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China Mobile fee change to hurt content providers

(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-07-10 09:21
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China Mobile, China's biggest mobile carrier, has changed its fee policies for third-party content providers, a move that could severely hit the revenues of those firms, a content provider said on Friday.

China Mobile fee change to hurt content providers
A Chinese woman talks on her mobile phone outside a China Mobile office in Beijing, the country's biggest mobile carrier, has changed its fee policies for third-party content providers. [Reuters]

The changes are expected to hammer the shares of a number of Nasdaq-listed companies that count on mobile content as one of their main revenue sources, including Tom Online, Sina Corp., Linktone Ltd. and Sohu.com Inc., analysts said on Friday.

Details were sketchy, but changes included one-month free trials, said Tom Online Inc., one of several mobile content providers that had been told about the policy adjustments on Friday.

"Although Tom Online is currently in the process of making a detailed assessment of the potential impact of these new policies on the company's wireless Internet business, it believes the impact will be negative and significant," Tom Online said in a statement.

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