BEIJING-China mobile handset users sent close to 6 billion short message service (SMS) messages and more than 1 million multimedia message service (MMS) messages during the week-long Chinese New Year celebrations from 1-7 February. Sending short messages has become the primary way for young people to send their season’s greetings, with 35 percent of China’s mobile-phone users sending SMSs during the lunar new-year period.
The adoption of MMS is hampered by the higher cost of MMS-enabled phones and the limited multimedia content available on local Web sites.
Subscribers of China Unicom sent altogether a little more than 1 billion messages, bringing the company revenues of 104 million yuan (US$12.56 million).
China’s two mobile operators registered 80 billion SMSs last year, an increase of 400 percent over 2001.
But the amount of unsolicited advertisements and fraudulent messages is increasing to such an extent that some experts are calling for a stricter regulation of the market. Under the current regulations, only administrative punishments may be applied, although persons sending large numbers of sexually explicit messages may be accused of distributing pornographic articles.
