Maverick China's Junelyn Han has been invited to speak at the Mobile Payments World 2008 conference in Singapore. The conference will take place from July 9-11. Junelyn will present on the latest trends in China mobile payments.
Coming on the heels of the long-awaited annoucements of operator restructuring and 3G licensing in China, these next few months will be an especially interesting time for mobile payment companies, along with mobile advertising and other mobile-based services and content companies in China. 3G promises to provide a mobile network with greater mobile data speeds, enabling richer mobile-based services to be pushed to mobile users in China. For mobile payment companies, this means the ability to rely on technologies other than SMS as their payment channel. Whether this may be enough to jumpstart the industry in China, though, is another issue.
Recently the president of China UnionPay (CUP), Xu Luode, announced that foreign banks will be able to issue bank cards within the CUP network but cannot become CUP shareholders. CUP is China's sole national bank card network, and its shareholders are China's domestic banks, with several of the largest holding the most shares. The statement was made after it was announced that The Bank of East Asia became the first foreign bank to issue bank cards (debit and credit cards) in China. Foreign banks have been allowed to offer limited banking services but had not yet been allowed to issue bank cards in China before.
CUP is supervised essentially as a part of the government. Xu's statement shows that despite the continued, gradual opening of China's banking sector to foreign companies, the government will continue to call the shots.
China Mobile on Thursday released its acquisition plan of China Railway Communication, which would become the former's wholly-owned subsidiary but maintain independent operation.
The announcement confirmed a long-expected industry reshuffle involving another two smaller telecom service providers namely China Unicom and China Netcom.
In an adjustment to the management of China Mobile, former general manager Zhang Chunjiang of China Netcom assumes the deputy general manager's duty of the world's biggest mobile telephone operator, and leads the company's Party branch.
Wang Jianzhou will remain to be the general manager but serve as the deputy chief of the Party branch.
While all other deputy general managers retain their duties, Zhao Jibin from China Railway Telecom, Li Zhengmao from China Unicom and Zhang Xiaotie from China Netcom have also be appointed as the deputy general managers and members of the Party branch.
The reshuffle does not concern China Mobile Ltd.
Actually, this game of executive musical chairs, the acquisition of China Tietong, and the possible emergence of a real mobile competitor (or two) all concern China Mobile Ltd. and its shareholders very much.
Baidu TV recently received another round of investment another round of investment from Baidu, Intel and other key investors. The first round, back in 2007, brought in USD 5 million. Because of its name, many people do not know that Baidu TV is actually run by Adsit, an online advertising company in Beijing. Baidu provides funding, its brand name, and its network of existing customers.
The service has attracted the ire of many Chinese netizens, who complain that the video ads appear without warning, suck up bandwidth, and slow down the browsing experience. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Baidu has become popular in large part because it catered to user demands; in the case of its mp3 search service, it did so against the objections of many in the music industry. Now Baidu seems to be aligning itself with the companies, but will it drive away its users in the process?
I wanted to follow up on what I wrote several days ago regarding Alibaba's foray into offline advertising. Based on my understanding of Alibaba Group, it would surprise me the company actually makes a strong push into offline advertising at the moment. A key reason is that despite its recent success and growth, Alibaba faces plenty of troubles with its existing business. With the renminbi continuing to gain value versus the dollar, many suppliers in China are finding it more difficult to export their goods. These exporters bring in a large part of Alibaba's revenue, and when they are unable to pay their membership fees, Alibaba will feel the pinch.
Another problem for Alibaba group is the wave of criticism that Taobao has endured for collecting fees from some merchants on its B2C platform. Many smaller sellers feel that Taobao is playing favorites and promoting paying merchants at the expense of the masses of unpaying sellers whose offerings have helped Taobao become popular. C2C auction competitors Eachnet (a subsidiary of Ebay) and Paipai (a subsidary of Tencent) are using the opportunity to lure sellers away. Moreover, Taobao cannot count on the kind of financial support from other companies in Alibaba Group, now that sister company Alibaba is publicly traded.
With all these other problems to worry about, I just don't think it's very likely that Alibaba will make a major push into offline advertising. With the "Media Supermarket", the company is most likely just testing the waters. I wouldn't be surprised if, after learning more about offline advertising, Alibaba used some of its new wealth to buy its way into the sector.
