BEIJING, April 24 -- BOB Wang has a new habit during his Metro trip to work daily - reading news on a mobile phone screen.
"I needn't idle in the crowded carriage, watch advertisements on LCD screen or look at other passengers since I subscribed to News365 services," said Wang, who spends a total of one-and-a-half hours on the metro and bus every day.
"I know every top news before I reach office and home," Wang, a 27-year-old salesman, added.
Shanghai's two newspaper groups started their own "Mobile Newspaper" services in the past months.
The mobile news services may be the next hot spot in the thumb economy in China, following short text messages and customized ringtone services.
Generally speaking, two kinds of mobile news exist in the market.
Under the first kind, operators regularly send edited and shortened news through multimedia messages every day. Subscribers, who pay 3 yuan to 8 yuan every month, can read the mobile news offline.
The second type of service allows users to read complete news content (compared with print media) through WAP (wireless application protocol) technology and people have to pay for network access fees.
In Shanghai, Wenhui-Xinmin United Press Group and Jiefang Daily Group both adopted the first format.
"The two kinds of service aim at different target groups. Most people will choose the 'headline news' due to the hardware limit, like (the handset's) screen size," said Hou Tao, an analyst at iResearch Inc, a Shanghai-based IT consulting firm.
Wenhui-Xinmin launched four mobile newspapers last month under the News365 brand. They covered news, finance, sports and entertainment. Jiefang Daily kicked off iNews mobile newspaper earlier this year. Each of the media group sends users multimedia messages 2 or 3 times a day.
"The standard of our news choice is important, interesting and related to readers as well as eye-catching pictures," said Chen Ying, one of four full-time editors of News365.
On average, every multimedia message includes three pictures and 20 text messages, each of them of 100 characters long.
"The content of news not only includes stories in our group's media but all the sources we can access, including Internet," Chen said.
Wang said sports news, including soccer match results and pictures of NBA stars, is his favorite on News365.
The cooperation with local media groups will help Shanghai Mobile to develop mobile media and expand its business, the city's biggest mobile carrier said in a statement to Shanghai Daily.
Shanghai Unicom and Wenhui-Xinmin are due to kick off an English-language newspaper on mobile phone on Wednesday to serve foreigners, Shanghai Daily learned. Shanghai Daily is expected to contribute to the project.
The popularity of color-screen phones has boosted the various applications on the handset, industry insiders said.
"Almost all Nokia phones can support the mobile news services," said Maggie Xu, a market official at Nokia China.
But the big potential also provides challenges to mobile news services.
"The biggest shortcoming to me is the page-roll function and I often miss pages that may be worth reading," said Joyce Wu, who owns a big-screen NEC phone. Wu subscribes to both News365 and iNews services.
Tracy Zhu, who subscribes to iNews services and owns a Nokia 7260, also had a similar complaint.
The other shortcoming is that the new media can't provide exclusive information.
The editors of mobile news are not allowed to do interviews, according to Chen.
"If the carriage was not too crowded, I would rather read Titan Sports," said Wang.
Source: Shanghai Daily
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