China Mobile has teamed up with ZTE to develop rich communications services (RCS) to challenge Tencent's WeChat OTT messaging business.
China Mobile and ZTE will collaborate on the development of RCS facilities, the South China Morning Post reported.
ZTE expects the RCS service to be a legitimate challenger to WeChat's OTT dominance. The RCS platform enables the delivery of voice, SMS, instant messaging and files across devices.
Previous attempts to build a rival to WeChat, such as China Telecom's collaboration with Netease to launch the Yixin service, have not been successful. But ZTE vice president Fang Hui told the paper that the company is confident that the RCS collaboration with China Mobile will be different.
China Mobile's scale may help overcome the hurdles faced by Yixin – the operator has over 100 million LTE subscribers and is aiming for 250 million by the end of the year.
China Mobile also recently revealed it has applied for an FDD LTE license in case it faces a shortage of TD-LTE spectrum.