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China Mobile Challenges Skype and WeChat With a New Globally Targeted App

China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941), the world’s biggest mobile telco by user-base, has perhaps been inspired by the worldwide success of WeChat and Skype in launching its own app messaging app for a global audience. Called Jego, it has apps for iPhone and Android but no desktop application. While you can sign up with your phone number apparently anywhere in the world, the new Jego service is actually more like Skype than newer social messaging apps because it has global calling plans. For example, a Jego user could sign up for unlimited calls to Hong Kong for $12 per month after buying credit. There are mobile and landline calling rates (see here) for 20 countries so far, such as $0.02 per minute for landline or mobile calls in Singapore. That makes Jego a lot cheaper than the gouging you’d get from most telcos on global calls – including on China Mobile itself – and makes Jego app comparable in affordability to Skype’s paid features. For those who don’t need calling, China Mobile’s new Jego app supports online messaging for free, and will scan your contacts to find friends who also use the service.

Skype, which is now owned by Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has over half a billion users (when it last revealed numbers under its previous ownership), though it’s not clear how many of those are paying for premium calling. Mobile telcos around the world have been threatened by social messaging apps like Whatsapp, WeChat, Line, Viber, and Nimbuzz for many years, with the threat mounting as new features like video calls get added to some of those apps. WeChat has 195 million active users (and close to 400 million in total) while Line has 160 million registered users this week. While China Mobile’s stealthy launch of Jego won’t really solve any of that, it at least puts the company in contention to wrest back some of those global chatters and perhaps turn them into paying customers.

(Hat-tip to TheNextWeb for spotting this)