Mobile in China doesn’t only refer to adding a mobile communication device to your lifestyle, but has a whole different meaning in the immense human and cultural movement, as the result of China’s upcoming economy in a global game. There is a big movement from people from rural areas to the mega cities on the east coast and the way the ‘new economy’ is creating new possibilities is something unimaginable for the older generations.
The role new technologies like mobile phones and the Internet are playing in the lives of the youth is significant bigger compared with American youngsters states Baiterman from research. Chinese youth are experimenting far more with digital identities and have a much more intense online life. The use of mobile phones is huge and passionate, spending several months’ salary on a handset and sending between 20 and 100 text messages a day. Where the Internet is very much a shared or public thing, being used mostly in Internet cafés or other public places (as most Chinese people don’t have their own computer at home), playing multi-player games or using social networking sites, the mobile phone is a private device with private data, obsessively being within reach 24/7.
The Chinese took on modern communication technologies rather rapidly. One of the reasons is thought to be the one child policy, that has the consequence of families existing of six adults and only one child, who is seeking peer companionship outside the family and is using the mobile phone as a means to constantly be in touch with friends. An other important factor is the lack of alternatives like cable television, movies, video games, magazines, newspapers etc. and the low costs of the new tech. For example the Chinese only use mobile phones, simply because there is no landline network. Remarkable is the fact that new technologies are demanding great literacy in China, as it requires a different language from daily use, as to fit to the ten key pad of mobile phones.
Baiterman expects the Chinese and people in other emerging regions to leapfrogg the pc usage with mobile phone Internet, just like the mobile phone leapfrogged the landlinephone. The first contact with the Internet of the estimated 2 billion mobile phone users that are not yet online will be through their handset. For Western companies to be able to be successful in this market they need to be aware of these trends and specifications within emerging regions and economies. And they better do that, because there are a whole lot of people waiting to be served there and for now Western companies are losing compeition with their Chinese competitors.
