Page 149 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

CHAPTER TEN

Move over, Skype. Here comes PingCo, which brings chatting, dating, and game playing to
the mobile phone in a David-versus-Goliath battle with China’s Ma Bell. CEO Charles Wang
has made PingCo such a phenomenon that “ping me” now means “send me a message” in
a country where the mobile Internet is as cool as Hotmail once was in the United States.

PingCo—
Ping Me, Please

n Beijing, sending short messages
Iby mobile phone is an addiction. I
join in with my own Chinese mobile
phone and prepaid service card.
Getting set up takes an afternoon with
the help of my Beijing office assistant,
Summer. We go to a nearby electronics
store, Gome, a dusty, tired-looking
version of Circuit City. Inside, several
counters of cheap-looking Chinese
phones are on display under dim fluo-
rescent lights. I pass them up in favor
of a sleek Nokia model made in China. I head for one of the cheerless clerks
standing behind the glass counters. There’s not one customer in sight; it should
be a breeze.
An hour of behind-the-scenes paperwork later, I pay for it with my Mas-
terCard and obtain an official government-stamped receipt. My new Nokia
doesn’t come cheap at $155. How can a Beijing worker with an average
salary of about $500 a month afford a decent cell phone? That’s easy. Toting
the latest and niftiest mobile phone is a much bigger deal than owning a car,
a laptop, or a TV.

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Copyright © 2008 by Rebecca A. Fannin. Click here for terms of use.