Tom Online looks to improve
By Liu Baijia (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-03-26 08:44

Chinese wireless Internet service provider Tom Online is seeking to improve its performance in this quarter after slow down.

"Interactive voice response (IVR), wireless application protocol, and ringback tone will be three pillars for the company this year," said company CEO Wang Leilei.

He said in an interview in Beijing on Monday the slowdown of Tom Online's businesses had stabilized in the fourth quarter over the previous quarters and the momentum is likely to continue in this quarter.

The Hong Kong Growth Enterprise Market and NASDAQ-listed company saw its revenues in the fourth quarter grow by 13 per cent to US$31.95 million over the third quarter. The quarter-on-quarter growth rates were 1.6 per cent and 17 per cent respectively in the second and third quarters.

Wang said the growth will mainly come from voice-based IVR, personalized mobile ringtone downloads, and wireless Internet surfing and downloading WAP, which contributed 65 per cent of Tom Online's revenues in the past quarter.

While many people believe the traditional text messaging service known as SMS will keep declining , Wang said it is "just a good opportunity."

"When SMS revenues of other companies are falling, ours will grow and more importantly we will use this platform to promote our new services," he said.

He said the fall-out after the launch of the mobile information service centre (MISC) platform by the country's dominant mobile operator China Mobile on SMS was almost over, while that on multimedia messaging service (MMS) is still under way.

The MISC platform has a tighter control on the contents and bills of wireless value-added services provided by companies like Tom Online with an aim to curb cheats and pornographic contents, which has led to a big drop of revenues of service providers.

Tom Online, controlled by Asia's richest businessman Li Ka-shing and known for its aggressiveness in acquisitions, will not seek to buy mobile service providers this year, but instead will focus on entertainment and sports content providers.

Wang hoped the resources in entertainment and sports can help attract more Internet users to use wireless services.

Tom Online, which provides mobile messaging services to the sports channel of China Central TV and some channels of Beijing TV, will sign another major TV channel in China to promote its wireless services.

It also partnered with the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to enable its mobile subscribers to name a star in Chinese for one year if they subscribe to Tom Online's Stellar Paradise services for three months.

Tom Online will use the resources of its newly-acquired Indiagames, an Indian mobile game developer, to develop overseas markets.

Wang said Indiagames has good co-operations with mobile carriers and distributors in Europe and the United States, so Tom Online will use that advantage to distribute picture and ringtone downloads and WAP services to Chinese users in those countries.

But overseas business will not have significant contribution to the company's financial performance this year.

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