China Mobile Ltd. (sehk:0941 and NYSE), the nation's biggest mobile phone operator, saw the number of users of the GoTone Unity Package exceed 21.2 million as at November 12 this year.
It launched the service on May 17 this year, which is to say during the less than six months, it witnessed the number of users of the service rise over 117,000 per day on average. It is a tough job for mobile phone operators to attract users amid fiercer competition in the Chinese market nowadays and both the markdown and charging structure adjustments the company launched in the GoTone package helped it a lot raise the number of users. However according to industry observers, instead of lowered charging standard and adjusted charging structure, the open consumption mode is quite luring to users. Available statistics show that satisfaction of over 90 percent of the users enhances and up to 93.7 percent of the users are willing to recommend the service to relatives and friends.
The company said on May 17 that it lowered the charging standard of the GoTone package. In detail, the charge on roaming, long-distance calls and in-city calls was the same, apart from free answering nationwide. The package, featuring lowered charging standard, free answering nationwide, and simple charging structure, can well satisfy the demand of users. Besides, the service makes it easy for users to get known how much he or she consumes and on what services he or she spends the money.
London-based market research firm Ovum forecasted that the global mobile data business revenue would reach USD 1 trillion by 2015, up 10 percent from USD 906.82 billion in 2010. While, the global mobile voice business revenue would hit USD 607.91 billion, down 8.4 percent from USD 663.36 billion. Currently, China's mobile data business flow enjoys an annual growth of more than 200 percent and the booming development of the mobile Internet directly causes consumers' demand for data flow to rise sharply. Under such an environment, telecom operators in it should get known the trend and go with it through adjusting charging structure so as to well satisfy and release consumers' demand.
China Mobile saw operating revenue reach CNY 250.08 billion in the first half of this year, up 8.8 percent year on year. The EBIDA amounted to about CNY 124.15 billion, up 6.5 percent. The number of users hit over 610 million as at June 30, of which about 33 million ones were achieved from January to June.