Lei’s official Weblog

Recently I read a post on mobile internet from Marc van der Chijs’ Shanghaied Weblog, Marc is a successful internet entrepreneur in China, he seemed to be convinced about the huge demand that will be generated in China for mobile internet services once 3G (third-generation wireless network) is launched. (By the way, 3G has been dalayed in China for several years, many believe it is because the government wants to promote its own homegrown 3G standard (TD-SCDMA), instead of embracing the CDMA standard which other countries have based their 3G networks on. So, it’s still waiting for the maturation of its own technology). The market potential of mobile internet seemed intriguing to me. So, I did a quick search on the number of cell phone users in China. The lastest figure I could find is 455 million from this article, but I suspect the author mistook the number of subscribers as the number of users, one user could have multiple subscriptions and handsets with one or more networks, which is relatively common in China. Anyway, the figure is staggering by any measure and is still growing quite fast. With increasingly convergent technology and more innovations like iphone, a handset will be able to perform lots of tasks we can only do on a PC today. As long as the handsets have a big enough screen and competitions keep the price not too high, it’s certain to me that the incredible convenience promised by the mobile internet is going to drive up a huge market demand for the related mobile devices, software and content in China and worldwide. It’s just too bad that I didn’t realise this much earlier.