Bottom line: Caffebene could become the first big victim of an unsustainable Chinese coffee explosion, while KFC’s new lawsuit against rumor mongers reflects one of the many challenges it will face as it tries to rebuild its China image.
Caffebene China chief quits
A couple of new China fast-food headlines reflect the rapidly changing environment, as traditional players like KFC (NSYE: YUM) try to move upscale to attract consumers who now have many more choices than they did a decade ago. The upscale move has seen a massive explosion in premium coffee shops, which is behind one headline that has South Korean giant Caffebene showing signs of distress following its recent aggressive China expansion.
Meantime, the other more humorous headline has KFC suing 3 companies for spreading false rumors about its products on social media, including one saying it uses chickens that have 8 legs. On a more serious note, this story comes as KFC struggles to regain its skidding China momentum, and shows that Beijing isn’t the only one frustrated over the kind of rumor-mongering that regularly happens on popular services like Weibo (Nasdaq: WB) and Tencent’s (HKEx: 700) WeChat. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on March 28-30. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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HP (NYSE: HPQ) To Sell 51 Pct Of H3C Unit To Tsinghua Unigroup, Seeks $5 Bln (Chinese article)
Geely (HKEx: 175) Invests 250 Mln Pounds On British New Energy Taxi Plant (Chinese article)
Gome (HKEx: 493) To Open 100,000 Microstores On WeChat (English article)
China Construction Bank (HKEx: 939) Announces Annual 2014 Results (HKEx announcement)
Telsa (Nasdaq: TSLA) To Localize Production In China In 3 Years: Elon Musk (English article)
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: 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: 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…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on February 26. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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China’s Postal Savings Bank Plans $25 Bln IPO: China Daily (English article)
NetEase (Nasdaq: NTES) Expands Global Presence With First HQ In The West (Businesswire)
WeChat Speeds Holiday Cash Gifts With Shakes, Red Envelopes (English article)
China Drops Leading Technology Brands For State Purchases (English article)
SMIC (HKEx: 981) In Talks To Acquire South Korea’s Dongbu HiTek – Sources (Chinese article)
The Super Bowl may be the most watched TV program in the US, but it’s still relatively unknown in China due to the lack of popularity of American football. But the sport gained at least a few Chinese fans with its latest airing, as top executives from the likes of PC giant Lenovo (HKEx: 992) and online video firm LeTV (Shenzhen: 300104) tuned in to watch this year’s match-up that saw the New England Patriots defeat the Seattle Seahawks.
Meantime, an executive from the struggling Sina Weibo (Nasdaq: WB) was busy criticizing rival Tencent (HKEx: 700) for the latter’s freeze-out of several major Internet firms from its hugely popular WeChat instant messaging platform. Finally, we’ll end this week’s round-up of tech executive chatter with buzz that hints a former online literature pioneer may be preparing to emerge from a forced retirement, as he returns after a tough business battle of the sort that’s quite common in China. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: China’s Internet companies should create a code of conduct to ensure fair competition, and the regulator should step in when they abuse their market dominance to promote their other products.
WeChat freezes out Alibaba
Internet giant Tencent (HKEx: 700) was in the headlines for much last week, as reports circulated that it had cleansed its popular WeChat mobile messaging platform of several services from rival Alipay, the popular electronic payments unit of rival Alibaba (NYSE: BABA). Tencent certainly isn’t alone in this kind of “freeze out” behavior, which has become a unique characteristic in China’s brutally competitive Internet landscape. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on February 4. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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