Image Source: Visual China

BEIJING, July 25 (TMTPost) – China Mobile announced that it would terminate the operation of its instant-messaging application Fetion on September 30, 2022, ending services for Fetion users, amid tech giant Tecent's dominance in the instant messaging market.

After the termination of the operation, Fetion users can no longer log into Fetion and access its services. The company advised Fetion users to prepare backups of important information on Fetion. China Mobile also said in the  announcement that the company and Fetion will store information collected from users in accordance with relevant law and regulation and will delete them after the storage time expires. This means Fetion will officially exit the market.

The dominace by Tecent has virtually squeezed instant messaging apps developed by telecom carriers out of market. “There is no more Fetion on the market. In its later stage, Fetion failed to find its use scene and clients to market its services to. It was moving too slowly and missed business opportunities many times,” an insider at China Mobile told DoNews.

There had been rumors about Fetion’s exit from the market in the past two years. In June 2020, Fetion announced that it would suspend the four features on Fetion, which were Notes, Colleague Circle, Smart Report and Service Case, quoting product optimization. One month later, it was reported that Fetion would no longer support information optimization due to business adjustment. More features were disabled on Fetion later as well.

In April 2021, Fetion stopped the registration of new enterprise users while cancelling several user privileges such as meeting quotas and voice call feature. In May and December, Fetion adjusted its features and stopped providing services such as multi-party video conferencing, one-on-one video call and enterprise contact. Fetion’s recent moves suggested that the mobile application was already barely “alive” before the official announcement of exiting from the market.

Fetion is an instant messaging client developed by China Mobile, a Chinese telecommunications company. It allows users to send and receive SMS free of charge between PCs and mobile phones.China Mobile wanted to develop Fetion into a comprehensive communications service which will focus on wireless communications and offer the Internet applications as a complement.