As of early this year, there were over 1.28 billion mobile phone users in China according to GSMA (Groupe Spécial Mobile Association, which represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide), more than any other country on Earth by far. GSMA projections for 2020 are that there will be over a billion 4G smartphone connections in China, a massive increase from the 913 million reported last year, representing an unquestionably favorable forward trajectory that is underwritten by sweeping infrastructure programs like China Mobile’s (NYSE: CHL) TDD-LTE project.
Investors should keep in mind where the overall consumer market space is headed, with viewing all migrating to streaming, mobile commerce taking up an ever larger slice of the retail pie on a daily basis, and pipeline innovations like the recent spectrum efficiency world record set by a 5G research team from the University of Bristol. The team used huge multiple-input, multiple-output cellular base station arrays in March of this year to achieve spectrum efficiencies on the order of 22 times that of current 4G technology. It looks like people are going to be using their mobiles a lot more moving forward, and for more bandwidth-intensive things than in the past as well.
The GSMA analysis jogs quite well with recent China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC) data that showed a smartphone penetration rate of around 59 percent last year. CINIC, a branch of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, recently blew the lid off the long-running mystery about the number of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone units in China (something about which the smartphone juggernaut has been notoriously tight-lipped), with a report showing the iPhone at around 131 million active units, or nearly 17 percent of the smartphone market.
Of course, the bandwidth-creating infrastructure to service all these hungry consumers with their smartphones will have to keep up as device proliferation accelerates. But, China Mobile just announced a huge new $1.5 billion one-year frame agreement with Finnish telecom giant Nokia (NYSE: NOK) to aide in leveraging certain network assets to a more flexible cloud platform. Given that Nokia helped quarterback the global standardization of TD-LTE as a key member of the 3GPP organization and that its relationship with China Mobile stretches way back, this spells big things for China’s Internet Plus initiative, which seeks to spur on economic growth by permeating traditional Chinese industries with internet-based capabilities.
The Chinese government clearly is doubling down on the importance of mobile tech and high-speed wireless internet when it comes to juicing the country’s growth metrics. For small, local businesses in particular, such as merchants who are looking to benefit from this trend toward greater and greater volumes of mcommerce, consumer to merchant interaction, social media, big data-driven business intelligence and even entertainment are all key vectors that need to be addressed. Retailers need to make their shops and offerings visible in the age of mobile, they need to generate engagements with consumers, and ensure that those consumers will not only come back for more, but spread the word as well.
What’s really needed here is a total-package social customer relation management platform, something that can adapt as the market grows and more consumers flood in. A platform that can scale up as a merchant scales up logistically, delivering the same rich business intelligence whether a merchant has five customers, or five hundred thousand. And it just so happens that homegrown social marketing and promotions platform developer Moxian, Inc. (OTCQB: MOXC), which got its start in Shenzhen, has developed just such a platform in its Moxian+ (now in version 2.2.0) app, which comes in both a User and Business compile and can be downloaded as easily as scanning a QR Code off the website with a smartphone.
By truncating the platform into two apps for the user and merchant ends of the equation, substantial advantages are made accessible, both when it comes to the entertainment and social interaction end of things for users, as well as the big data backend that MOXC’s merchant clients are so in love with. The Moxian+ architecture truly is a marvel, bundling together customer auto updates, loyalty rewards programs and discount vouchers, with social media and entertainment, as well as geolocalizing elements. The platform thus becomes like a virtual agora, allowing people to meet new friends, share engagements, and discover local stores that are attractive to their interests. At the same time users can play games for rewards in the form of MOXC’s proprietary virtual currency units, something which also helps drive customer retention, producing a sense of familiarity, and brand intimacy.
The Moxian+ platform is ideal for driving customer conversion into full memberships, executing seamless and timely interactions, and really helping to build lasting relationships, which can serve as the foundation for growth. Moreover, this same framework lets business owners marshal their staff in real-time, resulting in tightly coordinated marketing efforts, whether the end points are in the digital realm of social media, or elsewhere.
Moxian, as a cutting-edge offline-to-online (O2O) integrated platform operator, is already out ahead of the curve when it comes to cloud integration and recently announced it’s using several of Oracle’s (NYSE: ORCL) suite of offerings, including the Oracle Exadata Database Machine, which it uses in a private cloud environment at its data center in China. This key engagement by MOXC is in support of its payment and transaction platform rollout, as well for handling the rapidly growing volume of Moxian+ users, and it also shows clearly how this small company is on the same page as sector majors like Nokia and China Mobile.
Chairman and CEO of Moxian, James Tan, asserted in an interview early in 2016 that the formation of its Moxian Beijing (Moxian Technologies Co Ltd.) subsidiary was a bold step to capitalize on both the existing success of the Moxian+ platform in China, as well as the future of the smartphone market. Moxian is looking to make big moves in the coming years, really supercharging its sales in Beijing and Mainland China, and Tan was also keen to point out the five-year cooperation agreement signed with Xinhua New Media Culture Communication to resell its ad space in China’s booming $26 billion plus gaming industry.
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.Moxian.com
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