The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on October 16. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Lenovo (HKEx: (992) To Set Up Internet-Focused Smart Device Firm In China (Businesswire)
Wanda Group Travel Unit Buys Zhejiang Everbright Travel Agency (Chinese article)
Integrated Circuit Investment Fund Set Up, Led By Tsinghua Unigroup (Chinese article)
TAL Education (NYSE: XRS) Leads $70 Mln Funding For US Minerva Project (PRNewswire)
Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU) Targets 10 Pct Mobile Search Share By Year-End (English article)
US-listed Chinese companies have made a flurry of strategic moves on Wall Street over the long October 1 holiday, with former high-flyers Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU) and 58.com (NYSE: WUBA) taking steps to prop up their sagging share prices. The correction now taking place is long overdue, following huge run-ups in New York-traded Chinese stocks over the last year and a half. Still, the sell-off doesn’t bode too well for car rental firm eHiCar Services, which has just become the first major Chinese firm to file for a Wall Street IPO following the blockbuster listing for Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) last month. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on October 8. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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China’s CIC, AVIC End Talks To Acquire Aircraft Leaser Avolon: Sources (English article)
Hilton (NYSE: HLT) Sells NY’s Waldorf Astoria to Anbang Insurance For $1.95 Bln (Businesswire)
Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ) Gives Update On Japanese Utility-Scale Pipeline (PRNewswire)
Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU) Announces $200 Mln Share Repurchase Plan (PRNewswire)
The Rent-A-Car Of China: eHi Car Services Files For $100 Mln US IPO (English article)
It’s rare that one issue dominates the blogosphere among the many tech executives who like to tweet about their companies on their microblog accounts. But the past week saw one such debate occur around a spat between 2 old friends in the smartphone space. In one corner was Luo Yonghao, a well-known English teacher who has recently moved into the highly competitive smartphone space. In the other was Wang Ziru, a self-styled gadget critic who has become quite influential. As many might guess, the debate centered on a recent critical review by Wang for Luo’s newly launched smartphone model under his Smartisan brand.
While the Luo-Wang spat kept the blogosphere well supplied with musings from a wide range of tech executives, a few other tidbits also provided some intriguing hints of things to come at other leading tech names. A couple of posts from Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU) CEO Zhou Hongyi suggested that a major restructuring could be on the way; and separate musings from an executive at e-commerce giant JD.com (Nasdaq: JD) also hinted at potential similar moves. Read Full Post…
Corporate culture is seldom on public display for most of China’s top tech firms, even though such culture often determines the success or failure of a company and is well known to industry insiders. The internal cultures at PC giant Lenovo (HKEx: 922) and smartphone sensation Xiaomi were the subject of chatter in the blogosphere this past week, as executives from inside and outside the companies discussed the less visible side of these well-known names. In Lenovo’s case, the talk came from a company executive herself, on the release of her new book. The latter saw a couple of outside executives comment on less attractive elements behind the inside culture at China’s hottest smartphone maker.
Meantime, the viral “Ice Bucket Challenge” was also all over the tech sphere, with nearly every major executive mentioning the topic on his personal microblog. Many also took the plunge that raises money for a rare neurological disease, but has also been derided as little more than a publicity stunt. Read Full Post…
Sometimes reporting on China’s high-tech industries feels like being trapped in a world where the same things happen again and again, as Beijing and companies repeatedly make the same mistakes. The nation is famous for its boom-bust cycles fueled by companies piling into the latest hot products, leading to price wars and battles for market share before most players go bankrupt or leave the space. A similar phenomenon has occurred in computer operating system (OS) space, where China has tried repeatedly to foster development of products that can supplant Microsoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) dominant Windows OS and more recently Google’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) popular Android OS for smartphones. Read Full Post…
Rising online search star Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU) has reached a major milestone, winning 30 percent of China’s traffic for the first time just 2 years after the launch of its So.com search engine. Despite that huge achievement, Qihoo’s newly released quarterly results show it’s having a harder time monetizing its search business, which may partly explain why its shares are down 20 percent since a peak in the spring. From the perspective of an observer, these latest signs still look quite encouraging and might even prompt a Qihoo skeptic like myself to consider buying the company’s stock at its current price. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on August 23-25. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Regulator Says Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) Seeks To End Anti-Trust Probe (English article)
US Game Designer Ouya Scores Xiaomi Partnership To Take Games To China (English article)
I generally try to avoid writing too much about smartphones in this space, since the blogosphere often seems like little more than a soap box for high-tech execs to hype their latest products. But a series of exchanges between some of the industry’s top executives provided a fascinating snapshot of the current price wars now gripping China, as companies try to undercut each other to see who can offer the cheapest models. Meantime, some of those same executives were poking fun at the recent news that a famous Chinese comedian was planning to enter the space, again reflecting how overheated the market has become.
Elsewhere on a more solemn note, executives from some of China’s leading tech firms were also paying tribute in the blogosphere to Robin Williams, praising the US comedian for his ability to make other people laugh despite his own depression that ended with his suicide last week. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on August 16-18. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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US Approves Sale Of IBM (NYSE: IBM) x86 Server Unit To Lenovo (HKEx: 992) (Businesswire)
Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Begins Storing Users’ Personal Data On Servers In China (English article)
Top executives from software security maker Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU) and struggling game operator The9 (Nasdaq: NCTY) were getting chummy in the blogosphere last week, filling the airwaves with chatter as they prepared to announce a new alliance at the country’s top gaming trade show in Shanghai. Meantime, executives from PC giant Lenovo (HKEx: 992) took time out from their usual tech and marketing chatter to make some low-key criticism against the government, including a microblog post in defense of the beleaguered McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) as it grapples with one of its worst-ever food safety scandals in China. Read Full Post…
