JPush: a Push Notification-based Business Opportunity in China
May 16, 2014 Leave a comment
JPush: a Push Notification-based Business Opportunity in China
by Tracey Xiang – May 9, 2014
Notification push for apps has disrupted the mass message services ran by telecom operators in China. For years Chinese operators have been charging every single message sent by businesses to their customers which could be in millions. That cost, to businesses who have developed mobile apps, now has been reduced to zero through push services like JPush.
JPush is a push notification service that helps Android, iOS and Windows Phone apps push notifications to their users. JPush’s basic services are for free. Apart from unlimited number of notifications, the free offerings also include an analytics service that shows metrics such as how many users have opened a pushed message and how long they stay on an app after they click open it through the message.
Even better, app owners are able to push notifications to targeted users based on gender, age group, location, smartphone model and so on — it, of course, depends on how much information users allow an app to access.
Premium services are also available for businesses who want to send rich media content or dedicated technical support. JPush now has global brands who have well-established presence in China as paying customers.
But to Upas Wang, CEO of JPush, a better business opportunity is in all the data the company has been collecting. Similar to other mobile app-facing services, JPush will be able to offer analytics or cross-promotional marketing service when having a large number of apps using its services. It now has had 50,000 apps.
JPush cannot be the only one in this business. Getui is its direct competitor that was founded around the same time with JPush. Other big Chinese Internet companies, including Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba’s Umeng, are offering push notification services to apps who use their developer-facing services. But JPush believes apps, especially those run businesses, will use independent push services as what big companies want to offer is just the function while independent ones are motivated to create more offerings such as analytics service.
What’s interesting and differentiating JPush from others is it is powering some newly-emerged smart gadgets. For some with small screens or simply functions, push notification is one of the most important features. If JPush will be able to collect user behavior data from those devices, the analytic results will be very useful. Chinese search giant Baidu has built a platform for smart devices, offering them cloud storage and other services, in order to have them upload user data there and eventually generate analytic results.
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