China E-Commerce
Over 100 Million Alipay Payments During Spring Festival
Over 100 million Alipay payments were made during the seven-day holiday of 2014 Spring Festival, 52% of these were mobile. Meanwhile Alibaba announced that the real-name users of Alipay approached 300 million by the end of 2013, with more than 100 million users using the mobile service for most of payments. Altogether subscribers made 12.5 billion payments during 2013, totaling over CNY900 billion. Data also revealed that 11.34 million people paid cell phone bills using Alipay Wallet, more than 1.5 million paid cab fares via Alipay and about CNY200 million was handed out in digital red envelopes during the seven day festival.
Source: China Internet Watch
China E-Commerce
Tencent Win 3-year Long Legal Battle Against Qihoo 360
Qihoo 360, an anti-virus software developer, was ordered by The Supreme People’s Court on Monday to pay five million Yuan (about $800 000) to Tencent Holding. This is the result of a long spun legal feud, dating back to November 2010, when Tencent discovered that Q360 provided tools to help QQ-users change the operating mode of QQ software. According to Qihoo, they did this in order to promote their security software and increase market competitiveness. Q360 also said that Tencent have been abusing its market dominance to maintain monopoly. Currently Tencent has around 816 million active QQ users monthly while Qihoo 360 has about 465 million PC users a month.
Source: Xinua Net
China E-Commerce
Sina Announce 42% Increase of Net Revenue in 4Q13
Sina corp. released their result from 2013’s fourth quarter, showing a net revenue of $197 million (an increase of 42% compared to the same period last year). Advertising revenues were $160.1 million (45% increase from a year earlier) and non-advertising revenues amounted to $36.9 million (30% increase over the same period last year). The total net revenue landed on $665.1 million (26% increase), advertising revenues were $526.5 million (28% increase) and non-ad revenues ended up at $138.6 million (19% increase).
Source: Tech Sina
China E-Commerce
Sina Plans U.S. IPO for Weibo
Sina announced plans to raise $500 million in a second quarter U.S. initial public offering of subsidiary micro blog platform Weibo. Sina, which is already listed in the U.S, could get a boost from e-commerce giant Alibaba Group if the IPO takes place. Currently Alibaba holds 18% in Weibo, but have hinted of an increase to 30% in the event of an American IPO. The details of any future investments related to the U.S. IPO have not been released.
Source: Market Watch
China E-Commerce
China launches LinkedIn
The beta version of Chinese LinkedIn has gone live. Under the name Ling Ying (领英), meaning leading and elite, the site was launched with invitation-only registration. Ling Ying has been added into the latest version of WeChat, allowing subscribers to show their LinkedIn on profile pages. Officials have also said that other SNS-channels (obviously not Twitter and Facebook) such as Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo will be integrated into the Chinese version. The social discussion page normally found on LinkedIn have however been removed in China due to censorship issues.
Source: Do News