[photopress:mobilephone_user.jpg,full,alignright]iResearch, a leading research company, thinks mobile phone advertising in China will generate nearly RMB500 million $62.5 million) this year — double last year’s market value. This includes advertisements delivered to mobile users through short messages (which many users consider a pestilence and a plague) or integrated in handsets.
Hou Tao, vice supervisor of iResearch, said, ‘The market potential for mobile phone advertisements is huge, as advertisers are still trying out new publicity methods and their investment is still limited.’
He sees the market growing rapidly in the next four years, with a compound annual growth rate of 38 percent.
The company’s research found that 91.3 percent of mobile users have received advertisements in short messages and nearly 40 percent of them said they are willing to try the advertised products or services.
(That is one of the problems with this sort of research. If it has a figure which cannot deal with a reality check then it is suspect. The idea that 40 percent of people said they are willing to use products advertized — force fed — to them by SMS is ludicrous. Real life experiences in European markets show that SMS advertising is a major source of customer aggravation. And aggravated customers do not say they will consider buying. Indeed, the reverse.)
That is not to understate the size of the potential market. China has 390 million mobile phone users and more than 80,000 independent Wireless Application Protocol service providers such as KongZhong Corporation, whose Kong.net Website had more than 20 million daily visits on average.
Source: China Daily