China Telecom, one of the Big Three integrated telecom operators in the country, has decided to set up a mobile reading base in Zhejiang Province, eastern China, expanding its presence to the fast-growing mobile reading market.

The Beijing-based company plans to make as many as 1,000 mobile phone applications available to users on its 3G mobile community platform, of which 30 or so developed by itself.

"Setting up the mobile phone-powered reading base is just a beginning, the company will strive to diversify the content of the reading materials in the future," said an executive for China Telecom. Looking ahead, it will work together with other companies to introduce 500 categories of mobile phone games, 200 Internet websites, and 200 service provider (SP) applications.

"The mainstream vehicle for mobile reading is expected to shift to multimedia products from the current text version in the long run, as the number of 3G terminals climbs and the functions of multimedia mounts," predicted the China Telecom executive.

The China Telecom 3G mobile service arrays are designed to cater for mobile game and mobile book users across the country, an effective strategy to ramp up the traffic for the company, said Cao Ming (transliterated), vice president for wireless Internet portal 3g.cn, noting that the mobile game and mobile book fans-targeting penetration model will bring tens of millions of users gradually.

In a bid to get prepared for the inroad in the mobile reading market, China Telecom launched a video and information operating center in Shanghai earlier on November 12, 2009, putting its sparkling eSurfing video & information platform into operation. China's mobile reading market size is expected to hit CNY 3 billion in 2009, rushing to CN 4.6 billion in 2010 and breaking the CNY 10 billion mark in 2013, predicted Iimedia.cn, an online media market researcher in China, in a report earlier.

China Telecom saw the number of its active users for mobile movie and television account for 74% of the total by this September, pushing the traffic for live broadcast up 87% in the August-September period, according to an executive for China Telecom Guangdong product R&D center.

In addition, China Telecom is trying to roll out high-end 3G mobile phones to build up a high-end user base, disclosed people familiar with the matter. The telecom operator has included popular CDMA-EVDO mobile phones such as Samsung Glyde, Dopod Touch Pro 2, and RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8130 on the products-to-be-released list.

Source:TMCnet