Thousands of people have signed up to a newly-launched mobile phone version newspaper.

The southern city's dominant media group, Shenzhen Press Group, had already notched up 7,680 subscribers by 4 pm yesterday after setting up the service on Monday.

It was launched in conjunction with the Shenzhen branch of China Mobile, the nation's largest mobile phone operator.

Sun Weinan, editor-in-chief of the new mobile newspaper, told China Daily he believed the number of subscribers could reach about 4 million by the time the free trial operation ended at the end of March.

"Of the 10 million China Mobile users in Shenzhen, about 8 million users are able to access the MMS (multi-media messaging) service. We optimistically hope at least half of these users can try the mobile newspaper service," said Sun.

The mobile newspaper is sent to subscribers daily at about 8:30 am by MMS. It offers a range of news, including politics, business and technology, culture, entertainment and sports and current affairs.

As well as stories taken from the major newspapers under the media group, a team of reporters and editors will work throughout the night to ensure the messages sent to mobile phones carry the latest news.

Sun said: "That's the part that the traditional newspapers cannot cover, but the mobile newspaper readers can exclusively enjoy."

Subscribers can even interact with editors and other readers by messaging their comments.

The newspaper "publisher" hopes to eventually upgrade the service so that users can receive the latest weather forecasts, city traffic updates, job vacancies and shopping discounts.

Subscriber Yan Min, a public relations worker, said the new service was very convenient and informative.

"It helps me to go through the news and find the one I think most interesting, which I can read in more details in the actual newspaper," she said.

However, she added she was undecided on whether she would continue to subscribe to the service when charges are introduced from April 1.

China Mobile will charge 8 yuan (US$0.99) for the monthly subscriber and 1 yuan for each article.

Tang Li, a journalist with local newspaper Shenzhen Daily, said the service would be more helpful if it could send out the latest news throughout the day. "It would be ideal, but the costs must be very high to do that," she said.

Since the country's first mobile newspaper was launched by China Mobile and Nanfang Daily, a leading newspaper in South China's Guangdong Province, last July, the new service is becoming more popular nationwide.

(China Daily January 12, 2006)