By Qi Hongming
At the Xizhimen operating office of China Mobile, Mr. Guo paid RMB1, 500 yuan as the prepaid communication fee and acquired a 3G mobile phone, tailored by China Mobile, with the brand of Samsung S3930C. "A mobile phone with the same model will sell at the price of RMB2, 160 yuan in a mobile phone store. It is quite expensive. But now, the mobile phone may belong to me as long as I consume enough talk fees up to RMB2, 600 yuan within a year. As a salesman, it is natural for me to phone excessively, as a result, such a promotion is right fit for me, which equals to exchanging the talk fee for a mobile phone." Mr. Guo told the reporter gladly.
The tailored mobile phone received by Mr. Guo has a slight difference with those with the same model and sold in the market. The menu and pre-loaded services of the mobile phone have also been tailored, besides the operator's indication has been printed on the body and outer packaging of the mobile phone. With China's mobile communication going into the 3G era, communication operators are capable of providing about one thousand digital value-added services to their clients. Every user would has their own preferences, while most of them are likely at a loss facing diversiform facilities, in this case, the operators would like to select firstly a few of extractive facilities and have them tailored to the mobile phones, which make users easy to use.
At the operating office, over twenty types of tailored mobile phones launched by China Mobile are priced varying from RMB tens of hundred yuan to tens of thousand yuan, and among which most adopts the mode of exchanging prepaid communication fee for a mobile phone. At the operating office, users come and seek advice on tailored mobile phone services in an endless stream. A counter operator said that "Such tailored cell phones have been selling well recently, because the company has given great effort to the propagation and preparation, together with the fact that users can simply access to 3G network only by exchanging a 3G mobile phone without changing the phone number and SIM card. Meanwhile, compared with 2G mobile phone, tailored 3G mobile phone is provided with more advantage and therefore is popular even more".
While communication operators marching into the 3G mobile terminals on a large scale, the mobiles are also salable on the Internet. At Qianmen Gome Electric Appliance in Beijing, an undergraduate surnamed Xiao Wang, left the shopping mall silently after strolling for a while. She expressed the reason why she leaves at the doorway of the mall, "My classmates usually make a decision after they have collected related information and looked through the prices, test and appraise and comments posted by net friends on the Internet, and then come to the shopping mall to look over the material object. Today I want to return and buy a mobile via a net shop, since I still find the prices offered on the net shops are cheaper after I strolled in the shopping mall. "
Through observing the prices of some hot-selling mobile phones on shopping websites and making a comparison with the retail prices in a mobile phone sales market, it can be found that the mobile phone prices on most shopping websites are lower than the prices in mobile phone sales markets, and only the prices of some promoted mobile phones in sales markets are close to the prices on shopping websites.
As understood, although those mobile phone manufacturers like Nokia, Motorola and Haier have opened online sales business, they are not provided with strong competition advantage and have small sales volume because their online sales price is not differentiated very much with the one in mobile phone sales markets. However, the individual dealers in virtue of the third party payment platform launched by www.taobao.com and www.eachnet.com have constituted a major force of online mobile phone sale. In accordance with the report issued by www.taobao.com, over 10 million sets of mobile phones were sold out in www.taobao.com and the daily sales volume is above 20,000 this year. Additionally, www.360buy.com and www.newegg.com.cn that specialized in selling 3C products online also have a marvelous mobile phone sales volume. In allusion to such a situation, a salesman of www.360buy.com expressed that, "Compared with traditional sales modes, online sale can save store rental and personnel expense with an unmatched cost advantage that is also suitable on mobile phone sale."
With the increasingly diversification of mobile phone sales channels, the new sales channels represented as mobile phone customization and online shopping are occupying more and more market shares. Insiders believes that under the control of mobile phone manufacturers, the profit of substantial chain stores is very small, and it is very possible that the growing-up new shopping channels of the mobile phone market will become the main channels in the future.
