Page 157 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

scribers hooked on the basic text messaging service and then sign them up for
paid premium services such as backing up address books online, astrology
charts, and weather updates. Then he plans to get advertising revenues from
marketers who want to reach PingCo customers: Most are males between the
ages of 18 and 25, but with a monthly income of only $266. That could be a
hard sell.
One plus is that PingCo can target ads to specific groups of subscribers.
PingCo’s nifty software analyzes messages for keywords in the content. Then
PingCo pushes ads to users that match their interests according to the
keywords (this is similar to the methodology used by Google’s AdSense
program). If a subscriber makes a purchase from the advertisers, PingCo splits
the revenue with the promoter.
Say I want to find a place to stay on Hainan Island, the new Hawaii-like
resort area in southern China. The word resort is picked up as a keyword in
my message to a friend. Then my cell phone number is turned over to a
marketer pushing travel promotions to that destination.
This strikes me as an invasion of privacy. But Wang emphasizes that
PingCo gets permission from subscribers, winning them over with small
incentives such as free access to mobile games before turning over their phone
numbers to marketers. For every name PingCo recruits, it receives 25 cents
from the marketer. Internet users have accepted online ads, but wouldn’t
unsolicited ads be a major nuisance on cell phones? Still, free SMS is cool
enough that young Chinese don’t much care.
How long before free SMS and the mobile Internet take off in the United
States? Perhaps not too long, judging from the way innovation is being
sparked from the most unexpected sources and traveling across time zones.
PingCo doesn’t have plans to go global, but it could someday. If PingCo can
continue to one-up China Mobile, it will be because it has some winning
attributes: good leadership, innovative service, and great timing.
Our next entrepreneur has his own leading-edge technology: a new
browser for the Web that makes Internet Explorer look dated. And talk about
lucky: This software developer was mentored by the guy who unearthed
Skype and has the blessing of a whole community of software developers who
are working with him for free. Plus, he has a huge fan club of more than 100
million users worldwide who love his software. It is the first Chinese tech-
nology to break through the country’s borders and register globally.

PingCo—Ping Me, Please 131