News and Research on Hurray! Holding Co. Ltd. (HRAY)
Business Description
Hurray! Holding Co., Ltd. provides wireless value-added services to mobile phone users delivered over the wireless networks of the two mobile operators and over the fixed wireless networks of the two major fixed-line telecommunication operators in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The company also designs, develops, sells and supports services provisioning and management software, and provides system integration services to a major Chinese mobile operator. The company engages in the development, marketing and distribution of music and entertainment oriented consumer wireless value-added services.
Wireless Value-Added Services
SMS Services
SMS is the major and most mature wireless value-added service in China. These main services are: Chatting and other community services, Interactive television entertainment, quizzes and contests, and Games.
IVR Services
The company's Interactive Voice Response (IVR) services, which are available on the networks of China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom and China Netcom, include chat services whereby users can chat with each other live over their mobile handsets in wireless public chat rooms. Users can also utilize the company's IVR services to access music, greetings from famous Chinese celebrities, jokes and serial stories, such as detective stories, from their mobile phones or send this content to the mobile phones of their friends or others.
RBT Services
The company offers Ring Back Tone (RBT) services on the networks of China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. RBT services allow a mobile phone user to customize the sound that callers hear when ringing the user’s mobile phone. The company offers various entertaining content including pre-recorded messages, movie dialogues and soundtracks and a range of classical music.
WAP Services
The company offers its Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) services through China Mobile’s and China Unicom’s networks. WAP allows users to browse content on their mobile phones so that users can request and receive information in a similar to accessing information on Internet web sites through personal computers. The majority of the company's 2.5G services is WAP services and includes: Ringtone downloads, Picture downloads, Community services, Games, Pop culture, News and finance, and Personal information management service.
MMS services
The company offers Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) on China Mobile and China Unicom’s networks. MMS is a messaging service that allows multimedia content such as ringtone and pictures to be transmitted in a single message, compared to text via SMS. MMS can be downloaded on many 2.5G mobile phones in China.
Java Games
The company offers a range of in-house developed games based on the Java platform, which offers a way to create 2.5G games. In 2006, the company launched 47 new titles on China Mobile’s game portal, including Explorer, Magma Millionaire in Shanghai, Sword of Fairy, and Mice Love Rice.
The company distributes markets and promotes its wireless valued-services via a range of channels and platforms. The company focused on marketing directly through mobile operator’s provided services such as SMS and WAP.
Music Development, Production and Distribution Business
VASPro Services Provisioning and Management Software
The company designs, develops, sells and supports services provisioning and management software, called VASPro. The company also provides system integration service for VASPro. VASPro enables mobile operators to manage various functions related to the provision of 2.5G services by third party service providers through mobile operators’ WAP portals.
Billing: VASPro enables mobile operators to bill their customers for the services provided through their WAP portals and determine amounts paid to their service providers after the deduction of various service and network fees. In addition, service providers rely on mobile operators to bill and collect on their behalf, using multiple billing schemes such as per-use, subscription or a combination of both.
VASPro also supports flexible billing functions that allow service providers to cross sell and differentiate their services by offering promotion packages and service bundling to their users. For example, VASPro allows service providers to offer discount schemes, such as first month free followed by billing and packaged services with more than one service and combined billing.
Service provider management: VASPro allows mobile operators to manage their major number of service providers by providing various functions, such as authentication of service providers when they first offer their services on mobile operators’ WAP portals, ongoing account management and automatic service provisioning, which eliminates service providers’ need to run such software in-house and thereby reduces their set-up time to link themselves to mobile operators’ WAP portals.
WAP portal management: VASPro allows mobile operators to manage the look and feel as well as functionality of their WAP portals. Some of the functions include advanced directory management, personalization of menus, which allows users to personalize the WAP menu displayed on their mobile phones, single sign-on, which improves users’ ease of use by allowing them to avoid signing on each time they access a service on the WAP portal, and service subscription confirmation.
Customer care and business intelligence tools: VASPro provides various customer care tools to mobile operators, which include customer information management, service history, complaint history, blacklist management and customer web registration. In addition, mobile operators are provided with functions that can be used for business intelligence, such as data warehousing, integrated authorization and authentication, flexible multi-dimensional data analysis, analysis based on time, service, region and service provider, and various charting functions.
Product and Content Development
Wireless Value-Added Services
The company develops most of its content and applications for wireless value-added services in-house through its 200-member product development team. The company's product development team focuses primarily on developing new services such as WAP services and Java games, as well as developing 3G-compatible services. In addition to in-house developed content, the company also acquires rights to certain copyrighted content such as music, pictures, games, news and other information from a major number of content providers such as record companies.
Music Production
The company engages in music production through its affiliated music companies Freeland Music, Huayi Brothers Music, New Run and Secular Bird. These companies are domestic record labels with an aggregate of approximately 100 employees specializing in artist development, music production and music distribution.
Freeland Music, Huayi Brothers Music, New Run, and Secular Bird are all pioneers in developing music artists and producing and distributing their songs in China. Together, their portfolio of artists includes some of the singers in China, such as Xiangxiang from Freeland, Liangying Zhang from Huayi Brothers, Long Pang from New Run, and Qiang Wang from Secular Bird.
Competition
Music Business
The company's competitors in music business include Warner Music, Universal, EMI and Sony BMG and independent labels based in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China such as Taihe Rye, Rock Music, Ocean Butterfly, Zhushu, Rock Mobile, a subsidiary of Rock Music, and A8.
Software and System Integration Services
The company's competitors include major international software companies such as Microsoft, traditional telecommunications companies such as Motorola and NEC, major software and professional services companies such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM, and local software developers and telecommunications companies such as Aspire, Huawei and ZTE.
History
Hurray! Holding Co. Ltd. was founded in 2002.
