GoD: 'Mostar: Breaking into the Chinese Mobile Space'

With 449 million mobile subscribers and the number predicted to rise, China is a market that can't be ignored. In this exclusive Games On Deck editorial, Ozura Mobile's Li Ling See discusses their entry into the market with Mostar, China's first tournament based mobile gaming community portal. The following excerpt describes some of the challenges in the deployment of Mostar within China's mobile games space: “The deployment commencement was efficient and effective as this was Ozura's sixth deployment of tournament based community portals with clients. The implementation of tournament and multiplayer features, gift shop, and forum went well except for SMS and WAP charging. It is challenging to get a universal shortcode which can be used across all provinces in China. [Editor's note: A shortcode is a special telephone number which is used to address SMS and MMS messages from mobile phones, and are often charged at higher rates than normal messages to pay for downloads.] If different shortcodes are used in different provinces, it can create confusion to the users and more marketing cost will be incurred. To overcome this barrier, virtual money charging system was introduced in Mostar. The virtual money is called "M coin" and serves as prepaid credit for users to download their desired mobile games and enjoy the entertainment services offered in Mostar. Users are able to purchase or top up their preferred amount of M coins via WAP. M coins are then saved into their accounts.” You can now read the complete editorial, which includes more in depth analysis of the Chinese mobile games space, as well as how the region's market has benefited from Ozura Mobile's Mostar portal (no registration required, please feel free to link to this column from external websites).