Sina’s Weibo Steps Outside China 新浪微博进军日本市场

By newsdoug on June 29, 2011

Weibo makes misguided move into Japan Since being set free earlier this year by its parent Sina (Nasdaq: SINA), Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, has taken a frenzy of initiatives to leverage its wildly popular service to become a viable stand-alone business and eventually make an IPO. I’m a big fan of Weibo, which in its short 2-year life has become a household word among Chinese youth, but I have my doubts about a new plan to launch its service in Japan with a local partner. (English article; Chinese article) This latest initiative sounds like too many previous ones by Chinese companies, which have all found mostly disappointment in the tough Japanese market. The list of China net firms that have tried and largely failed in Japan is long and includes such big names as Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU), Alibaba.com (HKEx: 1688) and Ctrip (Nasdaq: CTRP), just to name a few. While both are Asian markets, the closed nature of Japan’s market in general and the differing tastes between Chinese and Japanese have made cross-border media tie-ups very difficult to execute successfully. Even China’s online game operators, which should theoretically have lots to offer in a big gaming market like Japan, have found little or no success in their limited forays into that market. But perhaps even more important, Weibo will have to compete with the real Twitter in Japan, as well as any other homegrown players in the market — a strong contrast to its protected home market where the real Twitter is blocked and there is no competition from global players. I don’t know how much of its resources Weibo is spending on its first expansion abroad, but I hope it’s not too much as this effort is almost 100 percent guaranteed to fail and could become a big distraction as Weibo tries to earn its first profits.

Bottom line: Weibo’s first foreign foray into Japan is a bad call, and is bound to drain resources and end in disappointment in the company’s drive towards profitability.

自今年早些时候从新浪<SINA.O>独立出来後，新浪微博采取了一系列积极举措，欲借助其受欢迎度成为一家独立的公司，最终能进行首次公开募股（IPO）。短短两年内，新浪微博就让中国年轻人耳熟能详，我也很喜欢新浪微博。但我个人对其与日本当地企业合作计划存有疑虑。许多中国公司之前都有类似举措，但大多都在严酷的日本市场折戟沉沙。试图进军日本市场但基本以失败告终的中国网络公司包括百度<BIDU.O>、阿里巴巴<1688.HK>和携程<CTRP.O>，而这只不过是我列出来的几家而已。中国和日本同属亚洲，但日本市场整体闭塞的性质及中日民众不同的口味，使得中日媒体合作难以成功。甚至连中国网络游戏运营商打入日本市场的有限努力也鲜有成功案例，虽然在理论上，日本这一规模庞大的游戏市场应不乏商机。而可能更重要的一点是，新浪微博将在日本与正版Twitter和其它本土品牌短兵相接。这与中国国内市场情况截然不同，因为 Twitter在中国被屏蔽，新浪微博在国内不用面对海外同行的竞争。我不知道新浪微博这次首次迈出国门会动用多少资源，但我希望不会太多，因为这一努力几乎注定会失败，并可能成为其争取首次录得盈利道路上的巨大阻碍。

一句话：新浪微博把进军日本作为拓展海外市场的先声并非明智之举，势将浪费许多资源并以失败告终，同时影响公司的盈利计划。