Compared to US carriers, Chinese carriers charge much less for SMS messages, but the volume in China is so high that it has become a major revenue source.

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Revenue from mobile phone sales has hence been increasing and is expected to continue the upward trend owing to both increasing smartphone popularity in China and also more emphasis on value added services like SMS, MMS, mobile internet, to name a few.

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When I first heard about Shenzhen-based Tencent during the early 2000s from ICQ managers, Tencent was working with China Mobile to allow PC users to send short messages from PCs to phones, and then via SMS (mobile Short Messaging Service) back again.

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