercial market based on the mobile Internet, where the mobile real name and the mobile street have been applied, is a market with a scale that is several times that for the Internet; and commercial value and opportunities in such a market will also be surprising.
