Fortune has an article on Wang Jianzhou, CEO of China Mobile, and the recent moves of that company in China. It mentions China Mobile’s mobile content efforts—“a dizzying array of non-voice services including Internet search, ringtones, and music downloads. It has struck content deals with domestic and foreign providers, including News Corp, MTV Networks, Yahoo, and the National Basketball Association, and transmits 1.2 billion text messages every day”—although this is only in the main cities and runs on old networks. China Mobile is keen to roll out 3G networks, but the government is influencing it to use the home-grown TD-SCDMA standard, which is still under doubt in much of the industry. The government also wants it to make overseas acquisitions, although Jianzhou seems to be doing his best to avoid overpaying for companies (something that worries investors, which own 25 percent of China Mobile).

It’s a good insight into the man running the largest mobile phone company in the world, but the most interesting bits are about the rural expansion, and how China’s rural poor are using mobile phones. From wild mushroom pickers seeking the time to sell which offers the best price to yak herders communicating with their family a day’s hike away, mobile phones are being used for communication much more than expected, and deployment costs are lower than expected so its increasing profits: In 2006 China Mobile reported net income of $6.3 billion, up 24 percent year-on-year, on sales of $35.9 billion.