I wrote earlier this week about a looming crackdown on private Internet-based video providers, and now that campaign appears to be building momentum with word of turbulence in the booming set-top box sector. The latest reports say industry veteran LeTV (Shenzhen: 300104) has withdrawn its set-top box product from the market, while e-commerce giant Alibaba is reportedly delaying the roll-out of its own similar product. The reports certainly don’t bode well for the fledgling sector of set-top boxes, which allow people to watch Internet-based video content on their TVs the same way they watch programs using traditional TV channels. Read Full Post…
Global e-commerce giant Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) was decidedly low-key in the launch last week of its Kindle bookstore in China, and now perhaps we know why. Just days after Amazon formally opened the store on its China site selling books for its Kindle tablet PCs, media are reporting the government agency that regulates the publishing industry has said Amazon’s new store violates Chinese regulations, implying the store may have to close until the situation gets sorted out. Whether or not such a closure, if it comes, would be temporary or permanent remains to be seen, though I think it would probably be temporary. But this case does once again underscore the regulatory risk of doing business in China, where numerous government agencies often oversee specific industries and anyone who operates needs to take care to keep all those regulators happy.
