Bottom line: China’s telcos won’t accelerate their 5G network building even if licenses are issued earlier than expected this year, though foreign equipment suppliers could benefit if Huawei is hobbled by the US-China trade wars.
5G coming to China sooner than expected?
What a difference a decade makes. That’s about how long has passed between China’s issuing of 3G wireless licenses and the upcoming issue of 5G licenses two generations later. I remember in the 3G era how China dragged its feet forever, and finally issued licenses several years after the rest of the world. This time around it appears to be moving more quickly, driven by what appear to be political and economic factors.
The topic has popped into the headlines again this week with word that China’s telecoms regulator will “soon” issue 5G licenses. (English article) The signals coming from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) have been pointing to a release of licenses this year all along. But this could mean that will happen sooner rather than later, since many were previously expecting licenses toward the end of the year. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: ZTE will experience fallout from its run-in with Washington through much of next year, and could see an even longer-term hit to its global business as international customers start to look for alternate suppliers.
ZTE off life support, but major challenges remain
The saga of embattled smartphone and telecoms equipment maker ZTE(HKEx: 763; Shenzhen: 00006) appears to be nearing an end, as trading resumed in the company’s stock following an official settlement with Washington over illegal sales to Iran. The ending to this story certainly came with a big climax, with ZTE shares plunging by 42 percent in Hong Kong on the first day after trading resumed.
They fell by a smaller 10 percent in China on Wednesday, but only because China places a 10 percent limit on daily rises and declines in individual stock prices. Not surprisingly, the stock was down another 10 percent in China on its second day of trade, while the Hong Kong shares did a dead cat bounce and were up slightly. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Huawei’s revenue growth for 2017 is likely to drop by more than half from 2016’s rate of 32 percent as it cuts its money-losing businesses, with the biggest slowdown likely to come in its smartphone unit.
Huawei to focus on profitability in 2017
Quality over quantity is a growing theme in China these days, as the nation puts aside its previous pursuit of high growth at any cost in exchange for more sustainable expansion in high-quality areas. After starting at the top in Beijing, that theme is trickling down the corporate food chain to telecoms giant Huawei, whose New Year’s message hints that company growth could slow sharply this year.
Or course everything is relative, since Huawei has just announced preliminary results that show its revenue for 2016 jumped an impressive 32 percent to 520 billion yuan, or a whopping $74 billion. To put things in perspective, its biggest global rival Ericsson (Stockholm: ERICb) is seeing its sales contract, and is expected to post about $65 billion in revenue this year. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Xiaomi’s progress in India shows its global expansion is moving ahead despite a recent setback in Brazil, but it will need to replicate that success in other markets to revive its sputtering fortunes.
Xiaomi wristband wins North Korean fans
Former smartphone sensation Xiaomi is in a couple of headlines as the week winds down, both showing how the company is looking to foreign markets to offset its sputtering business in China. The bigger of the items shows how quickly Xiaomi is advancing in India, where it has consolidated its position as the third largest brand just 2 years after entering the market. The second item is a bit quirkier, saying that Xiaomi’s wearable fitness band has become a hot-seller in North Korea, a market that isn’t exactly known for its consumer culture. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Ericsson’s new tie-up with Inspur looks like a savvy move to gain a foothold in the nation’s fast-growing market to supply infrastructure to power Internet-related products and services.
Ericsson ties up with Inspur
Chinese IT services firm Inspur has just scored a major new partnership, with word that it’s forming a new tie-up to offer cloud and other Internet-based services with global telecoms equipment leader Ericsson. (Stockholm: ERICb). The new tie-up adds to a growing stable of similar alliances between Inspur and big-name foreign partners, following previous tie-ups with IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO).
We should begin by pointing out that this kind of tie-up isn’t that uncommon for big foreign high-tech names, since Beijing often prefers that such companies form joint ventures for doing business in the vast Chinese market. That drive for tie-ups has accelerated over the last year, following Beijing’s roll-out of a new national security law that requires foreign high-tech product makers to work with Chinese partners when selling to the government or big state-owned companies. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and news reports about China companies were carried on July 14. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Singapore’s GIC Buys 5 Pct of China Telecom’s (HKEx: 728) H-Shares (HKEx announcement)
Inspur, Ericsson (Stockholm: ERICb) Form Tie-Up in Cloud, Internet of Things (Chinese article)
Yum (NYSE: YUM) Shares Rise After CEO Signals China Momentum (English article)
Wanda to Bring First International Soccer Tournament to China (company announcement)
Tishman Teams With Lenovo (HKEx: 992) on South China Real Estate Development (English article)
Bottom line: Reluctance to transfer its technology killed CRI’s breakthrough deal to build the first US high-speed rail line, showing that emerging Chinese tech leaders must be more open to such transfers if they hope to succeed globally.
CRI’s high-speed train to US derails
The story that has seen China’s rapid modernization using western technology took an unusual twist last week, when a US firm aiming to build America’s first high-speed rail line abruptly canceled its tie-up with a Chinese partner over technology transfer issues. The US builder of the line connecting Los Angeles and Las Vegas was quite direct, blaming its decision on Washington’s condition requiring that rail cars for the project be locally manufactured. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Micromax’s plan to sell smartphones in China is likely to sputter due to intense competition, while Huawei stands a 50-60 percent chance of becoming one of the world’s top 2 smartphone brands by 2020.
India’s Micromax eyes China smartphone market
It seems the smartphone road connecting China and India isn’t just one-way, with word that leading Indian brand Micromax is planning to enter the intensely cut-throat Chinese market. Meantime, Chinese leader Huawei is looking beyond its home market and to the rest of the globe, with its brash smartphone chief declaring his target of passing Apple(Nasdaq: AAPL) and Samsung (Seoul: 005930) to take the world’s smartphone crown within 5 years. Read Full Post…
Some 4 years after disappearing from the headlines, a fourth telecoms carrier formed from China’s numerous regional cable TV companies is finally making a formal debut with its receipt of an official license to offer telecoms services. That means the new company, China Broadcasting Network Co (CBN), could theoretically shake up China’s laggard telecoms services industry that has been monopolized for years by the trio of state-run giants, China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL), China Unicom (HKEx: 762; NYSE: CHU) and China Telecom (HKEx: 728; NYSE: CHA).
But anyone hoping for big change shouldn’t get too excited, since CBN is cut from the same cloth as the existing 3 state-run telcos. What’s more, the new company is likely to be plagued with internal power struggles, at least initially, since it was created from a patchwork of provincial cable TV companies whose former stakeholders may still try to exert some influence. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on January 28. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Greater China Still Biggest Contributing Region as iPhone Sales Top Out (Chinese article)
China Cinda Said to Study Joining Yingli’s (NYSE: YGE) Debt Restructuring (English article)
Ericsson (NYSE: ERIC) Q4 Results Beat Expectations on China Rebound (Chinese article)
Qihoo (NYSE: QIHU) CEO Pledges 10 Pct Stake to Encourage Staff Entrepreneurship (English article)
TAL Education (NYSE: XRS) Announces Financial Results for Its Fiscal Q3 (PRNewswire)
Bottom line: Huawei’s new move into notebook PCs could seriously challenge the existing establishment, and it could become a top 5 brand by the end of next year.
Huawei moves into notebook PCs
Telecoms giant Huawei is making a surprise move into the PC market, with word that it will launch a new line of notebook models next month using chips supplied by Intel (Nasdaq: INTC). The move would put Huawei into direct competition with leading PC maker Lenovo (HKEx: 992), as it aggressively expands beyond its older networking equipment business and diversifies into consumer electronics.
Huawei’s move into notebooks isn’t a huge surprise, since such products are increasingly similar to the new generation of smartphones where Huawei has found recent success. Huawei already sells tablet PCs, which perform many of the functions as notebooks as well. But the move does represent an entire new product area for Huawei, and is almost certain to put the company on collision course with Lenovo in their home China market. Read Full Post…
