Ouch! China Mobile’s (Messy) Mobile Market(App Store Clone) Stumbling Out of Gate
China Mobile rolled out its version of app store Mobile Market(mmarket) on Aug. 17th, 2009 and is allowing free downloads of apps till September 1st, 2009. Well, it hasn’t been a pleasant launch.
On the surface, Mobile Market supports a wide range of cell phones like the up-and-coming OMS(Android)-based OPhones, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motoloa, LG, Lenovo, Dopod(HTC brand in China), and Dell(note: there’s no section for Android phones on Mobile Market). Don’t get too excited. Most of phones don’t really support Mobile Market’s phone clients. So a user would need to download applications to computers first, then transfer them to phones via a data cable(way to easy to get apps pirated). Only a small set of high-end smartphones( eg: Lenovo O1, Nokia N95, N97) can support Mobile Market client. That means even though China Mobile has 495 million of mobile subscribers, only a very tiny set of them can actually use Mobile Market now. For example, only 2 OPhones are being sold on the market: Philips V808(3980RMB), and Dopod A6188(4500RMB). The much-anticipated Lenovo O1 should be launched in next month. These phones are all fairly expensive though. China Mobile will need to subsidize the phone purchase to stimulate interests and usages in Mobile Market(eg: buy the phone for 4000RMB, get 15000RMB credit for your bill)
Enough with the hardware side. Let’s see how Mobile Market takes a lesson from Apple’s App Store. Here are the differences and similarities:
- has only about 1000 apps for all phone models. about 51 apps for OPhones. So there’s really no comparison here.
- integrated billing with China Mobile.
- allows users to try out apps for a day. If they don’t like it, they can uninstall without paying.
- right now, developers can charge a flat fee for applications. In the future, developers can charge by monthly fee, or by usage fee( eg: 3RMB per 100 uses ). Users can pick whichever method they like.
- no all-you-can-eat data plan. However, China Mobile says there’s no data charge for using Mobile Market(including browsing apps & downloading apps using the phone client) for NOW. Because this sounds too good to be true given China Mobile’s past behaviors, lots of skeptics out there are questioning how China Mobile can sustain such a model.
- both give 70% of revenue to developers and take the rest 30% home.
- both have an approval process for apps. Reading to the Mobile Market developer forum and looking at apps waiting to be tested and approved, many apps have been sitting idle not being approved.
- one last very important point: Mobile Market doesn’t have anti-piracy mechanism. Once a user gets your app out of a phone, he can distribute and let others to use freely! So all the fancy dream of making money just goes out of window completely. China Mobile better gets its act together. Otherwise, no one will want to develop apps for Mobile Market. So many developers get on iPhone because they can or at least seem to be able to make money. Apple makes it fairly hard to pirate iPhone apps.
If you are a developer outside of China and dream about tapping the huge subscriber base of China Mobile, keep dreaming because you can’t do it without a local partner. Mobile Market requires you to have a China issued ID or passport, or have a company presence in China.
China Mobile rushed out Mobile Market because it wants to get on offense first against China Unicom who’s going to distribute Eunuch(Wi-Fi less) iPhone in China in October. But the early result of Mobile Market launch is not good at all because it’s not really ready for prime time. There are not enough phones supporting Mobile Market, not enough apps, no safe ways for developers to protect their apps from being pirated. There are not enough buzz around Mobile Market. Many users have no ideas about it. Supposely, Chinese mobile market is the biggest hope of Android and any handset makers that want to compete with iPhone. But too many bad signs now. A total mess.
Want to learn more about the basis about China mobile market, check out our recent presentation.
