The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on March 19. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) To Close Beijing R&D Center (Chinese article)
Bottom line: The Baidu-led union of Uber and Yidao in China looks like a smart move for all 3 parties, but could come under strain due to internal and external factors that could ultimately lead Baidu to buy out the venture.
Yidao, Uber to merge in China
China’s rapidly evolving paid car services realm is creating some strange marriages, bringing together e-commerce leader Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) and social networking giant Tencent (HKEx: 700) last month with a merger of their taxi app services. Now we’re getting word of another unusual marriage, this time as leading search engine Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) steers domestic heavyweight Yidao into a union with global giant Uber.
This latest deal would come just 3 months after Baidu made a large investment in Uber, reportedly worth $600 million, and would give Baidu a solid foothold in the fast-growing market for Internet-based car hiring services. China’s other 2 Internet majors, Tencent and Alibaba, already had major Internet hired car assets through their strategic stakes in industry leaders Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache, respectively, which surprised the industry when they announced a plan to merge last month. (previous post) Read Full Post…
Bottom line: New developments in the break-up of Shanda Group are likely to result in the successful sales of its games and literature units in the next 6 months.
Cloudary pools resources with Tencent literarture
The slow-motion break-up of former online entertainment superstar Shanda Group continues in 2 different headlines, with word that its core online literature and gaming businesses are set to be taken over by Internet giant Tencent (HKEx: 700) and a couple of major brokerages, respectively, in separate deals. Both of these deals look quite exciting, as they involve the entry of serious-looking buyers who could ultimately use their acquired Shanda assets to create some interesting and potentially competitive new companies in their respective spaces. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on March 17. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Hunan TV’s Online Video Platform Mango TV Lands 1 Bln Yuan Series A – Source (English article)
Tencent (HKEx: 700), Shanda Literature Units Join To Form Online Reading Group (Chinese article)
NZ’s Fonterra Buys Stake In China’s Beingmate (Shenzhen: 002570) For $553 Mln (English article)
Legend Group Plans July IPO, To Raise Up To $3 Bln – Report (Chinese article)
Consortium to Acquire Shanda Games (Nasdaq: GAME) Adds New Members (PRNewswire)
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on March 13. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Online Ratings and Group Buy Site Dianping Wins $850 Mln Series E – Sources (English article)
Tencent (HKEx: 700) Opens TMall Digital Store, Still Inaccessible On WeChat (Chinese article)
ReneSola (NYSE: SOL) Looks To Exit EU Solar Settlement Agreement (Chinese article)
Smartisan Enters Low-End Smartphones With 1,000 Yuan Model – Source (Chinese article)
Homeinns (Nasdaq: HMIN) Reports Q4 And Full Year 2014 Financial Results (PRNewswire)
Bottom line: Baidu’s temporary halting of updates for its mobile operating system is likely to become permanent, and looks like a smart move as it focuses on more efficient ways to boost its mobile market share.
Baidu stops supporting Yun OS
In a move that seemed inevitable, Internet search leader Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) has put the brakes on its 3-year-old mobile operating system (OS) that was sapping big resources with little or no chance for long-term success. The move comes just a month after Baidu trumpeted the growing contribution of mobile revenue to its overall business, surpassing traditional desktop PC search revenue for the first time in December. There’s no mention in Baidu’s latest quarterly report of how much of its mobile search revenue came from smartphones equipped with its self-developed mobile operating system, Yun OS, but I suspect the answer was “very little”. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Apple Watch should debut strongly in China thanks to extensive partnerships with top Chinese retailers and app makers, giving the product instant relevance in the local market.
Apple Watch coming to China
Global gadget leader Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has been in the local tech headlines nonstop these last few days, wowing Chinese fans with a customized version of its new Apple Watch that will debut in China next month as part of its global launch. Pundits are mixed on how the watch will fare in China, but I expect it should do quite well thanks to inclusion of China’s hottest apps together with the company’s own strong reputation for well-designed, cutting-edge products.
In a separate but probably related Apple headline, media are also reporting a new smart air conditioner that the company has developed with local appliance leader Haier (HKEx: 1169) will also debut in April. Apple first announced this alliance last June as part of a broader smart device alliance under the name of HomeKit, and I suspect the Apple Watch will be usable with these new air conditioners. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: China Mobile’s new unnamed social networking platform based on RCS technology has a 50-50 chance of posing a serious challenge to WeChat due to the many advantages it will enjoy from its China Mobile connections.
New China Mobile platform to challenge WeChat
After 2 years of standing on the sidelines as Tencent’s (HKEx: 700) WeChat rapidly stole its text messaging business, leading telco China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) is finally preparing to fight back with its own competing product offering, according to ZTE (HKEx: 763; NYSE: CHL), which is supplying networking equipment for the product. ZTE’s cloud computing chief Zhu Jinyun told me the new product will be an entire platform for social networking and other services based on rich communications suite (RCS), a technology developed by a global telecoms association.
I’m admittedly not too familiar with RCS, though some web searches showed it’s a platform that allows for a wide range of functions, from one-on-one instant messaging to group chats, file transfers, IP voice calls and location-based services (LBS). Anyone looking at that list will instantly recognize that many of those features are already present on WeChat, whose popularity has rapidly siphoned texting business from China Mobile and the nation’s other telcos. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Beijing needs to roll out new rules allowing limited foreign investment in sensitive areas or risk seeing private companies like Ant Financial suffer from slower growth and artificially low valuations.
foreign investment bans need new approach
Alibaba-affiliated (NYSE: BABA) Ant Financial has been on a financial roller coaster ride over the past month, as it tries to raise billions of dollar to fund its growth en route to an IPO that will offer Chinese investors one of their first plays into the private banking sector. Some reports have said the new funding could value Ant, whose largest asset is the Alipay electronic payments service, at up to $50 billion. But others have put the figure as low as $30 billion, reflecting the intense negotiations taking place. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Mobile data usage will grow by triple-digit amounts this year as telcos boost 4G promotions, while box office growth will start to slow and the ongoing decline in traditional SMS text messaging will accelerate.
Hongbao chatter fuels mobile data surge
The usual rush of Lunar New Year-related data is coming in, painting a mixed picture for traditional and new media. The clear winner in the mix is new media, whose surging popularity helped to fuel a 70 percent jump in mobile data traffic over the holiday period. Traditional movies also performed well, with China’s box office rising 36 percent during the period. It will also come as no surprise that the big loser over the holiday was traditional SMS text messages, whose volume plunged by 25 percent. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: The huge success of Tencent’s hongbao promotions over the Lunar New Year reflects the growing dominance of WeChat, which could marginalize other mobile services unless regulators step in to create a more level playing field.
WeChat clobbers Alibaba in red envelope promotions
I remember a time not long ago when we China tech reporters used to write annual stories about the number of people who sent billions of simple Lunar New Year text greetings over their mobile phones. Those days now seem like a distant memory, and new data from Tencent’s (HKEx: 700) WeChat and Alibaba’s (NYSE: BABA) Alipay are showing just how small those earlier figures were, even though they seemed impressive at the time.
But the real story in this new tide of “red envelope grabbing wars”, known as qiang hongbao in Chinese, is the huge victory for Tencent over Alibaba, which I’ll describe shortly. That victory owes directly to the huge popularity of WeChat, which saw many of its hundreds of millions of users glued to their smartphones for much of the Lunar New Year while they ignored everything else. Instead of the usual New Year activities, they spent much of the holiday trying to “grab” millions of yuan in gift money being doled out over WeChat by their friends, bosses and also by Tencent and Alibaba themselves. Read Full Post…
