PDX.cn is a leading Chinese mobile content portal started by Marcus Xiang, Jack Wang and Dirk Ye in 2004. Today, the company boasts over 100,000 mobloggers from an active community of two million users and continues to fucus its strategy on handheld created content. Pacific Epoch interviewed the founders for their thoughts on the mobile blogging community in China, its business models and limiting factors.

Pacific Epoch: Can you give us a brief introduction to PDX's service?

"Marcus Xiang: The company's only business is mobile blogging. Many people claim that mobile blogging is the killer 3G application. However, we have found that there is still a long way to go before mobile blogging really becomes a game-changing service, though we are very confident in the potential of mobile blogging. Since mobile blogging is a multi-platform application, combining SMS, WAP, mobile email, WAP Push, IVR and audio/video streaming, there are many possible combinations for the development of mobile blog services."

PE: When did PDX.cn launch its mobile blog site? How many users does PDX.cn have?

"Xiang: Our site was the first mobile blog site to be launched in China when we opened it in June 2004. We plan to develop PDX.cn as a mobile blog social networking community. At present, we have two million registered users, including 100,000 mobile bloggers. The content on the web and WAP versions of our site (www.pdx.cn & wap.pdx.cn) is identical. Content posted on the website is available on the WAP site and vice versa. Our WAP site alone has two million users. Our website actually gets less traffic than our WAP site."

PE: Do you think a there is a business model in use in a foreign market that is suitable for the Chinese mobile blog market?

"Xiang: No. Mmobile blog business models cannot be imitated because the business model is so closely determined by local mobile operators' policies, MMS pricing, penetration of WAP and handset camera technology and local interest in self-expression. We have to find a suitable mobile blog business model for China."

• Actual usage and statistics from a company actually focused on handheld content creation with measurable WAP and regular site usage allows us to see moblogging adaption and trends within the dynamic Chinese market.
  
• Importance of MMS and SMS usage and pricing on people with advanced handsets which lends credence to the theory of data transfer as the big bottleneck for phone blogging.
• The effect of local culture and policies  on actual usage and practice - the implication that there is no win win model for this emerging business. People still need to be engaged.

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