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Tag Archives: JD.com
Jingdong (jd.com) latest Business & Financial news from Doug Young, the Expert on Chinese High Tech Market, (former Journalist and Chief editor at Reuters)
The year 2014 could well go down as the “Year of the Crackdown”, as evidenced by 2 more such crackdowns in the headlines as we head in autumn. The first and larger of the pair comes in the online video space, where media are reporting the broadcasting regulator is finalizing rules that would severely limit the amount of foreign content on online video sites. Meantime, a more mild crackdown is also coming in the e-commerce space, where separate reports are saying another regulator is rolling out rules that will punish companies that overstate their transaction volumes. Read Full Post…
People like myself who were holding out big hopes for a new crop of private firms challenging the 3 big state telcos will be disappointed to learn that the group of virtual network operators (VNOs) are off to a glacially slow start, boding poorly for the program. It’s obviously way too early to call the program a failure, since it’s only 3 months since the first private VNOs were launched. To consumers these VNOs look the same and offer similar services to the 3 existing state-run telcos. But the VNOs don’t actually own any telecoms networks, and instead must lease network capacity from the traditional carriers. Read Full Post…
It’s rare that one issue dominates the blogosphere among the many tech executives who like to tweet about their companies on their microblog accounts. But the past week saw one such debate occur around a spat between 2 old friends in the smartphone space. In one corner was Luo Yonghao, a well-known English teacher who has recently moved into the highly competitive smartphone space. In the other was Wang Ziru, a self-styled gadget critic who has become quite influential. As many might guess, the debate centered on a recent critical review by Wang for Luo’s newly launched smartphone model under his Smartisan brand.
While the Luo-Wang spat kept the blogosphere well supplied with musings from a wide range of tech executives, a few other tidbits also provided some intriguing hints of things to come at other leading tech names. A couple of posts from Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU) CEO Zhou Hongyi suggested that a major restructuring could be on the way; and separate musings from an executive at e-commerce giant JD.com (Nasdaq: JD) also hinted at potential similar moves. Read Full Post…
We’ll have to wait a few weeks to see who wins the title for China’s most valuable Internet company, but the champion for wealthiest chief executive has just been declared with Alibaba founder Jack Ma beating out Tencent (HKEx: 700) chief Pony Ma for the title. That declaration, based on estimates by Bloomberg, comes after release of the latest public filing from Alibaba in the run-up to its highly anticipated IPO that could come in less than 3 weeks. That filing also showed that profits from China’s leading e-commerce company rose 60 percent in the second quarter, an impressive feat for a company of its size. Read Full Post…
Two of the world’s biggest retailers are in the e-commerce headlines, led by a move into Shanghai’s new pilot free trade zone by global giant Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN). At the same time, Wal-Mart-controlled (NYSE: WMT) Yhd has become China’s first e-commerce firm licensed to operate online drugstores, giving it a potential edge over other rivals also eying the space. Both of these stories highlight how the big international names are trying to use their clout and global connections to carve out a space in China’s fast growing but highly competitive e-commerce space, which is now dominated by the domestic pair of Alibaba and JD.com (Nasdaq: JD). Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on August 16-18. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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US Approves Sale Of IBM (NYSE: IBM) x86 Server Unit To Lenovo (HKEx: 992) (Businesswire)
Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Begins Storing Users’ Personal Data On Servers In China (English article)
The microblogging realm was filled with words of sympathy this past week at the woes for some of China’s longest-serving foreign tech firms whose names have become household words over the last 20 years. Leading the list were a flood of comments on Nokia, whose name was once synonymous with cellphones in China but later fell on hard times and last week laid off a big part of its Chinese workforce. Meantime, other tech executives looked on in wonder at the recent plight of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Mercedes-Benz, which have joined a growing list of western firms being investigated by Chinese anti-trust regulators.
Chinese firms haven’t been the only ones feel the pain these past few weeks, as the nation’s Internet regulator has also cracked down on social media sites with its eye squarely on industry titan Tencent (HKEx: 700). As that happened, the operator of the popular WeChat and QQ instant messaging platforms got some rare sympathy from rival Weibo (Nasdaq: WB), the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, which itself came under a similar crackdown 2 years ago. Read Full Post…
Consolidation continues to advance in the Chinese supermarket aisle, with word that Hong Kong grocery operator Dairy Farm (London: DFIB) is paying nearly $1 billion for 20 percent of Yonghui (Shanghai: 601933), one of China’s top chains. A couple of years ago I would have said this deal looked like a good one for both sides, combining Dairy Farm’s well-run Hong Kong-based chain of Wellcome supermarkets with Yonghui’s sizable Chinese operations. But frankly speaking, China’s rapid migration of food shopping into the e-commerce realm makes the whole idea of consolidation of brick-and-mortar operations look like a belated effort with limited growth potential. Read Full Post…
Tencent’s (HKEx: 700) hugely popular WeChat and QQ instant messaging platforms are once again hogging the headlines, reflecting the increasingly important role the 2 services are playing for the future development of the Internet giant. This time WeChat is in the news after coming under new government restrictions aimed at censoring some of its content. Meantime, QQ has formally launched an official shopping channel in partnership with e-commerce giant JD.com (Nasdaq: JD), laying down a big challenge for sector leader Alibaba. Read Full Post…
The following is Part 6 in a multi-part series about the rise of WeChat, the popular mobile instant messaging service owned by Tencent.
By Lanie Nie
WeChat builds up payment capabilities
WeChat has played a key role in Tencent’s (HKEx: 700) recent efforts to build a “federal republic” on the mobile Internet. That interpretation comes from Cheng Lingfeng, a China tech reporter and former Tencent employee, describing Tencent’s strategy of selling stakes to close partners who promote WeChat Payment, a new service that allows users to link their bank cards to their WeChat accounts to facilitate online transaction payments. Such linkage gives WeChat users easy access to selected paid add-on services like shopping, mobile top up and taxi booking. Read Full Post…
The following is Part 5 in a multi-part series about the rise of WeChat, the popular mobile instant messaging service owned by Tencent.
By Lanie Nie
Tencent targets smart partnerships
Venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road always ask young entrepreneurs with little business knowledge what they would do if Facebook did the same thing, and similar concerns exist for China start-ups in dealing with the “Tencent factor”. With the strategic goal of providing users with “one-stop online lifestyle services”, nearly everything has become a must-have for Tencent, making it a public enemy for the entire community of Internet-based service providers in China. Read Full Post…
