Disqus
Now, that’s what I call the good marketing — nothing will make you sign-up for a long-term plan like a good dose of beer. 
Apparently, two Chinese carriers — China Mobile and China Unicom — are practicing a novel marketing strategy in the east China city of Suqian. According to the BusinessWeek’s article, the two carriers are competing to lure subscribers as though there were “10 competitors fighting it out.”
The question is whether can beer-driver marketing sustain and for how long? At this point, with government controlled duopoly – you bet it can! However, China still lacks 3G and the accompanying services that would further drive growth of the overall mobile industry in the country. The problem is that the government waits for the completion of the domestic 3G standard – TD-SCDMA. In the meantime, people of China are stuck with the limited 2G services like ringtones and wallpapers downloads.
Anyway, my point is in the “be our customer and get a free beer” marketing, not in the 3G situation in China. If you’re interested in latter, I strongly recommend you to read the mentioned article on BusinessWeek’s site.
About The Author
Dusan Belic
Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.
