China Introduces New Pager Service to Attract UsersTime Pager, at one time the second largest pager company in Shanghai, has desperately watched its business slip for the past couple of years.However, a small trick called "palm broker" the company played has started to bring back many of its old users. "Should you dial 95810 and say out the code for the stock you are concerned, you will find specific information and suggestions on the screen of your pager," advertised the company. Like Time Pager, many pager companies in China have been racking their brains to introduce new service items to win back its users from the mobile phone market. Since the introduction of pager services on the Chinese mainland in 1984, the pager market swiftly expanded. By June 1999, the number of pager companies in China had been over 1,700, and the number of users exceeded 72 million, the largest in the world. However, the emerging of mobile phone market, in particular, the improvement of phone functions and the decline in price, posed a grave challenge to the pager market. Xianglong company based in Shenzhen, started building the first IP pager service item last year. Accessing the Internet, its users can directly receive e-mails. Even two-way pager services appeared, with which users can in one way download any information like weather forecast from the Internet or the information platform, and in the other way carry out online stock trading and talk on the Internet. Experts predicted that the latest developments represent the trend for pager service in China. |
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