Unicom's Value-added Marketing Strategies

The increasing popularity of wireless-telecom enables cellphone users to communicate with others freely at any time and any place. With the rapid development of telecommunication technology, cellphone users have more demands in aspect of information communication besides the basic demand of telephone conversation. The presence of point-to-point text message and the mode of China Mobile dream-net makes cellphone users step into an era of value-added services. The intra encouragement and support between value-added services and the variety of customer demands accelerates the social progress and value-added service development.The value-added services of China have developed from zero to a eye-catching sunrise industry in a short period of five years. The profit from value-added service are making up an ever bigger percentage of the total profit of wireless-telecom services, becoming the major factor of increasing the operator's ARPU and service income. Statistics shows that the cellphone coverage has surpassed 60% in big cities like Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai. Accordingly, value-added service profit is increasing, accounting for as high as 15% of the total income and to about 30% by the year 2010 according to experts' prediction.(numbers taken form the on-line industry research report)Though value-added services are increasing the most rapidly and is the most promising sector of all the wireless-telecom services, we should not be blindly optimistic. The operator is faced with the problem of the year-by-year decreasing of ARPU, and it is common that the number of the users increases while the profit doesn't. In the fierce market competition, it is of vital importance for China Unicom to know well the value-added service market environment and its development characteristics, so that they can have a sensible localization of the value-added services and a proper arrangement of the value-added service hierarchy. By integrating the recourses on the basis of the above knowledge, China Unicom can enlarge the market and promote the profit percentage of the value-added service effectively to realize a healthy and effective promotion of the value-added services.The enormous market potential of the value-added services is both challenge and...