We’ve been working with China Mobile for several years on reducing network data volume and improving the consumer experience. Recently, the Bytemobile Customer Marketing Services team was able to help Jiangsu Mobile – the second largest of China Mobile’s provincial operators, with 30.2 million subscribers – with more than mobile internet solutions.

Jiangsu Mobile had deployed its breakthrough web browsing service for handsets - called Open-Surf and powered by our content adaptation technology. The operator was looking to accelerate the expansion of the service province-wide, so subscribers could access their favorite brands and websites on their existing WAP handsets.

While promoting the service through SMS, MMS and its website – www.js.chinamobile.com – Jiangsu Mobile was seeking alternative methods to illustrate the value of the new, innovative service, while demonstrating key features to entice younger consumers to use the service.

We worked closely with the Jiangsu Mobile marketing team to understand the local market, subscriber behavior and the operator’s core brand values. Following a thorough information exchange, we internalized these fundamentals to develop compelling promotional ideas while leveraging Bytemobile’s experience in deploying mobile internet services around the globe.

Once the market landscape was fully understood, we went to work, evaluating alternative media for the challenge. We chose video due to the ease of viral propagation through social media. After Jiangsu Mobile agreed, we quickly drafted a video script and storyboard, secured customer approval, and proceeded to manage production from start to finish.

Following the completion and acceptance of the video, the Jiangsu Mobile team has utilized it in a number of promotional campaigns across the province. The result? A satisfied customer with increased consumer awareness and a measurable rise in Open-Surf subscribers.

- Dan Fisher

3G TD-SCDMA network coverage is rolling out in China, and the country’s (and the world’s) largest operator, China Mobile Communications Corporation (CMCC), is opening a ‘Mobile Market’ application superstore for its products and services.

Details of these and other developments were discussed in a recent meeting between Lu Xiangdong, CMCC executive vice president; Hatim Tyabji, Bytemobile executive chairman; and other senior executives of both companies at CMCC headquarters in Beijing. Bytemobile and Alcatel Shanghai Bell (ASB) have been awarded Phase 1 of the CMCC Web Gateway project, which will enable open web browsing from mobile handsets on the operator’s TD-SCDMA network.

Mr. Lu indicated that TD-SCDMA coverage is now up to 230 cities, and 50 million subscribers are projected by 2011. CMCC will soon launch 36 different models of TD-SCDMA handsets into the market.

CMCC’s one-stop shopping outlet will showcase the mobile Internet for Chinese consumers with personalized services such as search, navigation, games, video, music, ringtones, and wallpapers, as well as mobile enterprise applications for Chinese corporations. In this context, Mr. Lu stressed the importance of localized R&D and recognized Bytemobile’s recent opening of a development center to serve the specific needs of the Chinese market.

As of March 31, 2009, CMCC reported a subscriber base of 477.2 million, having added 19.9 million new customers during the first quarter.

-Jaishree Subramania

I am pleased to announce two exciting new initiatives in Bytemobile Product Development. We believe that these initiatives will accelerate our momentum in China and advance our efforts to ‘green’ the mobile internet industry.

China Development Center
We have established our fifth development center – after Patras, Belfast, Champaign, and Mountain View – in Beijing. China is the world’s largest market for mobile services, and we are rapidly penetrating the provincial operating companies of China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom (see John Cole’s blog post on the China Mobile Web Gateway project). Given the growth of our customer base and the singular requirements of the market, it is only logical that China would be the next destination for the expansion of our global engineering team.

The new development center will focus initially on three areas:

• Customization of our products to meet local market requirements and support mobile devices used in China
• Localization of our product interfaces in Chinese languages
• Custom engineering to respond to customer requests with unique solutions

Our first priority is the adaptation of our products to local handsets. Therefore, our first engineer in China – who started last week – is focused on handset profiling and customization. Until now, we have performed this function in our handset laboratory in Patras. With the launch of our team in China, we will be more efficient and better able to meet local demand. We are also working closely with partners in the region to outsource parts of the process under the direction of the local team. As customer demand increases, we will ramp up the team to scale and manage the workload.

Our next priority will be custom solutions engineering in China. To date, we have performed this function in Patras and outsourced to key partners in Greece. The new center in Beijing will enable us to anticipate and respond to the local market and continue to drive our thought leadership throughout the region. We are actively recruiting solutions engineering candidates in the area and are also seeking candidates with a combination of global and local experience.

Green Network Platform
Greening the Mobile Internet and White Space Innovation are two strategic programs that we have launched in the last year. They intersect in a new research and development project designed to dramatically expand the capacity of the Unison Mobile Internet Platform and make a significant contribution to the sustainability of our customers’ network environments.

We launched the project – appropriately named ‘Fusion’ – on April 1, the day after general availability of the new Unison release. Our goal is to reduce our customers’ hardware requirements as they deploy and scale Bytemobile applications in their networks. The Unison platform is already the most scalable mobile internet gateway in the industry. However, Bytemobile has never rested on its laurels and isn’t about to start now. Rather than targeting incremental improvement, we aspire to the seemingly impossible: a ‘quantum leap’ increase in system capacity, which would yield a proportionate decrease in power, cooling and rack space requirements – and therefore in overall data delivery costs.

Because this is a white space innovation project, there are no limitations on methodology. We will evaluate technical solutions ranging from software changes to new operating systems to custom hardware.

Project Fusion will provide a useful model for white space innovation projects of the future. The ‘greening’ of the Unison platform will further enhance our strategic value to customers as they implement environmental responsibility in their network operations and service delivery.

Building a Great Company
Both the China Development Center and Project Fusion are ambitious undertakings. As such, they are consistent with Bytemobile’s history of global market and technological leadership. They also support our plans to continue building a great company that fundamentally changes the shape of its industry through innovation and localization.

-Chris Koopmans

Image use courtesy of www.flickr.com/photos/dongbin/3296818794/ under Creative Commons attribution license.

I am proud to announce that Bytemobile and Alcatel Shanghai Bell (ASB), our reseller partner in China, have been awarded Phase 1 of the China Mobile Communications Corporation (CMCC) Web Gateway project. Our Web Fidelity Suite content adaptation solution will be deployed at the national Web Gateway center in Nanjing to enable open web browsing from mobile handsets on CMCC’s 3G TD-SCDMA network.

CMCC is the world’s largest wireless network operator, with more than 470 million subscribers. The group’s operating companies cover 31 provinces in China and command a nearly 70% share of the mainland China mobile market. On January 7, 2009, the Chinese government issued 3G network licenses to CMCC as well as China Unicom and China Telecom.

Stepping Up the Competition
Adrian Hall’s blog post of April 10 – State of the Company – framed the significance of the CMCC win to Bytemobile in general terms:

Our global sales pipeline is significantly larger today than it has been in the company’s history – a formidable fact considering our 104 network deployments in 54 countries. The pipeline consists of a number of sizable deals that include multi-year commitments and leverage our entire product portfolio.

…we are competing more and more with traditional telecommunications industry giants such as Comverse, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks. We are winning against them because of our agility, our laser focus on customer needs, and the strength of our technological innovation, execution and support.

Our competition for the CMCC Phase 1 bid included Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Huawei, and ZTE. Huawei and ZTE are both Chinese infrastructure equipment providers with a strong presence in the China market.

As a trusted advisor to CMCC, we were able to build positive relationships with key decision-makers. Visits to China by Hatim Tyabji and other Bytemobile executives have been instrumental in securing the confidence of CMCC senior management.

Successful Trials
With our partner, ASB, we completed successful commercial trials of the Web Fidelity Suite at Jiangsu Mobile and Hubei Mobile, two of CMCC’s provincial operating companies. We then closed Jiangsu Mobile for the implementation of its 3G Web Gateway solution. This deal led to the formal inclusion of Bytemobile in CMCC’s approved vendor list for the nationwide roll-out.

An additional 5-10 CMCC provincial operators are expected to deploy 3G Web Gateway services in 2009. Phase 2 of the roll-out will target CMCC’s GPRS and EDGE network subscribers. Phase 3, scheduled for 2010 and beyond, will proceed to the remainder of the 31 CMCC operators.

Given our initial success, complacency is not an option. CMCC has selected the Ericsson and Huawei proposals as potential back-up solutions to ours. We must continue to execute and deliver results in order to remain the preferred supplier and realize the full potential of this opportunity.

Teamwork Across the Organization
Our winning bid at CMCC culminated a cross-functional team effort that exemplified the Bytemobile culture in action. Key contributors included:

The Beijing office of the Asia-Pacific team

• Li Xiaohe (Michael Li), Bytemobile China general manager
• Ada Hang
• Louisa Liu
• Kane Qiao
• Frank Su
• Johnson Wang
• Wayne Wang
• Anna Zeng
• Jerry Zhang

The Mountain View and Patras engineering and product management teams

• Chris Koopmans
• Joel Brand
• Kannan Parthasarathy
• Nick Stavrakos
• Konstantinos Tsolakas
• George Tsolis
• Paris Zafiris

Worldwide Customer Support

• Warren Simpson
• Tony Gambacorta
• Bill Hamlin

I would like to extend my sincere personal thanks to all of these individuals for their efforts.

Sharing the Excitement
In closing, I would like to share my feedback to the China team:

Michael,

Congratulations to you and the entire Bytemobile China team and to ASB. This was indeed a very challenging and hard fought win and the effort put forth by all of you was tremendous. I am confident that this win marks the launch of many great successes for Bytemobile in China. Now we must work even harder to ensure that we capitalize on this opportunity and move quickly to keep our competitive advantage. You know that the support of the entire company is behind you, your team, and our partner.

I would like to offer my personal thanks to Chris [Koopmans] and his team as well. Their support has been exemplary.

John

The China Mobile Web Gateway win is an exciting milestone for Bytemobile and for the Asia-Pacific Region.

-John Cole