An Enorbus challenge
Mobile Communications International
November 2001

Having taken full advantage of the SMS boom, Enorbus plans to be one of the first in the queue to reap the benefits of GPRS in China

Enorbus is one of a growing number of mainland firms in China taking advantage of the explosion of SMS. Headquartered in Beijing, Enorbus operates a wireless entertainment site - wap.5wan.com - through which it delivers wireless gaming content to the Chinese market. SMS services can also be accessed over 5wan's complementary wired site at www.5wan.com.

Co-founder and CEO Norbert Chang came up with the idea for Enorbus whilst working in the US. At the time of the voice boom in China, Chang was working at UBS Warburg in the technology research and development department, specialising in wireless technology and content. Chang teamed up with partner Ipang Lin (now COO) who had previously studied at Berkeley. Both decided to head back to China to take advantage of the emerging wireless data market. With a vision of breaking into the wireless gaming arena, Enorbus was created in March 2000.

At start-up, the company had five employees. Today the company boasts 25 staff, all dedicated solely to wireless gaming, and this is why Chang believes that Enorbus has the edge over its competitors Sina, Sohu and NETEASE, which provide a broader range of services. However, these rival content providers have an established wired base, making it easier to push services to customers.

Enorbus currently operates in Asia, partly because of the revenue-model approach adopted by the region. Chang says that the company has plans to expand, by opening offices in the US and Japan in the next year, which he sees as the company's biggest markets after China.

Divided into two parts, one providing services for the Chinese gaming market, and the other concentrating on foreign markets, Enorbus provides a number of games over SMS, WAP and Java.

"We had a focus on wireless entertainment - and gaming in particular - from the start," says Chang. The company's gaming portfolio ranges from single-player, role-playing and logic games to multi-player adventure and strategy games. Other products include WAP comics, WAP puzzles, wireless greeting cards, ringtones and icon downloads.

Enorbus is getting ready to launch a selection of exclusive Java products in the Japanese market to a yet-to-be-named Japanese mobile operator.

It is also currently working on MPEG 4 solutions to further expand its portfolio.

Claiming to have an intimate understanding of Chinese consumers, the company markets its gaming services to the 20-35+ market, rather than the younger market which is typically targeted for such services in other regions. A large proportion of Enorbus's marketing is directed toward 20-year-old graduates, fresh out of college and planning to buy their first phone. These customers, claims Chang, become the heaviest users of SMS and WAP, and gaming in particular.

Enorbus is partnering with both China Mobile and China Unicom - the alliance with China Mobile being the company's largest. The SMS market is very lucrative and, although the shift has focused from WAP back to SMS over recent months, Chang expects WAP popularity to increase with the advent of GPRS.

China Mobile is now testing GPRS in 18 provinces with launch planned at the end of the year. Nokia will expand China Mobile's GPRS network to cover all 31 provinces by Q4 2001. Enorbus's games are on the China Mobile GPRS start package. Under the alliance, China Mobile has a revenue-sharing model whereby the mobile operator takes nine per cent of the product fee, with Enorbus claiming the remaining 91 per cent of revenue for each SMS or download. One of the greatest catalysts for the boom in SMS has been the introduction of new billing platforms modelled on DoCoMo's i-mode. China Mobile's version is labelled 'Monternet' in which the billing and collection of revenues are handled. The SMS and WAP structure of the revenue-sharing strategy is already in place, with the focus now on GPRS.

Chang says that Enorbus always planned to launch in a market where there was an established revenue model for content providers, claiming that other markets have a more 'fragmented' approach to revenue sharing.

SMS traffic continues to rise in the Chinese market, as does the hope that GPRS will revive WAP. With further expansion in mind, Norbert Chang and Enorbus are banking on GPRS really taking off in the region.