China Mobile Called A Halt to Jego, its One-month-old Skype/WeChat Competitor

June 25, 2013 Leave a comment

China Mobile Called A Halt to its One-month-old Skype/WeChat Competitor, Jego

By Annie Wang on June 24, 2013

China Mobile called a halt to Jego, a Skype-like appreleased early this month, by disabling new user registration and stopping voice and video calling service in mainland China, according to a statement issued by China Mobile International (in Chinese). This has added some more spice to the talking of messaging lovers. This app, at first, aimed to provide users from home and abroad, with free messaging services like text/voice chats, pic sharing, video calls etc. Why was Jego a flash in the pan? Many wondered. Some of the insiders said the mainly cause was the disputes between different departments of China Mobile, as Jego was released and promoted by the Hong Kong-headquartered China Mobile International (in Chinese). Another speculation is the app may cannibalize two of its revenue generators, text message and calling services. China Mobile acknowledged that they were suffering the consequences of the rise free messaging apps, and even wanted to charge WeChat, one of the most popular of the likes. Jego actually was revamped from the push-to-talk software designed for volunteers during 2008 Olympic Games, as disclosed by employees from China Mobile.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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