Finnish handset-maker Nokia has teamed up with education company Pearson in an effort to teach Chinese consumers English via their mobile phones. Both companies agreed on forming a joint venture dubbed Beijing Mobiledu Technologies.

The step is to "accelerate" the roll-out of Mobiledu, a WAP-based "education service" which Nokia developed for the Chinese market back in 2007. Owners of Nokia handsets can use the service through an app which comes preinstalled, or can download the app through various channels. According to the press release, Mobiledu has 20 million subscribers, of which 1.5 million customers use the service on a monthly basis.

A question being asked is whether the new joint venture will make any cash for Nokia in the next few weeks and months or even fail, as China Mobile has stopped billing its subscribers for WAP services and has stopped paying providers offering WAP content. Chinese web portal Sohu.com's wireless revenue took a dip because of this problem, and KongZhong had to issue a warning back on 10 December.

China Mobile is currently working on implementing more consumer-friendly ways of subscribing to services, such as additional notices and notices and more specific short code subscription text messages. Kongzhong said late last month Great Leader's moves to remove smut and stuff which got by the censors office from mobile phones will impact revenue in the current quarter, shrinking it by 20 percent - 25 percent.

It is rather unimaginable, however, that Mobiledu will be affected in any uncomfortable way, as preinstalled Nokia services are bound to be known to China Mobile, which after all sells Nokia handsets to its subscribers, with apps.

Source:techeye