Most would agree that looking back on 2008, the mobile telecom sector in China has really made some major strides.

The major telecom carriers were approved for a massive restructuring. Anti-spam policies were enacted and enforced against even the largest players in the market. Even the Olympics got with it by implementing a number of innovative mobile services to keep the attendees, athletes and press all in sync during the games. 

All this sounded exciting and whilst it did attract the attention of some pioneering advertisers, mainstream brands still didn"t put mobile into the marketing mix.

In 2009, this is all going to change. Branded and SME advertisers will both finally realize that mobile is a great marketing vehicle and start throwing budget that way. Here"s why:

1. All three carriers are now done with restructuring and getting down to business. All three will get 3G licenses by January, and will be pushing 3G networks and services, lowering data costs, offering subsidized handsets, and spending tons of marketing dollars to educate users on new mobile capabilities. 
   
   The infrastructure is getting more robust and more importantly, the users and advertisers are more aware of the potential of mobile data services.
   
    
2. The economic crisis will have a negative impact on marketing spend overall, but this downturn may actually be a plus for mobile. With more limited budgets, advertisers will need to turn to more measurable and higher ROI media, and mobile marketing vendors/media will be a major beneficiary from this trend.
   
   There are many unique qualities of mobile that make it the most cost effective way to build two-way communication with customers and drive traffic to offline fulfillment.
   
    
3. With the iPhone revolution that started in 2007, most handset vendors (even Nokia) now have nice new phones with big screens, touch screen UI, camera, fuller keyboards, GPS and better data services support. 
   
   200 million new handsets will be sold in China in 2009 and the owners of these new phones are all looking for a reason to justify their purchase.
   
   Marketers can leverage all this technology to make rich content and higher levels of interactions. Mobile ads will be more entertaining and engaging.
   
    
4. The strong carrier and government enforcement of anti-spam and consumer protection regulatory policies is making pure SMS or MMS spam much less viable and cost effective as a marketing vehicle. 
   
   This will force marketers to get more creative about how to use the messaging medium as a marketing tool and give greater respect to users" rights. All this will mean less noise in the system and more attention for legitimate marketers working within the system.
   
    
5. The marketing pioneers that started to utilize mobile in their campaigns in 2008 and before (both in China and abroad) have created a large portfolio of case studies that have shown real results that are very attractive and all highly implementable on 2G, 2.5G or 3G environments. 
   
   Pull-based mobile campaigns like SMS search, where users initiate the dialog, have proven to be the most cost effective mobile models and their secret to success is now becoming better understood by their practitioners. The laggards in the market will learn from these pioneers and will confidently put fourth more budget into such campaigns in search of even greater ROI.
   
    
6. Traditional 4A agencies in general have been a little slow in getting on the mobile marketing bandwagon. Most leading players in the space are independent firms focused on the mobile space. 
   
   The recent trend within the international agency groups is one of acquiring independent players in the space and folding them into the group. WPP, Publicis and IPG have all done this and all now have mobile specialized agencies in China within the group helping evangelize the benefits of mobile within the groups and to their clients. This increased mobile knowledge and execution capability will no doubt lead to more major brands adding mobile to their marketing mix.
   
    
7. As the competition heats up within traditional media players to attract advertising budgets in a down environment, many are looking to use mobile to differentiate themselves from the competition.
   
   By integrating mobile elements into TV, print, outdoor or radio, these companies can turn themselves into real-time interactive marketing tools. And what better way to acquire verifiable customer leads than using mobile.
   
   By integrating mobile with traditional media, advertisers can have long term two-way dialog with customers by making a very small adjustment to the media budget.
   
    
8. The sky is falling all over the world, and the Chinese government is trying like mad to make sure that doesn"t happen in China. During these tough economic times, governments are known to spend large amounts of money on stimulus packages to build infrastructure and increase consumer confidence. 
   
   China has already vowed to spend over US$600 billion over the next two years to stimulate its GDP. A key piece of spending will be on infrastructure (i.e. telecom networks) and another will be to stimulate more in-country spending. (i.e. buying phones/homes/cars). 
   
   Since buying homes and cars are still out of reach of many Chinese families, better mobile phones could be a place where we could see strong affects of the governmental incentives. Better and more phones can only mean better ROI for mobile marketers.
        
9. It"s been about two years since the mobile value added service providers (SPs) started being regulated out of business. Only a small fraction of the once highly profitable SPs are still around. 
   
   The unscrupulous actions of those SPs from 2002 to 2007 created a high level of skepticism on the part of consumers and made them very wary of any mobile offer or ad they receive. 
   
   Fortunately the rapid demise of the traditional SP has created a healthier mobile ecosystem and now consumers are more willing to respond mobile ads as long as they come from trusted brands and include a clear value proposition. 
   
   We are now entering a positive spiral where more trusted brands are making more interesting offers via mobile in a more targeted way to more open consumers, leading to higher response rates and increased marketing spend. If this keeps going it"s possible that some day mobile ad spend could overtake online ad spend in China.

The trends above are not in any specific order, but they all work together to make 2009 a year to watch in China, and could become the beginning of a mobile marketing tidal wave that could last many years ahead.