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Tag Archives: China Mobile
China Mobile latest Business & Financial news from Doug Young, the Expert on Chinese Companies, (former Journalist and Chief editor at Reuters in Asia)
Bottom line: After a slow start, China’s VNO program is showing signs of starting to gain momentum and could start to pose a meaningful challenge to the country’s big 3 mobile carriers by the end of next year.
VNOs move slowly but steadily
China telecoms regulator has just released some new data on the country’s virtual network operator (VNO) program a year after the first service launched, aimed at providing some competition for the country’s big 3 state-run telcos. While some observers are saying they’re disappointed at the data that shows China had 8.2 million VNO subscribers at the end of last month, I would actually take a contrarian view and say I find the figures somewhat encouraging.
Frankly speaking, I wasn’t at all confident that the VNO program would attract many subscribers at all. That’s because the program relied on cooperation from China’s big 3 telcos, which were required to sell capacity on their networks to these virtual operators, who would then sell service under their own brand names. The big and obvious problem lies in conflict of interest, since the big state-run telcos would hardly want to support these private companies that could quickly become major new competitors. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on July 30. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) Cloud Unit Sets Sights on Amazon in $1 Bln Global Push (English article)
Giant Interactive Seeks 100 Bln Yuan Valuation in China Re-Listing Plan (Chinese article)
ICBC (HKEx: 1398) VP Zheng Wanchun May Become New Minsheng Bank Chief (Chinese article)
Departing China Mobile (HKEx: 941) Workers Complain of No Raises in 10 Years (Chinese article)
China’s Great Short Seller Suddenly Turns Bullish (English article)
Bottom line: Internet-based financial services should continue to boom over the next few years, while a rapid decline in microblogging could start to ease now that Weibo has consolidated its position as market leader.
Weibo consolidates microblogging market
China’s Internet data tracker has just released a slew of figures for the first half of the year, painting a rosy picture for companies like Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) and others that are moving aggressively into online financial services. At the other end of the spectrum, microblogging continued its rapid decline, as marginal players retreated and industry leader Weibo (Nasdaq: WB) consolidated its position.
On a broader level, I was surprised to see the growth rate in overall Internet users slow sharply in the first half of this year, even as the number of people accessing the web over their mobile phones continued to post strong growth. I also took the time to tally up the subscriber totals for China’s big 3 telcos in the first half of the year, which shows that the dominant China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) gained share on its 2 smaller rivals as it aggressively promoted its year-old 4G service. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: China Mobile’s latest salary reduction plan underscores that it and its 2 peers are just big state-run companies that act on orders from Beijing, with little to differentiate them from one another.
China Mobile slashes salaries
I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with China’s big 3 state-run telcos, partly because they lack any kind of originality or inspiration. About the only thing they know how to do is heed the call of Beijing, or sometimes protest orders they don’t like. Another thing they’re good at is launching promotions to try to steal business from each other in their highly protected market. But no one will ever accuse any of the trio or originality or innovation.
With that introduction, I’ll be quite direct and say that the latest news that leading telco China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) plans to slash salaries company-wide is just the same old behavior in response to a central government directive. That kind of directive comes regularly from Beijing, which recently has grown frustrated at China Mobile and its 2 peers, China Telecom (HKEx: 728; NYSE: CHA) and China Unicom (HKEx: 762; NYSE: CHU), for failing to innovate despite their control of the world’s largest telecoms market. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Apple could lose its crown as China’s best-selling smartphone brand by the end of the year, as it faces growing competition from domestic names looking for a bigger slice of the high-end market.
China loses crown as top iPhone market
Global smartphone pioneer Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has just released its latest quarterly results, which as usual contain very selective bits of information about the China market that are revealing but make it difficult to draw very strong conclusions. One emerging trend appears to have Apple coming under growing threat from Chinese brands eying the higher end of the market. That’s my quick conclusion based on Apple’s admission that China fell to second place among its global markets in its latest reporting quarter, after briefly grabbing the top spot from the US during the previous quarter.
Of course everything is relative, and Apple still looks quite strong in China with iPhone sales in its Greater China market up an impressive 87 percent in its latest reporting quarter. (English article) But that said, there’s really no reason that the US should have retaken the top spot from China during the quarter, since both countries now receive their new iPhones at roughly the same time. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Oriental Pearl’s new purchase of a stake in a set-top box and TV maker is part of a broader series of recent moves that could help position it to emerge as a viable rival to China’s private online video companies.
SMG buys into TV maker MTC
State-run broadcaster Shanghai Media Group (SMG) is wasting no time telling the world who it sees as its main rivals, with word that the company is buying a major stake in a TV and set-top box maker after completing an overhaul of its own digital TV assets. Anyone who follows the industry will know that the high-flying LeTV (Shenzhen: 300104) appears to be the major target of this new SMG tie-up, which is seeing the company’s newly launched Oriental Pearl (Shanghai: 600637) digital video unit purchase a major stake in a Shenzhen-listed company called MTC (Shenzhen: 002429) for 2.2 billion yuan ($350 million). Read Full Post…
Bottom line: A probe against WeChat in Taiwan is likely to see its local offices shut down and Tencent evicted, reflecting the many challenges Chinese tech companies will face as they try to expand abroad.
WeChat faces Taiwan eviction
Taiwan may share many cultural traits with China, but its government certainly doesn’t seem to have much love for Chinese technology. The list of Chinese firms running into trouble on the island has just gained a new member, with word that Tencent’s (HKEx: 700) hugely popular WeChat is facing eviction from Taiwan for possibly violating local investment rules.
This brewing setback is interesting mostly for political reasons, and also because it reflects the troubles that WeChat has faced in its fledgling global expansion. From a practical perspective, Taiwan looks like an easy market for Chinese tech companies due to the shared language and culture. But the fact is that Taiwanese preferences are often quite different from China’s, and in this case the reality is that Japan-leaning Taiwanese far favor rival Japanese product Line to WeChat. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: China’s traditional broadcasters need to move quickly to forge new, meaningful partnerships with private companies outside the media space, or risk being overtaken by new media rivals.
Mango TV ties with China Mobile
Two of China’s leading regional broadcasters have been in the headlines these last 2 weeks, as they scramble to transform themselves to compete with a new generation of web-based private companies that are rapidly stealing their viewers and advertising dollars. Both stories involve new tie-ups with industry outsiders, reflecting the need to bring in new expertise to help these state-run broadcasters leverage digital and web-based technologies that will dominate the media landscape of the future.
The first big story came 2 weeks ago, when Shanghai Media Group (SMG) signed a landmark deal with e-commerce titan Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) to develop a financial news and information service that could someday take on the likes of global giants like Bloomberg and Reuters (NYSE: TRT). The second came last week, when media reported that Hunan Satellite TV had raised 1 billion yuan ($162 million) in the first private funding round for its fledgling paid video service Mango TV. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: China’s securities regulator should reopen its plan for an international board amid the current stock market rally, which would make big international brands like Imax available to average local investors.
Imax China files for HK IPO
A premier global movie brand slipped away from China’s stock exchanges last week, when the Chinese unit of big-screen superstar Imax (NYSE: IMAX) disclosed it plans to make an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong. The case brought back memories of a nearly forgotten plan by China for an international board for such listings in Shanghai, aimed at making big foreign names accessible to Chinese investors.
That plan was conceived more than 5 years ago, but later got put on hold as China focused on launching the Nasdaq-style ChiNext board in Shenzhen. It then got indefinitely shelved when China’s stock markets languished in the 4 years after that. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: China’s largest corporations need to face stiffer regulatory penalties to ensure their compliance with Beijing rules, as part of a campaign to clean up the country’s business climate.
More strictness needed in Alibaba, telco cases
Some of China’s leading high-tech firms were in the headlines last week for foot-dragging in response to government calls to change their business practices, in separate cases that show why Beijing needs to get more aggressive about enforcing its rules among big domestic corporations.
The first case saw e-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) sued by one of the world’s top makers of luxury goods for allegedly refusing to clean up its popular sites of trafficking in pirated goods. The second saw critics accuse China’s 3 major mobile carriers of taking largely empty steps to improve their mobile data pricing and speeds, after Beijing called on them to take such action. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Beijing should be commended for its recent program to open up telecoms services to private investment, and should consider accelerating the program and allowing in foreign participation.
Beijing injects competition into telecoms services
A campaign to bring private money into China’s telecoms sector was in the headlines twice over the last 2 weeks, reflecting a broader Beijing campaign to inject new life into traditional sectors like banking and energy that are now dominated by large and often slow-moving state-run firms.
One headline came late last week, when media reported that 20 million new phone numbers would be injected into a year-old program allowing private companies to sell mobile service. That followed even bigger news a week earlier, when media said the telecoms regulator hoped to allow private investors to build domestic telecoms network infrastructure for the first time. Read Full Post…
