The New York Times has an interesting article today on thriving state-owned companies in China-”China’s Policies Ensure State Enterprises Grow“. The article makes no mention of China’s Internet industry, which will generate 6-7+ billion dollars in revenue this year from gaming, advertising and other sources, is growing 20% or more per year, and which has [...]
Tudou just announced that it has raised $50m, bringing the total amount the company has raised to $135m; no word on the valuation but hard to imagine it was lower than $200m. From the press release: Tudou’s Series E funding round included $35 million led by Singapore based Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd. (www.temasekholdings.com.sg), and US$15 [...]
Leading Chinese map provider AutoNavi holdings is planning to raise $100 in an IPO on Nasdaq under the symbol “AMAP”. The company generates most of its revenue from automobile navigation. Wireless and online mapping services (through its MapABC Technology subsidiary) account for approximately 10% of overall, and Google specifically accounts for just over 1%. (As [...]
On Monday evening SIG analyst Zhao Chunming downgraded Tencent from positive to neutral over concerns about its valuation in the face of a slowdown in the Chinese online game market. 48% of Tencent’s revenue comes from online gaming, and in the last several weeks Perfect World, Shanda Games, Giant Interactive and Netease have all issued [...]
On Thursday Fred Wilson posted a chart from Comscore listing the top 30 global Internet properties. There are six Chinese sites on the list-Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, Sina, Sohu and Netease. The Comscore data significantly understates the size of major Chinese websites. I have borrowed the chart and inserted it below. Google’s Doubleclick Ad Planner has [...]
Ku6, acquired by Shanda (Nasdaq:SNDA) controlled Hurray Holdings (Nasdaq:HRAY) in November 2009, is now poised to become the first US-listed pure play Chinese online video site. I have written extensively about China’s online video business. To date more than $500M has been invested into various Chinese firms, with the field effectively winnowed down to four standalone [...]
In today’s Q1 2010 earnings release Perfect World announced today that it has acquired a majority stake in Runic Games, a Seattle-based game development studio. Perfect World, which already has a deal to publish an MMORPG version of Runic’s “Torchlight“, says it paid “consideration of approximately US$8.4 million” for the majority stake. From Perfect World’s [...]
By now we are all familiar with the concept of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) as four nations whose “combined economies could eclipse the combined economies of the current richest countries of the world” by 2050. Today China’s largest Internet firm Tencent announced a $300m investment into Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies Limited (DST). DST is the [...]
Some of that $ 500m+ raised by Chinese video sites is going to the lawyers. Yesterday Ku6 announced it is suing Tudou for copyright infringement; Tudou says it will countersue. Today, Youku announced it is suing Ku6 (English release here) for 10m+ RMB, also for copyright infringement. Employees are also benefiting from the investors’ open pocketbooks. [...]
Items of Interest