Mobile phone newspapers exhibit traditional media news to users through the mobile phone platform. There are mainly 4 ways to realize mobile phone newspapers: MMS platform-based, WAP browsing-based, client-based and 3G network platform-based mobile phone newspapers. Currently, the mobile phone newspapers published by China Mobile and China Unicom are mainly through MMS platform-based subscriptions for reading news, supplemented by WAP browsing. In addition, the 2 mobile operators are also promoting client-based mobile phone newspapers, mainly for business customers with smart mobile phone.
In 2007, China Mobile and China Unicom have both made mobile phone newspaper services a key business for development. China Mobile strives to achieve the goal of attracting 10 million users by the end of the year. On the surface, mobile phone newspaper services develop very fast. But such services are still in the stage of introduction into the market. Many
problems still need to be solved.
Firstly, compared with traditional media, which are masses-oriented, mobile phones as a kind of media are more personalized. However, mobile phone newspapers still lack enough personalized content. Currently, publishers make relatively little input into content for mobile phone newspapers. They basically stick to the collected and edited contents for traditional newspapers. This can hardly adapt to users' diversified needs. What is worth noting is that various newspaper publishers are currently starting to seek breakthroughs in content development to meet different users' needs. For example, they have set up such columns as "Comprehensive Coverage", "News", "Finance and Economy" and "Sports". But this is far from enough.
The information model for mobile phone newspapers should be based on multimedia. In addition to the basic forms of information in text and pictures as in traditional newspapers, mobile phone newspapers should also have multimedia content that integrate audio, video, games, entertainment and interaction into one body. In addition, as user and channel resources are controlled by mobile operators, there are certain communication obstacles between newspaper publishers and users. It is not possible to fully tap user demand. To a certain extent, this also affects the audience group-oriented development of mobile phone newspapers.
Secondly, limitations of mobile phone terminals also affect user experiences. As a media platform, mobile phone offers such advantages as interaction, timeliness and multimedia. But it also suffers such shortcomings as having a small screen and limited information volume. Small screens have a major impact on users' reading habits. They need to turn pages from time to time. Mobile phone newspapers cannot rival traditional newspapers in terms of ease-of-use. This requires emphasis on short and compact information when preparing content for mobile phone newspapers.
In addition, as color-screen mobile phones are widely used today, MMS subscription should be the main means for mobile phone newspapers to be greatly promoted by mobile operators. WAP browsing can serve as a supplementary means. But due to limited MMS capacity, which is usually between 50K and 100K, it is not possible to store large amounts of information. Therefore, MMS is only a transitional technology for mobile phone newspapers. In the future, mainstream mobile phone newspapers will be based on the 3G website platform.
Finally, profit means are relatively monolithic and need improvement. By scope, mobile phone newspapers can be divided into nationwide and local mobile phone newspapers. Participants in nationwide mobile phone newspapers consist of newspaper publishers, mobile operators and SPs, while the main participants in local mobile phone newspapers are newspaper publishers and mobile operators.
The two sides cooperate directly. The revenue sources mainly include the monthly all-inclusive fee of 5-15 Yuan and the WAP website browsing fee. Compared with traditional newspapers, mobile phone newspapers lack advertising as a means of profit. Because the mobile phone is a highly personalized media with reading limitations, how to balance advertisements and content is very vital. There is a need to avoid overloading mobile phone newspapers with excessive and boring advertisements.
