Chinese charging station, an evolving business model

Pictured left, a charging station seen in many Chinese cities, selling power for cell phones. via Lunch over IP in an article on evolving business models.

Over 420 million Chinese have cell phones, but in many areas electricity supply is non reliable. So this company, for a modest fee, lets people plug in their phone and charge the battery

Soon after starting the business, they noticed that while the phone was plugged in, the clients were hanging around, waiting for the battery to be at least partially recharged, and they figured that they could exploit that idle time by displaying advertising and other commercial content on screen placed on top of the booth.

... The hotel, restaurant or shopping mall hosting the charging station has the option of sharing in all the revenue streams or simply taking the charging fees and allowing the operator to take all the advertising related revenues."

Related:

-- Street Charging Services in Uganda - Jan Chipchase reports on shared phone use in Africa and brings to light what we never even think twice about, how easy it is for ur to charge our cell phones and how in some parts of the world, access to power requires major ingenuity.

-- Access to Power, Phone Charging Services - future perfect shows how cell phones get recharged in Soweto.

-- Romania. Five mile walk to recharge phones - Mobile phones have become popular in a remote Romanian village - even though users have to walk five miles to recharge them

emily | 7:40 AM | Mobile Success Explained: Japan, Europe, USA, China |
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