Asking customers which of Marilyn Monroe's co-stars said kissing her was akin to kissing Hitler might seem like an odd way for a high-tech company to generate money. But mobile phone gaming is no trivial pursuit in China.
Wireless service provider Linktone, the market leader for phone games in the country, launched the text message-based Intelligence Quotient Quiz (IQQ) -- featuring the Monroe question -- in April.
But even Linktone's managers were surprised by the runaway success of the trivia game, which has generated growth rates for the firm of over 2000 percent a month.
Perhaps due to the Confucian culture and its emphasis on education, the game was not just a success with the original target group of white-collar workers but also working-class phone owners with only a high-school education.
Satisfied customers include one shopkeeper in Guangdong Province who spent 16 solid hours playing the quiz on his phone.
"That product took us through the roof because everybody wants to feel smart," said Jeremy Li, Linktone's chief marketing officer.
Linktone originally began life as a wireless application protocol (WAP) service provider, bringing customers the Internet via mobile phones.
But despite the initial hype, WAP services bellyflopped in China because data transmission was so slow.
"What people were expecting, what they were promised, was the Internet over their phone and what they were delivered was something much less than that," Li said.
Then Linktone struck gold with the technologically humble short-messaging service (SMS), for which mobile customers were already used to paying when text-messaging friends.
This established habit paved the way for dozens of Internet portals to focus their attention on the SMS format, one that generates piles of hard cash.
There now are around 100 Chinese SMS-service providers, including the country's biggest Internet portals, Netease, Sina.com and Sohu.com, which transmit content to mobile customers by text message.
It's now so widespread that Chinese customers are expected to send more than 10 billion messages this year.
SMS generates revenue for content providers because customers are levied a flat fee per message, collected by the mobile service providers such as China Mobile or China Unicom, whom pass some of it on.
Linktone led the way in SMS gaming and it has turned out to be the firm's biggest money-spinner.
"Gaming and entertainment in general is our highest growth area. Our entertainment products are what drive our business." said Li.
The IQQ quiz proved so popular that Linktone now offers niche versions including sport, Chinese culture and even Shanghai general knowledge. It has also spawned a host of copycat trivia games as other SMS firms scurry to get in on the act.
Linktone additionally offers other SMS games that range from digital "pets" and role-playing adventure games to the traditional rock-paper-scissors pursuit, a standard drinking game in bars and restaurants across the country.
The revenue also gives a shot in the arm to China's tiny software development industry, badly affected by rampant piracy.
The country has no major software houses, because Chinese people refuse to pay in full for software when they can buy pirated versions of games from street peddlers for a fraction of the official price.
But wireless gaming differs from the PC and console gaming sectors in one crucial respect -- it does not depend on the game's consumers for direct revenue.
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