While Baidu.com is recruiting talents for its newly-rumored instant messaging service, China Telecom Shanghai has already taken a lead in launching its new IM product "Wang Xin".

Similar to other operators' IM products, China Telecom's "Wang Xin" can realize instant text communications between a computer and such terminals as mobile phones and Little Smart.

At present, there are several IM providers in China, including Tencent and MSN which have been regarded as the pioneers of the industry. Statistics show that China's IM market has reached CNY4.57 billion and it will amount to CNY8.76 billion in 2009.

Other Chinese telecom service providers China Mobile, China Unicom and China Netcom each previously launched Fetion, UMS, CNC MAXIM, respectively, as instant messaging applications for users.