While the world's largest cellular operator, China Mobile's, primary focus is on its domestic market, it has not ruled out investing in the African market, particularly those that scale quickly, says chairman Wang Jianzhou.
Speaking at the Fortune Global Forum, in Cape Town, Jianzhou admitted that, while Africa was an interesting prospect for China Mobile, it had not identified any target companies.
“Our domestic market remains our primary focus,” he said.
Jianzhou said that, while the company had more than 550 million subscribers in China out of a population of over 1.3 billion, it still saw huge potential, especially in the rural market that has around 700 million people.
“The rural market is still 60% of our new subscribers, while the cities have an oversubscription rate of more than 120%,” Jianzhou said. “We have 99% coverage of the rural areas now.”
He said China Mobile was also looking at increasing its various data services, such as mobile payments and other electronic forms of communications. It now has 50 million subscribers for its mobile newspaper service.
Mobile payment solutions have become an increasingly compelling business case for China Mobile, sparking its 20% purchase of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank.
A conference attendee, who asked not to be named, said there was strong overlap between what China Mobile would like to develop as a mobile payment solution and what some African-based network operators have already achieved.
“African operators have shown the world that mobile payment solutions work, are convenient and bring the unbanked into mainstream financial services. This is something China would like to do with its rural population,” he said.
The conference attendee said that, while China Mobile may look at buying an African telco for scalability reasons, it may also find this a cheap way to import mobile payment solutions back into China.
“Africa is interesting for us, however, we have not targeted any company,” Jianzhou said.
He added that apart from people-to-people communication, China Mobile was also exploring machine-to-machine communications.
“It is not just about people communications, but also communications between things such as machines and even plants,” Jianzhou said.
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