Chinese office-goers who often spend hours caught up in traffic jams have a new way to utilise their time -- reading mobile phone editions of their newspapers.
"I needn't idle in the crowded carriage, watch advertisements or look at other passengers since I subscribed to mobile news," says Wang Xin, who spends one-and-a-half hours on the metro and bus every day.
"I know every top news before I reach office and home," Wang, a 27-year-old salesman, said.
Two newspaper groups in China's eastern metropolis, Shanghai, launched their mobile newspaper services in the past months.
The mobile news services may be the next hot spot in the thumb economy in China, following short text messages and customised ringtone services, Shanghai Daily reported.
Two types of mobile news exist in China now.
Under the first type, operators regularly send edited and shortened news through multimedia messages every day. Subscribers, who pay 3 yuan to 8 yuan (approximately Rs 18 to Rs 64) every month, can read the mobile news offline.
The second type of service allows users to read complete news content (compared with print media) through WAP (wireless application protocol) technology and people have to pay for network access fees.
In Shanghai, Wenhui-Xinmin United Press Group and Jiefang Daily Group adopted the first format.
"The two kinds of service aim at different target groups. Most people will choose the headline news due to the hardware limit, like (the handset's) screen size," said Hou Tao, an analyst at iResearch Inc, a Shanghai-based IT consulting firm.
Wenhui-Xinmin launched four mobile newspapers last month under the News365 brand. They covered news, finance, sport and entertainment.
Jiefang Daily kicked off iNews mobile newspaper earlier this year. Each of the media group sends users multimedia messages 2 or 3 times a day.
"The standard of our news choice is important, interesting and related to readers as well as eye-catching pictures," said Chen Ying, a full-time editor of News365.
On average, every multimedia message includes three pictures and 20 text messages, each of them of 100 characters long.
"The content of news not only includes stories in our group's media but all the sources we can access, including Internet," Chen said.
The cooperation with local media groups will help Shanghai Mobile to develop mobile media and expand business, the city's biggest mobile carrier said.
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