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China Consumer Behavior Information Technology

Chinese People and their Mobile Phones: SMS

As in most Western countries, mobile phones are also very popular in China, among all different age groups and walks of life — sometimes seen in very unusual places. The contrast between China and other Western countries shows up in the — astronomical — numbers: up to 1997, there was little over 10 million mobile phone service subscriptions… today, there are more than 400 million.

Chinese Monk speaking on his mobile phone
Calling to…
Credits: Dennis Krut

As in most Western countries, mobile phones are also very popular in China, among all different age groups and walks of life — sometimes seen in very unusual places. The contrast between China and other Western countries shows up in the — astronomical — numbers: up to 1997, there was little over 10 million mobile phone service subscriptions… today, there are more than 400 million.

Even more impressive is use of short messages (SMS): just in the first 10 months of 2005, there were more than 260 billion. Short messages are so popular that such demand pushes the industry into creating a myriad of services based on systems that automatically answer messages sent through SMS from costumers: for example, in big cities like Shanghai, one can check the Yellow Pages through SMS, make restaurant reservations through SMS, and so on.

By Itamar Medeiros

Originally from Brazil, Itamar Medeiros currently lives in Germany, where he works as VP of Design Strategy at SAP and lecturer of Project Management for UX at the M.Sc. Usability Engineering at the Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences .

Working in the Information Technology industry since 1998, Itamar has helped truly global companies in multiple continents create great user experience through advocating Design and Innovation principles. During his 7 years in China, he promoted the User Experience Design discipline as User Experience Manager at Autodesk and Local Coordinator of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) in Shanghai.

Itamar holds a MA in Design Practice from Northumbria University (Newcastle, UK), for which he received a Distinction Award for his thesis Creating Innovative Design Software Solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments.

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