Archive for the ‘China’ Category
Written on March 25, 2008 – 8:00 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
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During one of the lunches at the LIFT conference in Geneva I met Markus Fuhrmann. He’s the co-founder of Web2Asia. A European service with headquarters in Shanghai that specializes in supporting western Internet companies and Mobile content developers to get a company or service going in China, Japan and Korea. Needless to say, there’s a lot of potential in these rapidly developing markets. Some of their clients are Jimdo (Germany), Xendex (Austria) and Vanilla Live Games. I kept in touch with Markus, and the business he runs turns out to be really fascinating. So I decided to ask him some questions about this hard to comprehend Asian markets.
Markus has a entrepreneurial history in games. His story in China began with an IMBA semester at Tongji University in Shanghai. “In the beginning I both loved and hated it in China, because I started my stay with one week in a Chinese hospital with pneumonia. After recovering and getting used to the cultural and environmental differences, I started to enjoy the dynamics and sheer endless opportunities available here.” He consulted several companies on how to launch in China. When he met his partner George Godula they connected immediately and it made perfect sense for them to team up.
How to bring a product from Europe or the US to Asia
So, when I want to enter the Asian market, what should I take in account? “The East Asian characters. This is a smaller problem for completely web based services but can amount to a lot of work if you have to change your client or back end infrastructure because you forgot to use Unicode and double byte support in the first place. In terms of function and usability there are a lot of things to watch out for, especially in Japan and Korea with the example of mobile phone support, which is crucial.”
“The second important part is the content side. Here you have to take care that the content fits the Asian culture, especially in terms of symbols and language. Another sensible topic is working specifically to local legislation requirements and restrictions on certain content.” I assume Markus is referring to dealing with censorship in China. Which probably brings some conscience issues.
The last part is less complicated and controversial, namely the feasibility of the underlying business model. Markus: “It’s already quite hard to earn money through advertising in Europe and the US, but it is even more difficult to earn money through this model in East Asia. The positive examples have been able to transfer a model of premium memberships, customizable content - micro payments - and value added services.”
Facebook doomed to die
These three different parts seem to create some obstacles for all the global players, since they failed to gain a foothold in East Asia. “One of the most famous examples that didn’t work out in China has been Ebay China, the local competitor Taobao realized that Chinese users prefer much more to buy products instantly than to wait for an auction to end. Same thing with Google; in Korea the company only has approximately 6% of the market share. As for other western hypes, they have yet to make it to East Asia, which are not good signs either. For example, jokes are already going around in China calling Facebook, “fei si bu ke” (非死不可) a transliteration which means ‘doomed to die’.” (more…)
Written on March 15, 2008 – 11:40 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
This week, Beijing-based research agency BDA announced that China is now the largest Internet market. With 220 million connected people they’ve outnumbered the US with 4 million users.
In this huge market, there’s an interesting battle between one YouTube rip-off against another going on. Tudou and Youku are both fighting for the attention of the 220 million online Chinese, and I must say, it’s one helluva fight. There’s of course lots of money involved, a government that cannot be trusted and even Mr. Murdoch comes along.
Reuters reported that Youku has partnered up with MySpace China. Officiously not for the money, considering that Youku completed three rounds of funding last year that make up for 40 million dollars. It’s more about targeting the local market. Youku CEO Victor Koo: “The partnership is aimed at driving Internet traffic to both Web sites and sharing online products”.
While Youku is celebrating this good news, Tudou is probably still a bit nervous. Last week our WebTipr from China, Doron Vermaat, interviewed Tudou co-founder Marc van der Chijs about rumors about a possible shutdown. The rumors seem to be nonsense, yet due to the loads of attention they got, the damage is already done. Van der Chijs: ““It’s hard to find out where this rumor is coming from but I am pretty sure the competition don’t have any problems with the fact that this kind of rumors about Tudou are created and spread.”
After a long search on the web, it seems like Youku is the most popular service. According to Nielsen/NetRatings the service has more than 100 million daily video views (December 2007). In the summer of 2007, Tudou counted 360 million video clips per week.
They’ve one thing in common: both are growing with an unseen speed. Youku had a 20-fold increase and Tudou grew from 131 to 360 million video clips per week in just three months. Other top video sharing websites in China include: 56.com, mofile.com, 5show.com, pomoho.com, uume.com and 6rooms.com (source). You would almost think that Chinese internet users are only browsing video sites. Just think of the revenue as soon as the services find a way to monetize their content and you’ll realize that China will one day be the largest internet market in money terms as well.
Written on March 7, 2008 – 9:17 am
Doron Vermaat, Next Web Webtipr China
At the end of 2007, two Chinese government ministries, SARFT and MII, announced a new set of rules to govern online video websites like Tudou.com, Youku.com, 56.com and other Youtube clones.
Last night Chinese language portal Netease published an article saying that SARFT had made use of these new online video regulations and ordered Tudou to cease operations because it was suspected there was porn on the site.
Tudou is the world’s largest video sharing website, claiming three times the traffic volume of YouTube. During the summer of 2007, Nielsen/NetRatings reported that Tudou was one of the fastest growing websites on the Web, growing from 131 to 360 million video clips per week in just three months.
The article on Netease have been taken offline but unfortunately for Tudou the story already was picked up by several bloggers and quickly made its way into the English blogosphere with posts on CNET Asia and David Feng’s Techblog86.
In an email reply to me Tudou co-founder Marc van der Chijs says that Tudou didn’t received a take-down notice and that the story is nothing more than a rumor. He regrets that some bloggers do little research to back up there claims “It’s hard to find out where this rumor is coming from but I am pretty sure the competition don’t have any problems with the fact that this kind of rumors about Tudou are created and spread. ”
I share Marc’s opinion about the fact that many bloggers and even journalists shoot from the hip without checking there sources. I just hope for him this rumor will stay a rumor.
Written on February 29, 2008 – 1:35 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
China’s most popular search engine Baidu.com said it plans to launch an instant messaging service. The marketing division of Baidu wasn’t really in a creative mood when they made up the name, as it will be ‘Baidu Hi’. Baidu is currently recruiting personnel to take care of the product design, research and testing.
“We are very excited to enter the IM market in China,” said Haoyu Shen, Baidu’s vice president of business operations in a statement. “The Internet is playing an increasingly important role in people’s lives in China, and we are constantly looking for ways to bring more convenience and functionality to our users. With Baidu’s strengths in creating online communities, and with our suite of popular products such as Baidu Knows, Baidu Post Bar and Baidu Space, we are confident that Baidu Hi will become a strong competitor in China’s IM market.”
If I worked at eBuddy or Meebo, I’d be delighted to hear this news. Since this will probably stimulate more Chinese people to start using instant messaging. As soon as the two companies have found a way to integrate this new IM service, the number of users might grow enormously.
Update: The guys from Wakoopa mailed us a scoop. The Baidu im-service will be client-based. Software service Wakoopa tracked four people using a ‘IM tool from Baidu.com, Inc.’ for 8 minutes and 58 seconds.
Written on February 7, 2008 – 7:55 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Gen Kanai
This year, LIFT will also organize an Asian edition of the conference. With the session ‘A Glimpse in Asia’, they wanted to warm up the current visitors for LIFT Asia-style. Gen Kanai, a business developer for Mozilla Asia and director of marketing and partner relations for Mozilla Japan, offered an overview of open source in Asia. According to Kanai, there’s a lot to win on the field of open source developing in Asia. He summed up the barriers for open source programmers in Asia:
- Asians have a different style of communicating. They’re not comfortable with the direct way Western people confront each other. According to Kanai, Asians ‘might be intimidated’ when working with people from the West.
- Open Source defacto language is English, so the hurdle for non-native speakers is higher. Also Asian people tend to create islands of groups, such as Mozillagumi.
- In the US and Europe, most programmers work on open source projects after their daytime jobs. Most Asians however, don’t have any free time. Kanai points out that most developers in India work for Western companies and can’t choose how much work they accept.
- Asian open source programmers need institutionalized support.
Despite all the barriers, Kanai urged the attendees to look beyond the stereotypes about Asia. “The continent has contributed to open source”, he said, “Yet we need to do more”. After this visionary speech he couldn’t resist the temptation of promoting Firefox: “Anybody who tells a friend about Firefox, helps the open source community. We can all affect the future of open source”. Next time keep the marketing talk to yourself Kanai, and the applause will be even louder.
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