Analyst Angle: The emerging mobile worker opportunity in China

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly feature, Analyst Angle. We’ve collected a group of the industry’s leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry. In the coming weeks look for columns from Current Analysis’ Avi Greengart, Jupiter Research’s Julie Ask and more.
As we all head off the San Francisco for the annual CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment knees-up, I was tempted to write something about the mobile enterprise market, some cool new device or service, or the latest video/multimedia/social networking/music trend. Instead, here is something to take your mind off of all those vendors, booths, Starbucks shots and parties.
As some of you may know, we have recently completed primary research of mobile workers in China. The logistics of surveying this segment in the Chinese market are somewhat challenging (the survey was translated and fielded in three languages) but the results are interesting.
Before looking specifically at mobile workers, a few interesting stats on the Chinese population and economy:
–The Chinese government’s reported goal is to quadruple the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020 and more than double the per capita GDP. China currently ranks 4th in GDP.
–China’s growth rate is likely to be low; China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission has stated that it will attempt to keep its mainland population below 1.37 billion by 2011.
–According to a February 2007 report from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), 56% of China’s population lives in rural areas. Some sources suggest, as do the NBS’ year 2000 census data, that the official urban population figures actually include millions of residents of small towns which are quite far from big cities. Therefore, the actual rural percentage is potentially as high as 75% to 80%.
–The Chinese population is almost evenly divided between male and female citizens. According to the Chinese government, “119 boys are born for every 100 girls. … About 40 million men may live as frustrated bachelors by 2020.”
–China’s entire workforce in 2007 is more than double the size of the United States’ entire population, with approximately 798 million people employed.
Mobile workers obviously are a subset of the overall working population. In the U.S., mobile workers represent approximately 51% of the overall workforce-the U.S. has reached, in iGR’s opinion, saturation in terms of the number of mobile workers-if the individual’s job function is not already mobile, it probably will never be.
But in China, mobile workers are just 17% of the working population and China’s mobile workforce will grow-and grow rapidly. This growth is in large part fueled by job creation but also by the fact that currently fixed-location jobs will become mobile.
Other interesting stats from the survey of mobile works in China include:
–Two thirds of the respondents said they were mobile 2 days per week or less.
–One quarter of respondents work in the manufacturing sector.
–Just over one third of respondents said use feature phones; 71% use smartphones. There is some overlap in the percentages as some of the respondents use multiple devices.
–Over four-fifths said that their smartphone serves as both their business and personal mobile phone
–Nearly half of the smartphone users said that they use a 3G network.
–The most commonly used applications were: Web-based email, Web browsing, texting, contacts and picture/photo messaging.
Clearly, the mobile workers in China use smartphones, 3G services and various applications just as their counterparts in the U.S. do. The main difference between the two markets is the percentage of mobile workers as a whole. But due to the large population, the Chinese mobile worker segment is already nearly four times the size of the U.S. equivalent. And the strong future growth rate means that the number of Chinese mobile workers will soon exceed not only the total number of mobile subscribers in the U.S. but also the entire U.S. population.
This segment represents a significant opportunity for the vendors offering solutions to mobile workers: wireless modem and PC card OEMs, mobile device manufacturers, distributors, software developers, systems integrators et al. Obviously, conducting business in China presents its own challenges but the size of the opportunity cannot be ignored.
Questions or comments about this column? Please e-mail Iain at iain@igr-inc.com or RCR Wireless News at rcrwebhelp@crain.com.