Latest: China Mobile's war on WeChat

China's OTT battlefront is essentially a contest between Tencent, the savvy internet firm, and China Mobile, the mobile titan. In the past week it's become a daily news staple.

The latest is Tencent chief Pony Ma at a public forum on the weekend, denying he has any plan to charge fees for WeChat, Tencent's wildly successful messaging app. 

Just as predictably, he also made a pitch for continued cooperation with the operators, pointing out WeChat was already generating a good deal of traffic. In an interview last week he talked up future joint efforts around machine-to-machine. 

Yet the sheer weight of WeChat fee stories – even the denials – has helped create a climate where people believe paid WeChat is a possibility. The state China Radio news service reported Ma's denial but also went ahead with a voxpop asking people if they would use WeChat if they had to pay for it.

In his denial, Ma avoided addressing the reports that the MIIT had called in the operators and Tencetn to canvass the possibility of paid WeChat.

In that light, the form of words from Tencent’s spokesperson is interesting: “We have not received any advice of any meeting,” he reportedly said. Like his boss he said there was “no plan to charge fees.”

So what’s China Mobile’s game plan? The head of China Mobile Research Institute, Bill Huang, memorably floated the idea of the freecall 800 charging model - ie, called party pays – being applied to mobile data. Sensibly he went on to say merely that this “might emerge in the future.”

Huang complained that because of its always-on function, WeChat occupied 60% of China Mobile’s signalling layer despite accounting for just 10% of data traffic.  But even he said it would be unrealistic for operators to try to squeeze the OTT players because “they represent customer needs.” 

In the same vein, China Mobile CEO Li Yue said technology change was inevitable in the industry, and observed that SMS pretty much wiped out much of the greeting card industry.

Meanwhile, in an amazing coincidence, a China Mobile slide pack was leaked online last week, revealing the firm is considering a revamp of its Fetion messaging service for the WeChat era. Launched three years ago, it has some 99 million active users, up 15% in the last year. 

Given the lamentable record of operators versus apps, Mobile's ambitions are brave. This blog applauds them, however. As long as China Mobile is willing to throw a few punches, those headlines will keep rolling.

Comments

[faheen]

Awesome Post