Internationalisation Stage and Entry Modes of Instant Messaging Firms

With the prosperity of IT industry, the focus of many internationalization services studies have been on software and related products. However, due to the newness of the technology, little research has been conducted on the internationalization of Instant Messaging (IM) firms. This study aims to address this gap by examining five cases: AIM, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Skype, and QQ. The key findings indicate that these firms do not comply well with the internationalization stage theories: (1) Big players tend to choose strategically important markets as the first choice; (2) Small firms selected more diversified markets, and market potential seems to be a significant criterion to be assessed when they going into global markets. (3) E-marketing is one preferred entry mode by small IM firms, while joint venture and partnership are the popular and primary for big players.