A latest survey shows that, by the end of 2009, China’s IM (Instant Messaging) users have exceeded 277 million, of which MIM (Mobile Instant Messaging) users were 91.41 million, almost 33.3 percent.
The rapid growing market has resulted in a fierce competition among telecom operators, while increasing the opening up of their products is the main strategy to grab the market shares.
China Mobile started the commercial test of Fetion since 2006，and it soon raced to becme number 2 in domestic IM market, leaving behind Microsoft’s MSN, as the company now has a number of 500 million mobile subscribers. Recently, Fetion is trying to become more open though expanding the scope of registration. The other operators’ users can also access into Fetion, which may perk up this IM tools again.
On other side, China Telecom announced that it has intrioduced a similar function on its IM tool, Tianyi Live, which also supports cross-network SMS. Tianyi Live is a jointly product, which was developed by China Telecom and Microsoft on June,2009. What’s more, China Unicom’s IM tool is reportedly under development stage. (Paul)
