Cell Phone SMS News in Chinese Newspaper Groups: A Case Study of Yunnan Daily Press Group

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Cell Phone SMS News in Chinese Newspaper
GroupsA Case Study of Yunnan Daily Press Group

• Liu Cheng Axel BrunsCreative Industries
  FacultyQueensland University of Technology

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Mobile Telephony and Yndaily

• Continuing mobile boom in China
• rapid growth in number of users, volume of
  messages, range of services
• but focus of studies largely on key areas
  (Shanghai, Beijing, etc.)
• dominated by China Mobile and China Unicom
• Yunnan Daily Press Group
• key regional news organisation
• case study for developments in other regional
  areas
• SMS, WAP, MMS news services since 2002
• overseen by Liu Cheng, vice-director of Yndaily
  information and network centre

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Rapid Growth in Users
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SMS Use in China

• SMS development initially slow
• limitation to Latin script until 1997
• thus absence of SMS value-added services
• China Monternet (MobileInternet) as first key
  service in 2001
• Common value-added services today
• Information, including news, weather,
  examinations, and English learning
• Entertainment, including short message games,
  mobile phone pictures, ring tones downloads,
  jokes, and other entertainment participation
• Communications, including mobile chat, and email
  
• Commercial, including mobile phone stock trading
  and mobile phone banking and
• Special services, including location-based
  services (similar to GPS) (China Mobile, 2006)

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The SMS Explosion
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Market Development
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The Mobile Services Downturn

• Problems with mobile services
• unethical business practices until 2005
• poor management, lack of regulation
• uninvited messages, inability to cancel
• illegal billing practices
• government intervention, some providers shut down
• also negative effect on legitimate providers
• still overall market growth, but notably slowed
• emergence of key market leaders / oligopolists

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Mobile News in Yunnan Province

• Established in 2002
• joint venture between Yunnan Mobile and Yunnan
  Daily Press
• harnessing existing content from Yndaily
  publications
• cross-promotion through Yndaily and Yunnan Mobile
  products
• initial problem of technological limitations
• 70 Chinese characters per SMS message
• 2-5 messages per day
• requires tight editing
• growth and decline echoing market development
• New opportunities
• MMS newspaper
• 3G services

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Key Strategies

• Yndailys key options for growing the market
• Leveraging existing content sources
• building on established news brands
• Interactive options and participatory journalism
• user participation growing in spite of overall
  market downturn
• MMS Services
• overcoming character limitations, incorporating
  image, audio, video content
• 3G Services
• but problems with technology changeover and
  market oligopoly

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Convergence Opportunities

• Beyond mobile telephony
• especially 3G devices no longer phones
• restructuring of Yndaily as multimedia group
• increasing focus on user involvement
• Towards new models
• growing focus on product RD e.g. through the
  China Digital Newspaper Lab
• but need for better and more streamlined
  government regulation
• threat of oligopoly led by China Mobile
  (especially in 3G market)
• need for further insights beyond the rapid growth
  in use