For many local residents, traditional Christmas greetings will be
replaced by "Merry X-mas 2 U" this year thanks to the growing
popularity of short messaging on mobile phones.
"I
used to send and receive e-greetings, but I am afraid of computer
viruses, so I don't dare to open messages from strangers," said
Wang Haodong with Hua Zhi Ying Electronic Co.
Instead of sending Christmas cards by e-mail, Wang will use his
cell phone to send friends short messages.
Holiday well-wishers can create their own messages, or they can
download pre-written messages, pictures, and songs from a variety
of local Websites.
"About 3,000 customers in Shanghai downloaded short messages every
day last week from the special Christmas packet we have set up,"
said Shen Qiong, of Linktone, which offers mobile digital services
across China.
For Christmas greetings, the company charges 0.2 yuan (US$2 cents)
for basic messages, and 2 yuan (US$0.24) for pictures and
songs.
"The promotion of the special Christmas packet has greatly
increased the number of other short messages downloaded from our
Website," said Shen.
The last few weeks have seen about 300,000 short messages
downloaded from the site (www.linktone.com) every day in Shanghai,
five times more than during last Spring Festival, and Shen
estimates the number will still increase by 20 percent right before
Christmas and New Year's Day.
More than 20 million of the 150 million to 200 million short
messages sent every month in Shanghai are downloaded from various
Websites, said Zhang Jie of China Mobile Shanghai branch.
Zhang expects those numbers to increase significantly over the
holidays.
Shao Guoqiang with China Unicom's local branch said, "It is certain
that Christmas will see an increasing number of short messages
sent, and one of the main reasons is that our registered mobile
users will be able to send downloaded Christmas pictures or songs
during the holiday seasons."
The boom in short messaging is bad news for retailers of
traditional Christmas cards.
Ji
Hong, an employee in charge of the greeting cards for Shanghai Book
Traders, expects this year's sales to be about the same as last
year, but the price for the cheapest cards will drop by about 30
percent from last Christmas to 2 yuan each.
"People are more interested in small decorations including
Christmas stockings and caps as the price has decreased from more
than 50 yuan (US$6.05) to approximately 20 yuan (US$2.42) for
stockings and 8 yuan (US$0.97) to 3 yuan (US$0.36) for caps this
year," said Ji.
(eastday.com December 21,
2001)