The World’s Largest Mobile Phone Market
E-mail has become the new snail mail for many Chinese as they turn to the immediacy of text messages on cellphones and instant messages on personal computers. The most affluent and educated use e-mail, but by and large people here rely much more heavily on the shorter, faster and more conversational methods of electronic communication. China’s mania for messaging — particularly mobile messaging — is largely a product of how technology developed here. Like other emerging global markets, rural regions of China lacked phones or even a television as recently as two decades ago. The country modernized just as mobile technology was broadly accessible throughout the world. China is now the world’s largest mobile phone market.
China’s 455 million cellphone users chat, cajole, joke and flirt via short messages about 33 billion times a month, according to government statistics and IResearch Consulting Group, a market research firm that focuses on Chinese Internet and wireless industries. More people in China get news or weather via the Web on their cellphones than from personal computers. Most Chinese people can’t afford a PC for their home because it’s a pretty big investment. Mobile phones have achieved iconic status in China, where technology is viewed as an important part of the country’s rapid modernization.
