We got clearance from all presenters, get ready for lots of information! The Q&A transcript is mentioned below the presentations.

+8* | Mobile SNS Best Practices from Asia

TX.com.cn | Mobile SNS in China

Q&A with TX.com.cn

Q: How do you gather users? Do you have an invitation system?
TX: We consider ourselves an entertainment site therefore we don’t really have first degree friends system, it is more for strangers to meet each other. We have not spent a penny yet on promotional work but they will soon. 50% of our first logins will recommend a friend. Our vision is to have an interactive portal, same interests among users is important.

Q: What is the thing that attracts most to the site?
TX: 30% of new users could play this dice game, simple applications attracts users. Fun, easy applications are the main thing. We also have a nice matching engine for dating purposes.

Q: How about data usage?
TX: Users have GPRS but not all have a GPRS data plan.

Q: Do you see ad model selling inventory?
TX: We hope so. We tested different application methods, direct sales etc. Now before 3G comes out, I don’t think advertising will be so big.

Q: how many users have you acquired from these different methods?
TX: Almost all of our 30 million accounts are from word of mouth, or through cross marketing with other mobile properties. We actually tested small marketing initiatives but that is still small.

Q: How is the relationship between mobile operators and TX? Your site is virtual community, how do you implement stickiness?
TX: Operator relationship is tough. TX is mobile Internet (off-deck), so we do not need to have direct relationships with any operators. We use only China Mobile network infrastructure and directly target end users. For stickiness, creativity is one important thing, creative apps. Other sites are copying us, which we see as a sign that we are leading.

Q: What are your payment systems?
TX: We have 6 different mechanisms. Third party channels, SMS, WAP direct charges to get virtual currency, some internet based payments, but very few users seem to trust Internet payment. However we believe in direct deposits through banks such as Agricultural Bank of China.

Hozom | Phonebook with SNS

Q&A with Hozom

Q: How do you invite new users?
Hozom: there is a link to DL page, we have a simple PC site but for functionality. Link is to WAP site.

Q: Which handsets are you compatible with?
Hozom: Windows mobile, Nokia, will extend to Android, Blackberry etc. Features have to be kept simple for easy portability.

Q: You can tag other users with keywords. What if they don’t like the tags?
Hozom: The phonebook is special and private, that’s why we don’t connect people with strangers, all connections have trust. For tags, you can accept or reject them in one click.

Q: Do you look at people’s group SMS to create ad-hoc groups (“Xobni-like”)?
Hozom: We are doing basic features, grouping features are manual. But it’s a great idea.

Q: You do online backup of phonebook, basically an online phonebook service. Many phones will have this by default. So what is your strategy?
Hozom: We want to be friendly to carriers and device manufacturers. We are open and would like to partner with them.

Q: China Mobile should have this kind of service, but not a success. How can people trust carrier? It’s easy to synch PC and mobile.
Hozom: Most of our features attract offline users. We see two ways to attract users: by innovating with great apps, or by making the service keep simple and beautiful, this is the way iPod succeeded.

Q: What is your revenue model, do you have ads?
Hozom: Revenue model is a pain for mobile community in China. Not many companies know how to get money. You can either get revenues from third parties or from users. We plan to get paid from users at first. Our service is to solve real business problems that they are willing to pay for and we will charge directly for some features. Pricing strategy will be complex but eventually from users.

Q: Nobody has talked about LinkedIn.
Hozom: In fact I’m heavy users of LinkedIn. We would like to partner with SNS like this. If they extend their users to mobile, we would like to work with them.

Q: How did you do porting?
Hozom: It is a great tech challenge for us. Every day we have headache with this problem. For the information layer we will use Hozom base, for porting it is “just” an engineering problem.

Q: Do you have LBS features?
Hozom: Users don’t understand LBS and I don’t want to educate users. I expect China Mobile or someone to educate users, after this I will introduce this plug in.

Q: How are you funded?
Hozom: Currently it is private, no VC.

Q: When did you start and how many users have you gathered?
Hozom: We started at the beginning of this year and launched the service two months ago. We have about 30,000 users, but active rate is not that high.

For confidentiality reasons, we had to remove part of the information but this version contains some elements of our core expertise (it’s not “presenting”): cross-market analysis of innovation and best practices. Notably, we highlight the fact that “SNS” is now too broad a term to describe the large variety of services DNAs out there.

A more complete report on the session will be presented later on the Mobile Monday Beijing website.

Panelists

Mr. Alex Liang, CEO, Pica.com | Mobile IM
Mr. Yu Dong, CTO, Yicha | Mobile search
Mr. Jerry Lee, CEO, PP.cn | Mobile community
Mr. Xin Ye, CEO, Casee.cn | Mobile advertising
Mr. Haila Wang, CTO, OrangeLabs (could not join and was represented by his colleague)

Moderator
Mr. Benjamin Joffe, +8* | Mobile Monday

Some background

CASEE > mobile ad. Network, and for mobile content publishers (provide revenues)
For better Mobile internet experience.

PP.CN > founded in 2004. Entertainment on mobile (mobile friend-making). Also work with YICHA to attract customers from Japan.

YICHA > founded in 2004. Mobile Services for QQ and News Platforms and other 2000 websites. In 2006, Yicha entered the Japanese Market.

PICA > Started in September 2004, IM for mobile phones with social networking services on top of IM service. Social networking communities. Partnership with MSN helped for outside the mainland such as Hong-Kong, Macao…etc. Exporting services to other Asian countries. Revenues from advertisements.

1. Why go abroad?

CASEE > It is part of the investment decision with investors (Casee has investors from the UK). Casee provides its platform to partners and runs its own operations in China.

PP.CN > The differences between China mobile ads market and Japan mobile ads market is that it is easier to make revenues from the Japanese market. The audiences of the two markets are different; however, seeing that there is already a facilitated internet mobile service of Japan, it is easier to make money from mobile internet services in Japan.

YICHA > Founded in 2004. Provide mobile search service for QQ and Ucfly and other 40,000 websites. In 2006, Yicha entered the Japanese Market. Looking at the global development, the Japanese market is great. In the Japanese mobile search market, the main competitors are only Google and Yahoo, there are not many local companies to compete with, which offers opportunities with companies with good technologies and services.

PICA > For Pica, going abroad means: ‘More Value and More Opportunity’. When you have a good technology and usage companies are valued much higher overseas by capital markets and investors. Therefore, if you operate advanced applications, there could be an opportunity to add value to the company by expanding overseas.

ORANGE > In China, there’s lot of good technologies and applications that could benefit Orange group. Orange has launched mobile branches in China only a few years ago to bridge Chinese and European mobile service applications.

2. Finding the right people

+8* > How to find and evaluate the people to hire or already hired from abroad? What are your experiences regarding this personnel recruitment processes?

PICA > Identifying the right people and learning the local market characteristics to adapt the product are two difficult points.

We also faced a few problems 1) Finding a right partner 2) Negotiating with the people who are known to be the ‘right’ people (as they sometimes want more ownership) 3) Finding the local support, which are tied with resources problem (both money and people). Particularly, it was hard to find the people who are good at communicating.

However, I would say our proven product and technology has facilitated the process along the way in communication and negotiation because our partners needed something similar to Chinese market that we have experienced of operating.

YICHA > Our Japan CEO has 10 years of advertising and local launching experience in Japan, and our Japanese investor Hikari Tsushin helped to identify him as well as other key team members. As a result, it was relatively easy for Yicha to start and to manage.

PP.CN > In the case of SNS and communities, there is a fairly strict examination procedures for keywords in Japan. To deal with this, we hired several staff members. We have products and technologies supported from China, operation team, personnel resources that have more than 5 years of experience. Specifically, our good resources for gaming have been useful to localize in Japan and globalize. Lastly, we try to seek potential employees from the overseas students, and we have good Japanese speakers as staff members, so no real problem in communicating. We talk around 5 hours on Skype every day with our Japan team.

3. Financing the trip

+8* > Was funding for the trip part of the deal? How did you make it a good business case?

PICA > We are making money and business itself is profitable. Revenues from outside China are 30% of the total revenues. We received funding from VCs even before overseas operations generated revenues so we had enough money/revenues to support the development.

YICHA > Yicha had a lot of experience in Japan. Before we entered the Japanese Market, we had enough financing to support the business. We estimate our revenues should reach about 20 million dollars next year.

PP.CN > Our case is similar to that of Yicha. We didn’t spend much money since it was not needed. The Chinese market is not very mature, but Japan has a mature and easy money-making market.

4. Biggest hurdles

+8* > What are the things that you didn’t anticipate during the operation such as launching a service…etc.?
Particularly to Orange: What are the results so far? Is it easy for Chinese market to be successful?

ORANGE > This year, we have a good case of a Chinese application brought to Europe via Orange. Those cases need to be publicized more to motivate Chinese companies to expand. We are also putting together an early stage investment capability and we offer the ability to companies to test applications in Beijing on a live UK network.

CASEE > The hardest part is the odd hours when working with UK due to time difference, but with enough Skype calls things work fine.

PP.CN > The difficult issue about internalization is communication. Sony and others educated the Japanese market so we have to strengthen the localization taking this history and local tastes into account. On mobile, services like Mobile Game Town from the company DeNA offers personalization such as clothing, backgrounds, and other features that we need to integrate. Therefore, we have a local team with a Japanese CEO who is responsible for Japan localization.

YICHA > Knowing that reacting fast to the changes is really important, we have the product leader(s) to go to Japan every month.

PICA > We found that it is important to find the right partner, especially make sure that interests are aligned.

5. “I wish I knew”

PICA > I think that passion and trying are the key. However, the first time might not be able to give you the ideal outcome that you expected!

YICHA > It is important to find the local team of China in order to find the suitable users in Japan. We researched and conducted surveys to identify what were their tastes in music, entertainment features, etc. Therefore, we suggest you to have local resources as we spent much time to conduct sustainable development both inside (China) and outside (Japan). Also, you need to be very prudent when going abroad.

PP.CN > I think that the company should already have gone through several competitions within the country and become a mature and healthy one before going abroad or thinking of going abroad. Mistakes abroad are much harder to correct, therefore, you need to check the plan, detailed processes and results. I believe the most important traits are being both prudent and confident.

CASEE > Our case is easier than Yicha and PP.CN because we are “reverse localization”. Our task is to develop a platform in China; therefore, it would probably be easier for us to meet the end users’ needs than Yicha and PP.CN.

Q&A

QUESTION 1 > How did you find the ‘right’ people. Was it through head hunters/connections? Another question is about the ways to get revenues.

PICA > Most companies here have received investment. In some cases, your VCs can help you. Other ways are to go to conferences, meet local partners and local offices for large companies, like Orange. Huawei is another channel that can help you as they are looking for services to bundle with their platforms.

YICHA > For revenues, mobile search is relatively mature in Japan. The business model is similar to that of internet search engines.

PP.CN > In regards to finding the correct personnel, your friends could become your partners! As for revenues, communities are quite mature in Japan. Although Facebook has a great service they have issues about revenues. Japanese market is more about mobile gaming to attract users. Mobile SNS in Japan generate revenues by selling virtual features such as Avatars.

QUESTION 2 > What do you think are the difference between the users in Japanese and Chinese markets?

PP.CN > Japanese users are young. They were born in the 1990s. Maybe due to the lack of space in Japanese houses, 13 to 18-year-old audience do not have their own computers in their rooms. Even if they have, the computer is around their parents. Therefore, they rely and spend much time on the mobile phones which dominates very much of their daily life (for entertainment, living…etc.).

Also, opposite spending habits are found between Japanese and Chinese users. Japanese would spend a lot of money for new and quality products. Often, buyers think that the more expensive the product is, the more reliable it is (no viruses,..etc.); however, this is not the case in China.

QUESTION 3 > What are the advantages of Chinese entrepreneurs in Japan?

PP.CN > Chinese entrepreneurs in Japan are good at identifying, solving, and learning from the experiences they had in the past. Also, the Chinese working style is more relaxed. In Japan, many staff would not leave their offices until 10pm because they do not feel comfortable leaving or would say “I am sorry to leave so early while you are still working”.

YICHA > I’d like to add something based on our experience. In terms of the local resources, the Japanese employees get many benefits when working with large companies, so Japanese are often willing to work their whole life with the same company, which makes it difficult to hire them. In terms of advantages, the easy communication both in time zones and distance (only 3 hours away) could be another advantage.

[Transcript by Brianna Chu | +8* ]

Our distinguished panelists were Xin Ye from Casee.cn, Richard Robinson from Dada Asia, Marcus Xiang from PDX.cn and Alex Kummerman from ClicMobile. Inspired by Thomas Cole’s Voyage of Life paintings, our panel covered the different phases a company goes through: childhood, youth, manhood and, in a likely distant future, old age.

As panelists were very straightforward, some of the quotes are unattributed.

Childhood

A company usually starts with an in idea. While some find it in the Silicon Valley, others look at trends in the market, for instance the rise of free content and all-you-can-eat data plans.

• All panelists mentioned they hired former colleagues to create the core team and share the dream. Some were available due to the previous company’s restructuring or sale.

• When asked what to do when you cannot go this way, Richard advised to find the right local partner, while Marcus suggested to not rush to hire but get to know the market and the people first.

Youth

The next stage is usually to develop the service itself, grow the team, find the first clients or partners.

• Alex managed to sign a corporate client at the start of the company, which solved numerous problems – your best investors are your clients!

• Marcus has been running operations with a lean team, almost unchanged since start, waiting for the market to pick up. Xin has been growing the team while signing clients and looking for investors.

Manhood

This is time where the enthusiasm will be all the more necessary to build building presence and differentiate, face ups and downs in management and market policies.

Among the key ideas put forward were:

• Listen and understand your users. Marcus identified this way interesting demographics such as soldiers with no access to Internet as among the most active, and gets direct feedback from users regularly.
• You can also see the impact of pricing such as data packages in the number of users and their usage of services. Very affordable pricing in Guangzhou supported strong usage.
• Market policies can be fought against when unjust! PDX.cn has been coordinating efforts to negotiate better policies with China Mobile and had them updated on a fairer ground for off-portal content.
• In some cases, breaking even seems like a distant idea while others see B2B and B2C sales opportunities as a way to support their business and fuel growth.

Old age

Defining old age in the mobile space in China is certainly challenging, as no WVAS provider is really strongly established in terms of users or revenues, and certainly not impervious to market changes.

• In terms of wisdom gained, working off-portal seems to be the strong trend, while efforts in traditional paid-for content such as ringtones, screensavers and games are seen as adding sail surface to a sinking ship.
• Most panelists are waiting for the market to validate new business models, supported by better networks and better pricing for data by operators.

See you in November for our next event!
Benjamin Joffe | +8* | Mobile Monday Beijing ]]> http://www.plus8star.com/2007/10/30/event-report-mobile-monday-the-mobile-ceo%e2%80%99s-way/feed/ 0 http://www.plus8star.com/2007/10/16/mobile-monday-beijing-sailing-in-turbulence-the-mobile-ceo%e2%80%99s-way-22-october/ http://www.plus8star.com/2007/10/16/mobile-monday-beijing-sailing-in-turbulence-the-mobile-ceo%e2%80%99s-way-22-october/#comments Wed, 17 Oct 2007 02:11:02 +0000 plus8star http://www.plus8star.com/?p=81
read more..]]> Operating a mobile business in China is not for the faint hearted. This has been repeatedly illustrated on the profiles of NASDAQ-listed value-added service providers during the past two years.

A heated debate is going on between the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) and telecom operators, but WVAS SPs often feel they have to face them both as primary and ’secondary’ regulators, and are left adrift in an increasingly tough sea of changes.

This session #15 of Mobile Monday Beijing on 22 October will look into how mobile CEOs cope with the situation in their day-to-day navigation, and define what is the essence of the CEO’s role:

• how to manage growth or scale back when new policies cut the wind,
• how to generate revenues,
• how to motivate and keep people on board,
• how to handle investors and partners.

:: Register ::
Participation fee: 100 rmb
(payment is at the door and includes light buffet)
:: Access map ::
:: Tell a friend ::
:: Who came last time ::

Attendance is limited to 150 participants so we recommend to register early. As usual, doors open at 7pm and we start sharp at 7.30pm.

We invited early stage and more mature companies to share their insights, offering a local and international perspective on China’s mobile market.

Marcus Xiang | CEO, PDX.cn

PDX.cn operates an independent mobile blogging and social networking community service. Marcus is also an activist for mobile internet and WVAS rights and has been working relentlessly to spread the idea of a healthy mobile internet and WVAS market growth hand-in-hand with operators via numerous interviews, columns and events. His most recent contribution is available on the SP Forum website (report, pictures).

Richard Robinson | CEO, Dada Asia

Dada is the #1 player in the dynamic Italian wireless market and a top player in Europe, the U.S. and globally in Direct to Consumer wireless entertainment. A seasoned mobile & Internet entrepreneur and executive with over a decade experience in Greater China, Richard joined Dada Asia in 2006 to kickstart operations in Asia Pacific with a footprint from China to New Zealand to India.

Alex Kummerman | CEO, ClicMobile | Founder, MobileMonday Geneva

Clicmobile is a Geneva based start-up company with an operational subsidiary in Paris providing the open media world with tools to run and build online communities. The company is now growing a development team in Beijing to start local operations. Alex has over 15 years of mobile telecommunication expertise and Clicmobile is his third start-up, he is also the founder of Mobile Monday in Geneva.