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Tencent's Weixin group-messaging app now has 50 million users in China - can it help kill off festive SMS this Chinese New Year?
For some watershed moments, you know what’s coming but just can’t pin down when exactly it will come to pass. And so it is with the sending of SMS in China, which reaches a peak during the upcoming Chinese New Year festivities. Will this year be the first time that the number of celebratory SMS be toppled by the welter of Weibos and gush of group-messages from apps such as Kik, Talkbox, Tencent’s (HKG:0700) Weixin, or Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iMessage?
It’s happening in other countries, as Forbes recently reported that the number of SMS sent in Finland and Hong Kong plunged by double digits this festive season. In China’s autonomous southern city, the total number of SMSes fell by 14 percent on Christmas Day compared to the previous year.
SMSes have been booming in China in the past decade, with the total number sent more than tripling from 2003 to 2010. According to Sina Tech, the number sent totaled 7 billion in China in 2003; then it rocketed: 9.8 billion, 11, 12.6, 15.2, 17, 19, and then 23 billion in 2010. But if those numbers are broken down by the exploding number of mobile users in China, the peak was reached in 2007 with 1,180 SMS sent each year per capita. By 2010, it was down to 1,027 SMS sent per person in that one year. So the trend is now one of declining SMS usage in China – it’s just that more mobile subscribers keep coming on board. And so it seems that Weibo and group messaging apps – along, indeed, with older social networks such as QQ IM – are having an influence at the personal level.
But in China, a number of factors will likely keep SMS being fired by the billions for a few more years to come. First, SMS are cheap. At 2 mao (that’s 0.2 RMB, which is two US cents) a shot (or cheaper with an SMS bundle), they’re way more reasonably priced than the exorbitant rates in the US and Europe. Secondly, while about 110 million Chinese are now 3G users, that’s nowhere near the kind of smartphone-and-data-plan penetration rate in the EU and the US, where people seem to be delighted to be sending ‘free’ SMS over 3G in order to avoid the excessive SMS charges of their mobile telcos. Lastly, there’s still room for growth in China’s mobile market, in contrast to the 100 percent penetration rate in Hong Kong. And so China’s traditional SMS platform still has room for growth in 2012, and we’re not at the watershed just yet.
[Source: Sina Tech news - article in Chinese]
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