In the first half of 2007, the number of registered personal IM accounts in China topped 700 million, while the number of actual users exceeded 126 million, accounting for over 90% of the total number of netizens in the country. China has become the most developed personal IM market in the world. The market value of IM users in the country now tops the world. CCID Consulting forecasts that in the next few years China's personal IM market will enter a period of slow but stable growth. The formation of an oligarch market will further raise the entry threshold. Therefore, China's IM market will see a change in current trends in the future.
As the personal application field is gradually becoming more saturated, opening of new markets has become a necessary trend of IM development. The mobile Internet has naturally become a new business source for service providers. Currently, China Mobile has over 20 million users, thus a solid foundation for growth. China Mobile and China Unicom have seized the opportunity and joined in market competition.
In 2007, mobile IM products headed by Fetion and UM formally entered the market. In the next few years, China's mobile IM market will grow rapidly. The number of mobile IM users is expected to increase to 40 million at the end of the year from 16 million at the beginning of the year. The market will showcase features of diversified products, deepening cooperation and expanding value. The market is currently controlled by operators, hence new IM firms will find it difficult to enter the market.
Relatively speaking, enterprise IM applications will be the hotbed for new firms to grow in. There is a low rate of penetration of IM products among enterprises in China. International giants and domestic newcomers are at the same starting point. In addition, enterprise IM is very different from the 2 major markets of personal IM and mobile IM. Its penetration into enterprises will not have much involvement with other market giants, thus having a relatively stable growth environment. But in order to effectively serve enterprises, it has rather high technical barriers.
Review of hotspot events in China's IM market in the first half of 2007:
- In earl 2007, China Telecom, China Unicom and China Netcom successively put their mobile IM products into commercial use.
- In 2007, Q1, Tencent had almost 600 million registered users, with 250 million active accounts.
- In May 2007, PICA and MSN jointly expanded the mobile IM market.
- In July 2007, Dianji introduced enterprise versions of products to directly compete with the enterprise IM market, with IBM, Tencent and Microsoft.
