[photopress:Wang_Jianzhou.jpg,full,alignright]In the world’s largest mobile market — China — one company is the dominant player, China Mobile. In its own country it is already the biggest but it has clear and stated ambitions to spread its coverage and market well beyond its homeland.
China Mobile Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Wang Jianzhou told Business Week in an exclusive interview: ‘Our target is to become a world-class company.’
Depends on definition. By normal standards it is already that in spades.
The company is listed in Hong Kong and has about 300 million mainland mobile phone subscribers. To give an idea of the scope of that figure it is the same as the population of the United States.
The market share in China is close to 70 percent of the current market.
Last year the company occupied 39.9 percent of the total (mobile plus fixed) telecom market by revenues (Its closest competitor was fixed-line operator China Telecom with 28.4 percent of a total market of around $72 billion) Its closest mobile rival is China Unicom which has a 13.4 percent share.
China Mobile is now the 11th largest telecom operator in the world by revenues, number five in profits, and at $150 billion, has the world’s largest market capitalization for a telecom company. Big apples.
In China, as elsewhere, the major urban markets for mobile phone service are nearing maturation although the less developed regions still have plenty of room for growth.
Wang Jianzhou said:
‘In Beijing and Shanghai now every adult has a mobile phone, so the penetration rate is 97 to 100 percent. They are like any developed city in the world.
‘But in rural areas, the penetration rate is only 12 percent . So that is a very large potential market for us. Ordinary farmers can now start using cell phones.’
Nationally the penetration rate is still a low 32 percent which leaves plenty of room for growth within China.
Also fast growing is the area of SMS messages. The figure is so large it is difficult to comprehend. 255 billion short messages have been sent by China Mobile subscribers so far this year. To which you can add ring-back tones, value-added services which already make up some 23 percent of total revenues.
Wang Jianzhou said, ‘We want to make the mobile phone a Swiss Army knife that can do anything for you.’
Source Business Week
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