China Web Updates

UC Released UC Paradise, an Open Platform For Mobile

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 10:46:43 +0800

UC Mobile, the owner of the most popular browser for mobile UC Browser, has released a new product called UC Paradise aiming to be an open platform for mobile. UC Browser claims over 100million users and 50billion monthly pv and over 400million downloads. The company hopes UC Paradise will be the game-changing product in Chinese mobile industry because as an open platform it for the first allows third parties to build their own applications on it sharing UC Browser’s millions’ users. In other words, UC wants its UC Paradise to be like Facebook’s open platform, but for mobile.

UC Paradise provides three key features: social networks, location-based service (LBS) and Flash games center. Third parties are welcome to develop applications (especially Flash games) on UC Paradise platform, with the access to UC’s huge user base and even users profile including location. Currently, several popular Flash games developed by third-parties have been operated on UC Paradise. As for the revenue-share, Li Mingyuan, VP of UC Product says, “At this stage, revenue is not UC Paradise’s focus. I can guarantee third parties would not be disappointed.”

Currently UC Paradise (http://u.uc.cn) can be running on all Symbian S60, Java, Android, PPC and M8 version of UC Browsers. For iPhone users, since it’s not Flash supported, users can only play wap-based games. The most controversial part is that UC Paradise can also scan contact list on user’s mobile phone and auto-link them to their real-life friends who are also registered. Although UC leaves this function as an option, some users still complains UC might leak users’ privacy.

As the company says, UC Paradise will be the most important product in next several years. When UC Browser first enters the market, most users love it because it can save lots on the bandwidth and also load the page faster as all web pages are optimized for mobile device. However, with the fast development of 3G networks (cost is also gradually cut down) and more and more smart phone like Android phones and iPhone in the market, UC Browser for the long term will be losing its core advantage. On the other hand, UC is also facing a tough competition from Tencent which has its own mobile browser (UC also complains that some ideas/features in Tencent’s mobile browser are copied from UC Browser). To be sustainable and reinforce its market leader position, Open is best strategy for the company.

Need to mention that, UC has also started its expanding to international market, especially south-east Asia market. UC Browser is now available in Russian, Vietnamese and Indonesian.

Tencent Is Opening As Promised, Further Thoughts on Chinese Style Openness

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 03:02:30 +0800

The mysterious Tencent, has released its probably the first open API today, API for Tencent’s microblogging platform. So that’s cool as Pony Ma has kept his promise: Tencent would be open within six month, at least he has taken the first step. If you know well about how Twitter grows so fast, you must understand the API is the obvious strategy. So I would assume you don’t need me to tell how good the API is.

As an big fan of Open technology and Open concept, I have been monitoring the evolution of open platform in China since the very beginning. The good news in local web industry is that more and more people (especially high level decision-makers) have reckoned open is the future, but on the other hand, some Chinese philosophy behind the Open concept might be more complicated than you thought. I am not saying it’s wrong, but it’s Interesting.

Open is also a competition

This is easy to explain. Basically, if your competitor has launched an ‘open’ platform, no matter if it’s necessary for you or if you have fully understood the value of opening or the market is mature for it yet. You must build up your open platform quickly. Recalling in 2008, 10 leading Social Networks announced together the support to OpenSocial, it turned out in the end most of those social networks just did it for PR purpose. Sina launched its open platform for its Weibo (microblogging) last month. As we have been covering a lot about Sina’s ambition and also given the fact that Weibo is so hot in China, Tencent’s first open platform is chosen on its microblogging service, surely is a must.

Service-oriented or Money-oriented

Open platform of course needs be monetized in the end. But look at Facebook, Twitter, when they got its open platform/API up, I don’t think they looked at money at that stage. It’s to sort of service-oriented. In China, the open API for some reason, is inevitably linked with $$$. The same example, end of day few of those social networks which supported OpenSocial were serious about the open platform. The reason is simple, OpenSocial API gives a good technical solution, but little about how to make money. And even more interesting, the thing could go from one extreme to the other. Instead of talking about monetizing the open platform, in China we could prepare rmb 20million fund for developers, which is super cool.

When you see all these mingled together, is it exciting as well as a bit strange?

Pony Ma Promises Tencent Will Be Open Within 6 Months

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:13:19 +0800

Tencent, is the biggest Internet company and probably the most mysterious company in China. Suffering the more and more complains from local companies which saying Tencent is killing the innovation in Chinese web as it strategically copies almost everything, Pony Ma, the CEO of Tencent, today said to the audience in a conference, Tencent wil be open within 6 months. And he also emphasized that the next 6 month will be very important for Tencent as it is the transition period towards an open company.

Pony said the first open product would QZone, Tencent’s social network; and even for QQ, Pony promises it will be open to the third-parties applications too.

Tencent has been trying to be more open, Pony said, but he admitted that the progress was slow. The battle against 360, along with the resulting pressure from local media/social buzz trigger him to make the decision to speed up the open strategy. “We wanted to do everything on our own before, but now we have realized that a great enterprise should not be always like this, we should allow third-parties to work together with us.” Pony said.

As a sign to further open, Tencent recently launched its so called Tencent Open Platform Directory to demonstrate its effort. The directory includes five open platfors, open.tenpay.com which is for Tencent’s payment gateway; pop.paipai.com for its e-commerce site; open.soso.com for its web search service; opensns.qq.com for its social network and open.t.qq.com for Tencent’s microblogging service.

If Tencent could be really open as Pony promises, Chinese web industry in 2011 would be truly exicting.

[image via chinaz]

China’s Smartphone Market – What Will Dominate??

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 01:32:50 +0800

Despite all the hype, Android is still small among different smartphone platform in China. Researcher estimated there were only about 250,000 – 280,000 Android phones China, at the end of October. Nevertheless, industry experts have high hope in the free and open-source OS. Many phone manufactures have embraced it as the de-facto smartphone OS, as it allows them to easily control applications preload and distribution. HTC, Motorola, Samsung, and Chinese local phone markets, such as Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE, Meizu, Coolpad, etc., have all launched their version of Andriod phones.

MediaTek, which supplies the chipset of about a quarter of all mobile phones in China, has also started shipping Android supported chips since October. This will make Android affordable to the mass market. Already, there are Android phones selling at RMB 1000 (about US$140) a piece in Shenzhen. Many expected next year, Android phones will flood the China market.

Surprisingly, there are more Blackberry than Android phones in China. Researchers estimated there are more than 300,000 Blackberry phones in China. Blackberry has been the love of bankers and traders since day one. As long as they survive (and no doubt they will no matter how many market crash there will in the future), Blackberry will always find its fans.

As of Apple’s iPhone, which started the whole mobile internet revolution in the West, experts believe it will remain a niche market for high end users in China. Its price, about RMB5000, is too high for the common white collars, who are earning about RMB3000-5000 per month. Researchers estimated currently there are about 1-2 million iPhone supplied by the official channel, China Unicom, and another 3-4 million imported from places like Hong Kong and U.S.

Although many have little faith in Nokia’s Symbian platform, experts believe it will remain a significant player, if not the largest. Finally, Window mobile, which almost everyone has forgotten until Microsoft launched WP7, experts believe it will capture certain portion of the high end market, together with iPhone and some of the most expensive Android phones.

By the way, Data Center of China Internet (DCCI) has forcasted by 2013, there will be more smartphones sold in China than the feature phones (the not-so-smart ones). Currently, the researcher said smartphone only accounts for 16% of the market. The following chart is DCCI’s forecast. (The blue indicate feature phone and the orange smartphone. Click to enlarge the chart.)

Source: DATA CENTER OF THE CHINA INTERNET

Chinese Video Sites, Burning To The IPO, With Hope

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 07:59:42 +0800

You may still question about the revenue model of online video and how long they will be burning the money, but the fact is that Ku6 has been listed, and other two leading video sites Tudou and Youku both are preparing for its IPO. (ref: Chinese online video sharing: where is the way out)

The Money

Tudou has raised USD 135 millions since it was set up in 2005; Youku has raised in total USD 160 millions in its 6 rounds of fundrasing and the latest one is USD 50 millions which closed only 2 months ago (ref: this). No need to say why they still need money, but you may wonder why not go for VC money for one more time? First of all, I don’t think it make sense any more to raise another round of VC money. USD 50 millions investment this amount probably has reached the max for a VC round; The valuation for these sites is very high after several rounds. Also from strategy point of view, video sites need much more money to cope with very high copyright fee, more bandwidth, fast growing mobile market. Of course, I guess the pressure from the investors may also be the reason. After years of burning money, VC firms of course want the exit as soon as possible. Acquisition sounds impossible anymore for Tudou and Youku considering their valuation, IPO seems the only and a must solution.

The Piracy

YouTube is fighting against the Piracy issues for a long while. Piracy, as always, might be complicated in Chinese internet where every one can not avoid. On one hand, due to the tough competition, video sites have to pay more and more money for the copyrighted content. (Youku paid around usd 8.44 million for copyrighted content during the first 9 months this year, according to this report.) On the other hand, some video content producer even movie studio want to see the piracy content on these sites at beginning because it can help generating social buzz and later on when content gets hot they can charge more. So the piracy is a long-time battle which could be the hurdle for sites going IPO, but surely they know how to get around it. Also we have seen sites like Tudou has been working hard to give people the image, it encourage Chinese independent and creative video producers to work with them and help them monetize their works. Tudou Video Festival which is held every year is absolutely great, is like Oscar for Chinese online video industry.

The Market

Net loss attributable to Ku6 Media was $12.8 million in the third quarter of 2010 ($12.4 million in the second quarter of 2010, and $5.2 million in the thirdquarter of 2009, according to this report.) Tudou‘s loss is reported at $12.67 millions in past three quarter this year; and Youku’s net loss is even double the figure, $25.27 millions in past three quarter this year (via this). Even so, the investor, the operator still believe it is worthy of burning the money. Thanks to the market. According to Nielson’s latest report on Chinese video market, 265 millions users watch video online and around 40 millions only watch online video instead TV. The market value will be over $300 millions by end of this year. iResearch report also say the market value for Chinese online video market will reach $775 million by end of 2012. The market still has huge potential.

The Vision

So how are they going to use the money? Besides paying for the expensive bandwidth, marketing expense, copyright content, high-difinition video content etc, I think they must have a clear plan for the fast growing mobile video market. With 3G getting popular in China, it assumes more and more videos will be watched on mobile devices; and some new ideas, such as live video streaming from mobile phone, augmented reality which could bring more interesting business models to this industry.

The money will keep burning, as long as we still have the hope!

Sina Announced Strategic Partnership With MSN China, The Setup of Chinese Internet Might Start Changing

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 16:28:04 +0800

Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba Group are probably TOP 3 Internet entities in China given the fact they all more or less reach all the sectors of web business, instant messengers, portals, e-commerce, search etc. Sina is huge, there is no doubt that it’s the leading Chinese portal, but you would not say it’s in the same line with those three giants. However, since 11st Nov, 2010, the setup of Chinese Internet might start changing: Sina Corp. announced strategic partnership with MSN China.

The situation for MSN China is not that good. MSN Live Spaces is closing down; MSN messenger is taking the No.2 in IM marketing, but the room for its growth seems shrinking; and the portal service cn.msn.com is in a dilemma in China. In comparison, Sina as the leading online media portal and blog service provider is growing fast and even much more stronger than before, huge thanks to its microblog service which is absolutely changing Chinese netizen’s online life.

Let’s have a brief breakdown of the partnership.

Sina Blog – Sina will the exclusive partner of Windows Live Spaces in China. Blogs hosted on Live Spaces can be easily exported to Sina blog; With Messenger Connect open platform, the update on Sina blog can be synchronized on Live Messenger and other Windows Live services; Users will be able to log on Sina Blog with its Windows Live ID;
Sina Microblog – Via Messenger Connect open platform, updates on Sina Microblog will can be synchronized on Live Messenger and other Windows Live services; In future, users would be able to see others MSN online status on Sina Microblog and even chat with their MSN contacts on Sina Microblog;
Portal service (Sina.com.cn, cn.MSN.com) – News on sina.com.cn can be easily shared with users’ MSN contacts by one click; news on cn.msn.com can be shared to Sina microblog easily by just one click; Sina and MSN China will be working closely to launch Finance & Life related online channel together;
Mobile – MSN mobile user can sign on and update his Sina microblog with his MSN ID.

Of course both parties will benefit from the partnership. But I still feel the big winner is Sina. For MSN China, it’s more like a protective strategy to stabilize its IM market share; On Sina side, it sounds more aggressive. Sina actually has its own instant messenger called SinaUC for years, but it did not really work out till now. On SinaUC official page, it’s interesting to see that users can download either SinaUC or Live Messenger. So the question is, with very close relationship with MSN and Sina service (blog, microblog, news portal), plus its own SinaUC, will Sina become another tough enemy of Tencent?!

iWeekend Coming to Beijing at 19th Nov

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 09:22:58 +0800

iWeekend is an intensive and innovative experience that brings together talented entrepreneurs and professionals of different profiles to select 3 ideas and bring these ideas to reality by collaboratively developing a business plan and a prototype, all in one weekend.

Although I do think it would not be easy to organize an event like iWeekend because it’s so different from other startups event where people just need come to talk. Still, I really love the idea behind it. A good startup is initiated by a good idea, a successful startup is executed by a good team. However, for people who has the idea and want to do a startup, usually what stops them grow the idea is they can not find the team. As iWeekend organizers believe, there is no better way to network and meet other restless minds than by working with them side by side for two full days.

Also reads from iWeekend’s official site, the mission of iWeekend is to

Promote the culture of entrepreneurship in new technologies
Foster a practical methodology of knowledge sharing and learning-by-doing, and
Help talented entrepreneurs to get started in 2 days flat

So if you are or want to be entrepreneurs (Note: English is the preferred language in the event, which I hope it can change it next time.), and wish to meet professionals and freelancers who may take on the challenge and collaborate in your project, iWeekend sounds the ideal event you may consider to go. The dates are 19th Nov – 21st Nov. You can apply for it here.

Jiepang, the Leading Chinese Check-in Service Announces the Partnership with Starbucks

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 11:53:44 +0800

You would not agree that Starbucks could serve you the best coffee of the world, but definitely it is one of the best cafe shop embracing some new ideas, e.g. social media. With the partnership with Foursquare in U.S. , yesterday, together with Jiepang, the leading Chinese check-in service, Starbucks (Shanghai) announced an interesting campaign, Check-in your Chrismas at Starbucks.

Started from 9th November till 23rd December, all Jiepang’s users who check-in at any Starbucks cafe in Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces would be awarded a virtual Starbucks badge and the opportunities to win a set of limited edition Starbucks Xmas Crystal Ball. If lucky enough, the check-in users could also win HTC phones and Starbucks 2010 laptops. According to the Digital Marketing director of Starbucks Shanghai, 189 Starbucks (~40% of Starbucks in total) in Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces will participate this campaign, which is expected to boost the check-in market in China.

Jiepang, a startup launched at 13rd, May this year and driven by a young and passionate post-80s team, has quickly became the leading location-based service in China. Although Jiepang is still small with around 150k users and 1,500-2,000 new users per day (according to David Liu, CEO of Jiepang), it has built up good partnership with cool brands like Nike, HP, HTC etc and is very active in various events such as music festivals to provide check-in service.

With no exception, in China, Jiepang is facing a tough competition from a couple of Foursquare-likers including e.g. RenRen the leading social network, Dianpin the very popular Yelp-like service and startups like Play4f, K.ai, Linxun etc. So how to stand out in the crowded market, David said, Jiepang would focus on location-centric social networking. It positions itself as a tool for social communications, not just a game for fun; it is not to compete with other social networks or yelp-like service, instead, it could be the best and more efficient tool to synchronize people’s real life with their virtual social networks with better and cool location-awareness.

The Transformative Change – StarWatch Report (Oct. Edition) Released

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 01:11:22 +0800

Some people like to demarcate stages of their business proceedings with the start and end of the seasons because it implies change in big
leaps and bounds just like the forces of weather and climate. In this issue we’ll be exploring “transformative change” and the things it entails and implies.

As with before, many people have sights set on group purchasing and games industry. In the group purchasing area, we can look at what’s going to happen or change in that crazy mini-landscape, a topic which surely will bring up a wide variety of opinions. As for the future of game industry, we’ll look at how a number of players, innovators and networks are doing what they do, what role their fans play, and of course also what changes we can predict for them in the future.

We’re also making some changes ourselves. In line with feedback from readers, starting with this issue, we’re simplifying the English title of this publication from StartupsWatch to the better-sounding StarWatch. For English version, download here; for Chinese version, download here.

StarWatch october-A report about Chinese start-ups in Internet and mobile Internet industry

View more documents from MOBINODE.

Dangdang.com Goes Public in Nasdaq Next Month

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 14:49:59 +0800

I was having a lunch with a friend today. And he told me, next month, i.e. November, the largest Chinese online book retailer, Dangdang, will be going public in Nasdaq.

As one of the first major Chinese e-commerce sites going public, it must create lots of fuss. I heard from an investment bank source that Dangdang will go for a very aggressive valuation, about 1 billion. With about only US$5 million in profit last year, it suggests 200 times earning.

However, growth of the company’s core business (selling books) is slowing down (60% last year) as it is over 10 years old. Its new business line, which sells everything from electronics to linens, slipper, home decor, milk powder, etc, grows fast, over 230% last year. But that is only a small portion of the business. And it is doubtful Dangdang has any advantages in this area, as there are many competitors selling those items online. Dangdang is only famous for book in China.

When people think of books in China, they can think of Dangdang and Joyo (Amazon’s China subsidiary). But for the other items, not really. For electronics, 360buy. For milk powder and other baby products, may be Red Baby. All other items, most likely Taobao, the ultimate online shop, which almost has everything you can imagine.

What in the IPO pipeline is 360buy, the largest online electronics shop, which is growing much faster than Dangdang. Another one is Vancl, the largest online garments shop. Besides growing fast, Vancl also has better profit margin, as it develops its own brand, rather than solely reselling other manufacturers products.

An industry insider told me online book stores has gross profit margin of about 5-10%. Electronics, 3-5%. Garments, 20-50%.

I personally like Vancl the best, for its fat margin. But, many others like 360buy, as the the management is real ambition and aggressive. Everyone believes 360buy is “the Amazon of China”, rather than Dangdang. But, Dangdang will take this credit when they go for IPO next month.