Alibaba Group executive chairman Jack Ma Yun is set to face a barrage of questions when the e-commerce giant reports quarterly earnings today, spurred by a government regulator’s blistering accusation of widespread fraud and other illegal activities at the company’s popular online shopping platform….
Alibaba faces firestorm as row with regulator escalates ahead of earnings | South China Morning Post.
This new infographic, put together by the Go-Globe team, shows just what a massive business it is. China now has 450 million online video viewers who collectively spend 5.7 billion hours per month watching stuff. There will be an estimated 700 million viewers by 2016.
China’s online video viewers watch for 5.7 billion hours monthly.
Chinese Law Proposes Real Name Registration for All Phone and Mobile Networks.
New draft law, new try….
Network Neutrality, a topic still under-discussed in China and large parts of Asia, but not for long, I would assume:
Network neutrality, the FCC, and the Internet of Things. – Slate Magazine.
This should a great event for information exchange between Chinese and EU ICT experts and policy-makers. Free of charge:
November 15-16, 2012
Wenjin Hotel – Beijing, P.R. China
Registration form | Speaker form | B2B form
Event flyer | B2B event brochure | Participants tips
For complementary information, please contact the event organisers
The OpenChina-ICT 2-days Dialogue Conference will be held at Wenjin Hotel on November 15-16, 2012 in Beijing, P.R. China, with the support of the European Commission.
The event (free of charge) aims at developing concrete recommendations for actions for international cooperation in ICT between Europe and China. It will comprise one day dedicated to discussions on ways of improving support to current EU-China cooperation and on enhancing direct dialogues among policy‐makers and ICT research communities of China and Europe. The second day will include one-on-one business matchmaking among European and Chinese companies and a study visit for European visitors to have a better view of the overall infrastructure and environment of R&D in China.
http://openchina-ict.eu/project-events/dialogue-conference-in-china/
Uebersicht zu den populaeren Weibo-Diensten: Deutsch-Chinesisches Kulturnetz – Kulturaustausch zwischen Deutschland und China.
CNNIC latest figures on Internet Development in CHina CNNIC第30次互联网报告_专题_网易科技.
As guest contributor for a new German-language blog on China policy issues, I wrote this piece on China’s media system and media policy developments: http://rotervorhang.de/rotervorhang/?p=65 (sorry, German only)
by Jason Lim on April 24, 2012 • 11:46 pm, http://technode.com/2012/04/24/let-chinas-online-video-market-war-continue/
A few weeks ago, news broke out about the number 1 online video site, Youku, buying out the number 2 online video site, Tudou. Last December, this acquisition would have been dismissed as ridiculous given the bitter fighting between Youku and Tudou in a tit for tat battle over content rights. But as China’s tech sector grows at hyper speed and companies with deep pockets enter the same space like online video or group-buying, the natural cycle of fierce competition then consolidation is inevitable.
Now, as reported by Bloomberg, Tencent’s v.qq.com, tv.Sohu and Baidu’s iQiyi have announced their alliance, only after a month after the consolidation of the two biggest players, Youku and Tudou. It almost feels like a modern version of China’s Three Kingdoms warring period. Originally a slew of online video sites emerged, so many that it was hard to remember all the options. The only real differentiator was which could deliver the best quality content the fastest. After a year of close combat, many of the weaker players have died, leaving the remaining players to join forces and continue the battle to become the supreme winner. Now it will clearly be Youku + Tudou against v.qq.com+tv.sohu.com+iqiyi.com.
Such consolidation in the market mirrors what is happening in China’s group buying space. At one point there was an absurd amount of group-buying sites, in the 6,000+ range. But now those numbers have rightfully dwindled to a few hundred and will inevitably result in the top five. Reports of Lashou’s downsizing follows, 360Buy’s outsourcing of its group buying business and 55Tuan’s takeover of Ganji’s group buying business.
The point is, as Yang Wang noted in The Gold Rush Menatlity, that despite having war chests of money and the ability to raise a tonne of venture capital funds and people who are treated more like numbers, not every company should be doing the same business. They should take a longer term approach when considering which businesses to enter. With the benefit of hindsight, they should be able to see what happens when everyone rushes in to the same thing, without strategizing how to grow sustainably. But who knows if this mind shift will happen sooner rather than later. It may only be a matter of time and seeing what the next big trend from America is, before the next battle begins.
AmCham China. Craig Watts, market intelligence director for GroupM, discusses a report he wrote exploring an ongoing transformation in who uses the Internet in China, and why.
The podcast is from November, but interesting nonetheless.
Information Society News 