Chinese Mobile Search Engine mInfo Gets Boost From Olympics; Look For Major Distribution Deals & Mobile Operator Tie-Ups
If you haven’t already, you should check out the excellent ongoing series of articles over at MoCoNews comparing how well mobile content services and mobile search engines stack up when it comes to delivering the latest around the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Tricia Duryee kicks off the series by road testing AOL, Google, Microsoft Live, and Yahoo, and searching for the term “Olympics.”
Judged on the basis of results relevancy and the quality of search advertising, Google and Yahoo tie for Gold, followed by AOL (Silver), and Microsoft (Bronze). Google delivers relevant results – most likely from the Internet since Mobile Web results are grouped at the bottom of the page – along with an ad. This in my book leaves a large question mark over the visibility – hence effectiveness — of the ad, and lends credence to this must-read post as well as the startling conclusion that Internet search engines (think Google) are playing up Internet results because they can’t cope with the mobile Web.
The MoCoNews post underlines the market need for more data on mobile search services, as well as proven methodology by which we can measure their performance. To close this gap and move the discussion a significant step forward, Peggy Albright and I are testing leading branded and white-label mobile search services across a variety of mobile operators and geographies worldwide. We have our industry sponsors and our board of advisors in place, and we’re naturally excited about breaking new ground with our quarterly series of reports.
In addition, the MoCoNews focus on mobile search and the Olympics provides me the perfect opportunity to take a close look at mInfo, China’s home-grown mobile search company, which was also chosen in July by the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games as the mobile search provider for the official mobile Internet site of the 2008 Games in Chinese and English. This announcement – along with a string of recent milestones including a tie-up in July with Nokia to deliver mobile search via Nokia’s WidSet mobile app platform – makes mInfo a name in mobile search we need to know much better, so I caught up with Alvin Wang Graylin, mInfo CEO and Co-Founder, for an in-depth briefing.
It took a few weeks to arrange, but it was well worth the effort. In addition to a one-hour exclusive interview with Alvin, I have his pledge that MSG will get the inside track on future deals and developments. (For example, mInfo is near to closing a couple of milestone deals with mobile operators and mobile ad companies, so please check back regularly.) In the meantime, I encourage you to check out the highlights from our first interview, as well as a few insightful mobile search usage stats further down in this post.
So who is mInfo?
The company operates Chinese-language mobile search services supporting SMS, WAP, instant messaging (IM), and embedded java applets in China. More importantly, mInfo’s patented technology allows natural language searches. SMS search, which is the flavor of mobile search Alvin tells me most users prefer, allows users to search by texting fully formed sentences (what are the morning flights from Beijing to Guangzhou on China Easter tomorrow?) to the service rather than keywords (flights or MU5102). Of course, the service supports keywords and commands as well.
In addition to these Chinese services, the company has a separate English-language service called Guanxi, which allows expatriates and tourists to search for restaurants, bars, shops, events, discounts, etc.. in 20 Chinese cities using its natural language SMS technology. The services provide the user with the answer – not a list of links – via a return text message. (If you want to see the search service in action, then check out the video here.)
Over half of mInfo users text their questions; a third use WAP; and the rest is split between IM and the client. “We can send a WAP site link within an SMS, but the majority of phones don’t support it and people are afraid of data charges. So we only do it when we have to, like when users are looking for ringtones or images via SMS. What we find is if people initiate a conversation using SMS, they want to finish it using SMS.” Based on the company’s current log analysis, Alvin estimates “over 92 percent of our searches come back with [return users] acceptable answers.”
mInfo’s main focus and, in Alvin’s view, the key differentiator, is its “life-oriented topics” and “providing answers to urgent questions related to your daily life activities” (weather, train/bus schedules, stocks, news, sports, music, leisure, and a long list of places to eat, shop, etc…). “What we’re trying to be is essentially somebody’s good friend who can answer their questions based on knowing them well. The more you use our service, the more we know about you, the more we understand your expectation requirement, your location, your spending habits, the more we can give you the kind of information you’re looking for.”
In addition, mInfo segments users to deliver what it says are still more relevant results and recommendations. “If we can recognize you belong to a certain group; even if you haven’t done certain things with this, we’ll try to give you things that are relevant to your group’s profile.” However, there is also a keen focus on the individual over time. “We’ll do scoring of every person’s activities of every search they do. We’ll help categorize them into groups. The more you use it, the more the individual activities affect the rankings.”
Not much rocket science in the example that Alvin offered. “Let’s say that this person; we find that he consistently goes to look for five-star restaurants and plays golf, and he’s travelling every three or four days. We can say, okay, next time when he says ‘I’m hungry’, we’ll send him a five-star restaurant in the city that he’s most recently travelled in, for example.” BTW: mInfo also delivers mobile coupons (via SMS text) linked to search queries and search histories. Alvin tells me QR codes and 2D barcodes are cool, concepts that make for great demos, but redemption and broad phone support are major issues.
What is the impact of the Olympics?
Under the conditions of the agreement, mInfo is the exclusive mobile search provider, but it cannot advertise on the service. So what are the benefits? Profile, loads of information about users, and lots of traffic. Alvin and I spoke just before the Olympics, and even then he revealed that usage before the event had started had already hit between 20,000 to 30,000 users per day, a figure he said would likely increase by 50 to 100 times once the Olympics were in full swing. (I’m checking on this and will ask Alvin if it’s possible to have a full report on traffic and usage after the event to see if actual usage met or exceeded his expectations.)
Another plus is the strong ties mInfo can build with the carriers such as China Mobile. (The Olympic mobile site is the product of cooperation between the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG), China Mobile, and mInfo.)
What about the search advertising side of the equation?
mInfo calls itself a provider of mobile search and pull-based advertising. In a nutshell, mInfo generates revenue from target advertising and bids for search result ranking. But there’s a twist – and a few factors unique to the Chinese mobile market — that make mInfo the one to watch.
By way of background, Chinese authorities turned up the pressure in March on push-based mobile advertising, and cracked down hard on unlisted, spam-based mobile marketing companies. Push is out, period – leaving permission-based ads the only game in town. Against this backdrop, mInfo is on the money. Its mobile search service effectively enables a pull-based advertising model to deliver relevant ads to users in a way that is both targeted (based on queries, profiles, past search history etc…) and permission driven.
Granted, display ads also have a role to play. However, couple the delay in 3G with the fact that the vast majority of Chinese users never owned or used a PC (as a result, they prefer SMS mobile search to WAP), and you have market conditions that clearly favor SMS search over WAP - or any other medium for that matter.
Medio?
I asked Alvin for an update on the partnership mInfo announced last year with white-label mobile search and advertising provider Medio Systems to deliver a mobile search, advertising and content delivery platform for the Chinese market. As he put it, the companies have successfully combined their capabilities to “provide a much more complete solution” to carriers. “We’re [mInfo and Medio] jointly selling [to] some of these carriers. I can’t give you too much detail, but we expect to see some results coming in fairly soon.”
How many users search and what does mInfo report?
Chinese market research firm iResearch reports that mobile search market revenue in China is expected to reach 1.35 billion yuan ($190 million) in 2008, up from 196 million yuan in 2006. The firm also forecasts the number of mobile search users will reach 117 million by 2008 (up from 61 million in 2007) and total over 200 million by 2010.
In a recent release, Alvin stated that mInfo research “shows that only 25 percent of people in China know about mobile search.” However, Alvin also pointed out that once the concept is explained to them, “78 percent said they would be interested in trying it.”
During our briefing I asked Alvin to break down usage and search terms. “Less than 25 percent of our searches are related to downloading [mobile content]…. If you’re on the [mInfo's] WAP site, that portion goes up a little. But, when you take overall search counts, downloadable is not really the biggest priority when people are searching on their phones. This is quite different from most WAP only search services in China where the majority of searches are for ringtones and pictures.”
Popular mobile search categories are pretty similar to what they were in February when mInfo released data on the top five search topic categories for 2007. Back then the top categories were:
1. Dining/Entertainment
2. Stock/Financial
3. Ring tones/Pictures
4. Weather/Travel information
5. Leisure/Recreational Content
Alvin tells me financial is a little less popular of late, a shift that is likely linked to the current turbulence on the world’s stock markets.
By way of background, the February data (release here) also showed some interesting trends. For example, mInfo SMS and IM users were more interested in local and information searches, whereas users of the WAP and applet mobile search services tended to do more rich content searches. mInfo’s registered users increased by over 100% compared with 2006, with users under the age of 25 comprising about 50 percent of total users.
SMS search is the main attraction, but what about the other ways to deliver mobile search services?
Alvin is particularly bullish about the deal mInfo sealed with Nokia to deliver its search solution onto Nokia’s WidSet mobile applications platform. This is because Nokia claims the WidSets platform, which Nokia launched in China in 4Q2007, counts well over two million users. (In fact, recent data reports 4 million of the 10 million widget users worldwide are in China.)
As Alvin put it: “Nokia has a platform that is gaining momentum. I think 40 percent of all the widget users in the world are in China, so it’s a platform that will do well here…They [Nokia] are going to have access to a lot of users and we definitely want to make our service available to those users. The widget platform just allows us to do that in way that’s built into something users are already comfortable using.”
What about IM search robots?
mInfo offers the same service via mobile and desktop and last year announced a partnership with Incesoft to collaborate on bringing advanced conversational search via an IM robot and specifically for MSN users in China. Alvin tells me IM search is catching on, boosted by the increasing popularity of instant messaging on mobile.
What is the user experience? The service appears as a contact on the contact list of the phone. “Once they’re on your contact list, they’re kind of near the top of your list and when you have a question, you just click on it and you ask the question.” From thereon the search becomes less of a guessing game and more of a conversation. “It’s like a personal discussion with my search bot; my personal electronic concierge.”
What is the competitive landscape?
China-based firms, including Chongqing Yicha, Uucun, and Cgogo, have offered mobile search services since 2004. However, Alvin is upbeat that their influence and numbers have peaked. “Most of our competitors have focused on WAP-based solutions, but I think most of those guys are finding things difficult in the last one to two years. they had all bet on 3G and it’s taking a lot longer to materialize than expected.” I
Against this backdrop, mInfo isn’t worried about WAP-only mobile search services. Alvin watches Google and Baidu, but so does everyone. On the Internet, Baidu is the market leader. “Google has probably 20 percent [market share] and then the last 10 percent is divided between several players. Google and Baidu both have WAP presence, but it’s not their focus for sure.”
What’s next for mInfo?
Let’s just say I have good timing because mInfo is close to some major deals and milestones.
First, look for carrier deals (and not just in China). Alvin can’t disclose the details, but he did reveal mInfo is “in discussions with some of the leading operators to …provide some wide ranging mobile search solutions.”Later in the conversation, Alvin told me more about a demo he had just finished showing a mobile operator the same day. “He was very impressed when we showed him how to get from his home to the office…We showed which train to take and then which bus to take… and he said ‘Yeah, this is exactly the route I take every day!’”
Second, watch for the impact of this Chinese-language press release which describes the tie-up between mInfo and China’s State Information Center to deliver the official Mobile Business Directory. Alvin tells me the agreement designates mInfo as the official mobile directory provider. “We’re [like] the mobile Yellow Pages provider. We also sell listings for that. It’s completely independent of our own search, but a lot of our search technology goes into that mobile directory service.”
Third, advertising will be another big area for mInfo. “We’re distributing some of our ads and some of our content; in fact we - I can’t really announce it, but a large international company has recently signed a deal with us to distribute our mobile ads onto their network because they don’t necessarily have mobile advertising [inventory].”
mInfo also plans to “mix social networks with search” and develop the “ability to personalize search more.” Voice search and “richer advertising models” are also on the roadmap.
Finally, look for the company to be profitable in the first half of 2009 and close a third-round of venture capital investment from “existing investors and new investors” in the second half of 2008. (Alvin recently told the Chinese press that plans are in place to list abroad in three years’ time. To date, the only Chinese foreign-listed search service provider is Baidu.)
MY TAKE: Think Answers or 4INFO on steroids in a huge market that has ruled out push-advertising (thus tipping the scales in favor of paid search advertising triggered by a user query) and you have mInfo. Its patented natural language mobile search technology and variety of “delivery mechanisms” (SMS, WAP, IM, Java and widgets via the tie-up with Nokia) ensure that it will likely appeal to a large segment of the Chinese (and English-speaking Chinese) population in China, a market where home-grown providers already have an edge over the usual suspects (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft).
What’s more, the sharp focus on SMS is a smart decision in a market where most users don’t have PCs and so cannot fully understand the concepts behind WAP site search services and search box interfaces. (It also helps that SMS search is simple, intuitive and works on all handsets.)
mInfo has its eye on the prize: Expansion in markets outside China. Its strategy – which emphasizes tie-ups with the likes of Nokia and Medio, and closer ties with mobile operators – will no doubt move it giant steps toward this goal. Watch this space because mInfo is a name we’re sure to see a lot more of in the coming months.
August 18th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
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