Daily News 2004/11/11

ICQ looking for copartners in China Mainland

　　ICQ, the world largest instant message provider is now looking for copartners in China Mainland to enhance its influence on Chinese market. It plans to increase the number of users of ICQ to 28 times as much as the number at present in the coming 4 years.

　　With the headquarter located in Israel, ICQ says that by the end of next year, its influence on Chinese market will be enhanced greatly. Up until now, the number of regular ICQ user has reached 500,000, while the number of registered ICQ user has reached 6 million. Orey Gilliam, vice president and general manager of ICQ says that by 2008, there will be 14 million regular ICQ users in China due to the efforts it makes in looking for copartners in China.

　　According to iRearch, a media research company, the number of instant message (IM) user in China has reached 5.5 million last year. It is anticipated that the number will be increased to 7.4 million this year and to 12 million in 2006. During the last year, the users of Tecent QQ account for 74.3% of the market share, and the users of Microsoft MSN account for 11.23%, while, ICQ users in China account for only 1.9% on Chinese market, ranking the 8^th.

HOLLYCRM winning the bid for the call center of Liaohe oil field

　　On November 5 of 2004, Beijing: HOLLYCRM, leader in the field of Call Center and CRM announced that it had won the bid for the construction of the call center for Liaohe oil field (Stock code: 000817). It is known that after HOLLYCRM released the overall strategies and HollyC6 solutions oriented to call centers for government and enterprises on July 29 of 2004, there have been more and more customers in every industry using its service. Soon after it won the bid for FESCO (human resources), Shunfeng Express（logistics）, Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control（medical service）recently, it went further to enter into the energy industry, which means that HOLLYCRM is achieving its goal step by step with the mature and practicable HollyC6 solutions.

By 2008VoIP service will account for 13% of the market share in Europe

　　By 2008, the VoIP applications and services will account for 13% of the market share in Europe. This conclusion is from a report titled Voice Communications: from Public Applications to Private Applications. It is anticipated that in the coming 4 years, the number of broadband users of PVA (private voice applications) will exceed 5 million.

　　Along with the decrease of communication fees, the total income in telecom industry will drop. The only thing to be appreciated is that there will be new ordering and thus new income sources.

　　According to Mercer, a consulting company, more than 30% of the families in America and Britain will get access to VoIP services in the coming three years.