China has become the biggest country in the production and sales of mobile phone in the world.

There will be more than 400 million phone users this year with popularity rate of over 30 per cent.

Beijing, Zhejiang, Chongqing and Guangdong offer mobile phone newspaper

Text message economy becomes a new spot of light for IT media.

I feel that I cannot do without a mobile phone

"Nowadays, one can lose his purse. However, losing a cell phone will make one's life seem to be changed", said a professor tastily. Mobile phone has become indispensable "necessaries" for the life of ordinary people from untouchable "luxuries" in the past, after undergoing nearly 10 years of development since the mid-1990s. Mobile phone can be seen everywhere, from rampant mobile phone ads on TV to the phone callers on the street, and from mobile phone stalls of department stores to street handheld stores. When interviewed, a resident in Beijing said, "Handheld phone has brought a great convenience to daily life. I feel that I cannot be separated from it", according to the overseas edition of People Daily on September 9.

According to the latest statistics released by the Ministry of Information Industry, the number of cell phone users in China reached 334 million in 2004, an increase of 65 million subscribers over 2003. By now, the domestic cell phone output has reached 230 million, making China the largest mobile phone production and consuming market in the world. It is forecasted that in 2005, the number of cell phone subscribers will hopefully come up to 402 million with popularity rate accounting for more than 30 per cent.

Media with "body temperature"

With the mobile phone's popularization and the continuous network and science innovations, some new technologies, including multimedia message and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) have been applied in a wide range. As a result, mobile phone has been endowed with new functions such as Internet browsing, commercial information transmission and newspaper reading. There appears handheld phone's access to traditional media. Since July 18, 2004 when China Women launched the first mobile phone newspaper "China Women - Multimedia Message Page" in the country, some big newspaper agencies in Beijing, Guangzhou, Zhejiang and Chongqing have launched mobile phone newspaper one after another in a year's time.

With the incessant enhancement of media tendency, some experts have brought up a notion that mobile phone has been acknowledged as the "fifth media" after newspaper, radio, television and the Internet. Chen Gang, professor with the College of Journalism and Communication, Peking University, believes that mobile phone enjoys matchless advantages than any other media, an only kind of media with "body temperature".

As for the wording of the "fifth media", there is a still remaining dispute. But, mobile phone is very popular among people owning to some peculiarities superior over other media, such as the advantages of being portable, mobile and instant over other media based on advanced technologies and strong network, and features, including diversified conveying contents, fast transmitting speed and enjoying popularity.

However, "at present, handheld phone targets telecommunications trade, lacking original contents, sound interview and editing, and business management system that media should have in a real sense. The contents mainly depend on traditional media without deepening report, in addition to technical restrictions. So mobile phone media cannot be counted as true media", said the professor.

Yao Zejin, dean of the news-teaching office with China University of Political Science and Law, said, "Real 'fifth media' should be new media combining network and TV functions. Although being more popular than computers, interactive than newspaper, portable than TV and more colorful than radio, the phone media are far away from being real and independent media. The "ifth media" are only at the initial stage.

Text message business increases by more than 200 times

As an important tool for the life of modern people, mobile phone has brought more deepening influence to and changed people's life in its ceaseless process of popularity and enriched functions. The most impact and change are on the traditional conversing mode.

Xiong Dengyu, vice president with the School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University believes that mobile phone is in face of a way of life with an individual person at the center. The modern society presents a gradually spreading tendency, and in the silent expansion, cell phone has changed our life.

Text message has contributed much to the change. With the acceleration of the pace of human life, the convenient and fast communicating mode of text message has brought along a breakthrough to the traditional way of exchanges such as face-to-face and epistolary exchanges. Because of this, text message is popular among people, especially the young.

The Ministry of Information Industry's statistics show that in 2004, the number of mobile phone text messages reached 217.76 billion, an increase of 58.8 over the same period of the previous year. In the five years since May 17, 2000 when the first text message was sent successfully, the transmitting volume increased by 217 times over the past five years. .

While mobile phone brings convenience to people's exchanges, it also seems to make interpersonal exchanges tend to "networking" and "individualization". Mobile phone causes people to be alienated from each other. "A short message simply replaces the thinking and waiting in the past", said Liu Lifeng, market manager with the global system for mobile communications of China Mobile.

Next year there will be nearly 1000 billion text messages

According to the statistics released by the Ministry of Information Industry, the cell phone output in China accounted for about 35.1 per cent of the world's total in 2004, and China has become the largest handheld phone production and consuming country in the world. The enormous market contains immense economic potentiality.

The rapid development of cell phone has benefited from the functions of receiving and sending text messages, which has brought about a new economic pattern - "text message economy". Nowadays, all big radio and TV media have launched text message interactive business and there comes a network "text message mania".

"Text message economy" has turned to be a very important spot of light of economy for IT and information industries and news media. The text message turnover for "Super Voice Girl" program of Hunan Satellite TV has account for about half of its total income in 2005. As a result, Chen Fen, Zhejiang producer with the program deemed, "So far, most of China's TV stations have not taken the value-added text message services as a part of their important business. But, with the arrival of 3G and new media, the interactive entertainment business will be more important for radio and TV industries". According to the data released by the Ministry of Information Industry, by 2006, the delivery volume of text messages for China Mobile will reach 950 billion.

With the repeated development of cell phone technologies, there will be more phone products with functions of games, Internet and TV, based on telecommunications and text-message receiving and sending cell phones. And a growing economic industrial chain centered on mobile phone is taking shape. With the maturity of cell phone technologies, the "fifth media" tendency will be continuously strengthened, and handheld phone will help improve the further development of information industry. "Cell phone will be combined with the functions of service, news, entertainment and economy. There will be a bright future for the emerging economic industries supporting mobile phone", said Professor Yao Zejin.

By People's Daily Online