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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Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Sues Chinese Government Over Siri (English article)
Tencent (HKEx: 700) Video to Announce M&A Deal in H1 2014 – Source (English article)
Lenovo (HKEx: 992) Needs 4-6 Quarters To Turn Motorola Profitable – CEO (Chinese article)
Phoenix New Media (NYSE: FENG) Reports Q4 and Fiscal Year 2013 Results (PRNewswire)
China Mobile (HKEx: 941), France Telecom Develop TDD/FDD-LTE Smartphone (Chinese article)
Shanda’s Chen throws in the towel with company sale plan
I’ve followed online entertainment entrepreneur Chen Tianqiao for quite some time now, and can completely understand the latest news that he may be ready to throw in the towel by selling his flagship company, Shanda Interactive Entertainment. I remember first running into Chen in Hong Kong back in 2004 at an investor event, shortly before Shanda become China’s first publicly listed online gaming company later that year. Shanda was briefly on top of the world as China’s top Internet gaming firm for a few years after that; but it has run into a non-stop series of headaches since then, causing its value to stagnate as it got passed by more nimble rivals like Tencent (HKEx: 700) and NetEase (Nasdaq: NTES). Read Full Post…
Leading web portal Sina (Nasdaq: SINA) is rushing ahead with plans to separately list its Weibo microblogging unit, with word that it’s taken the first major step towards a New York IPO by formally hiring investment banks for the deal. I’ve previously said Sina was likely to accelerate its listing plan, amid growing signs that Weibo’s growth was slowing and users were abandoning the service in favor of Tencent’s (HKEx: 700) more mobile-friendly WeChat. The latest quarterly earnings report just out from Sina adds further reason for pessimism about the upcoming IPO, showing Weibo remains highly dependent on advertising for most of its revenue. Read Full Post…
A new report about a brawl on Metro Line 3 is casting a spotlight on the ongoing drama involving subway beggars, featuring a colorful but also unruly cast of men, women, children and even babies who spend their days pandering for money beneath the streets of Shanghai. I have some thoughts about how to tackle the problem, though there really are no quick and easy answers. Such subway beggars are far fewer in the US cities, and don’t exist at all in other major Asian cities like Hong Kong, Taipei and Singapore. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on February 25. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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China’s Sina (Nasdaq: SINA) Plans $500 Mln US IPO For Weibo (English article)
Shanda Interactive To Sell 5 Units To Alibaba For $3.2-$3.5 Bln – Sources (Chinese article)
ZTE (HKEx: 763) Launches Two New Firefox OS Phones in the ZTE Open Series (Businesswire)
Autohome (NYSE: ATHM) Announces Q4 and Full Year 2013 Financial Results (PRNewswire)
Alibaba’s colorful and sometimes controversial founder Jack Ma has been called many things in the past, but even he must be surprised and somewhat alarmed at the latest monicker of “vampire” given to him by an influential commentator at CCTV, China’s leading broadcaster. I don’t usually take sides in this kind of politically sensitive debate, though in this case I really do think that CCTV’s claim is largely unjustified. I suspect the attack, which Alibaba is correctly taking quite seriously, was prompted at least partly at the urging of big state-run lenders that are unhappy about the meteoric rise of Alibaba’s Yu’ebao service, which competes with traditional savings accounts. Read Full Post…
Spreadtrum, Mozilla offer super low-end smartphone chipset
I don’t usually write about new product announcements from chip makers, as such companies are continually rolling out new offerings in their attempts to drum up more business. But the case of a super-cheap new smartphone chipset from Spreadtrum (Nasdaq: SPRD) is causing me to make an exception to my rule, since this new product looks so cheap that it could actually point to similar products from rival chipmakers and result in a new round of smartphone price wars. I’ll end the suspense right now by revealing the new chipset, which includes the free Firefox open-source mobile operating system (OS), carriers a price tag of just $25. (company announcement) Read Full Post…
I haven’t written about Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) in a while, mostly because the company hasn’t made any concrete moves into China lately despite previous assertions that it would like to enter the market. But the company’s newly announced plan to purchase the popular WhatsApp mobile messaging service for up to $19 billion looks like a good opportunity to revisit the topic, and what this deal might mean for Facebook in China. Facebook’s own site has been blocked in China since 2009, making it inaccessible to the vast majority of more than 600 million Chinese web surfers. But WhatsApp is widely available, even though it competes with the wildly popular rival WeChat service from local Internet giant Tencent. (HKEx: 700)
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on February 22-24. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Fosun Int’l (HKEx: 656) May Acquire Forbes Media For Under $250 Mln (Chinese article)
CCTV Commentator Calls For Ban Of Alibaba’s Yu’ebao, Calling It A Vampire (Chinese article)
Vipshop Acquires Minority Interest in Ovation For $55.8 Mln (PRNewswire)
China Auto Lobby, Policymakers Collide Over Foreign Investment (English article)
I don’t usually write about the same news twice in a single week, but in this case reports with new details on looming tie-ups involving 4 of China’s top e-commerce firms seem to justify an update. In the larger of the deals, the latest reports say top Internet firm Tencent (HKEx: 700) is nearing a deal that would see it buy 6-20 percent of JD.com, forging a partnership that would create a major new e-commerce contender to rival industry leader Alibaba. In the second update, 2 smaller e-commerce firms, Yihaodian and Dangdang (NYSE: DANG), have confirmed earlier reports that they will announce a major alliance early next month. Read Full Post…
Earlier this week I made a disclaimer about personal ties when I wrote about the latest privatization of a US-listed Chinese firm, and now I’ll make a similar disclaimer for this post about the latest talk of a strategic investment by Yale University in home appliance maker Gree (Shenzhen: 000651). My personal interest in the story comes from the fact that I graduated from Yale many years ago, so anytime I see news of its activities in China I’m naturally interested. But if it’s true, this case could also hint that conservative big western institutional buyers may be eying more direct investments in China. Word of this deal follows news of a similar investment last year by a major western pension fund in JD.com, China’s second largest e-commerce company. Read Full Post…
