China-based Internet and Web Marketing Consultant » E-business

Chinese Video Sharing Websites Survive by Differing with Youtube

admin — Fri, 14 May 2010 01:41:27 +0000

Even though Chinese video sharing websites are still in their childhood in terms of market share, they have also contributed a lot to Chinese social development by changing the way people watching television in millions of China’s urban families.
Higher income and advanced Internet infrastructure in urban areas makes these families possible to explore the crazy Internet world by installing ADSL connections to their families.

In the past, people in these families have to wait to watch their interested television dramas in a fixed time everyday. They also suffered by random advertisings. While with inceptions of hundreds of “Youtube” websites, they found a way to avoid these disturbings. Today, they can even watch their interested TV drama as long as they want through some Chinese video sharing website without any interruption.
Unlike US Youtube.com, Chinese video sharing websites have completely different content structure. In a word, film and television stuffs dominate Chinese video share websites, with a share of around 70%; while UGC – user generated content, only takes a share of less than 30%. Comparing to UGC-driven Youtube, that’s really a big difference.

Analyst attributed the difference to China’s special environment for television drama industry: “ In US, the television materials are tightly held by its four television stations including CBS, ABC, NBC and etc, these television stations would not like to sell television drama copyrights to video sharing websites like Youtube. While in China, we have 198 television station with more than 2000 television channels as well as thousand of film and television production companies. Television materials in China are highly scattered, which provides a chance for Chinese video sharing websites to change the rule of television drama industry”.
With the forming of a large Internet television drama database, more and more Chinese young students, white collars are shifting to watch television dramas online. Chinese video sharing websites also see a great chance to boost their business. Some of them have started to expand by strengthening partnerships, copyright issue and later stage development.
Main local video sharing players in China are www.joy.cn, www.youku.com, www.tudou.com and etc.

Internet Sales to Lead Bricks and Mortar Business in Japan

admin — Fri, 14 May 2010 01:25:39 +0000

Japan’s Internet sales market grew rapidly in recent years with the drive of the new “online shopping” consumption mode. Online sales volume in 2008 grew 300% percent over year 2000.
The new online shopping mode is crazy popular among female employees and aged people in Japan. ” It makes shopping much easy by just making a phone call or ordering your favourite product online, you don’t have to go to the shopping mall yourself.”, a young man who would not like to disclose his name told the reporter.
Up to today, the number of registered user in Rakuten-Japan’s largest online shopping mall has reached 53 million. It is expected more famous brands will move to this online shopping street with the influence of the ongoing economic recession.

Zhifubao Replaced Paypal as World Largest Electronic Payment Gateway

admin — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:09:43 +0000

China-based third party online payment processor Alipay Zhifubao announced that its user number has reached 200 million by yesterday June 6, 2009. This made it overtake Papyal as world’s largest electronic payment gateway. Latest statistical data shows Paypal owns approximate 180 million users globally.
Zhifubao, a branch of Alibaba Group, debutted on Taobao.com in October 2003. It took Zhifubao 5 years to get the first 100 million users in the end of August 2008. The period shorted to 10 months to enlarge its user number from 100 million to 200 million.
Shao Xiaofeng, CEO of Alipay Zhifubao says even though the actual turnover value of Zhifubao is lower than that of Paypal for now, Zhifubao is expected to overtake Paypal in this regard in 3 years. Zhifubao uses RMB as its official settlement currency as its users are mainly from the Mainland China; While Paypal, with a global user coverage, uses U.S. Dollar as its official settlement currency. The large currency exchange rate between U.S. Dollar and Chinese Yuan weakens Zhifubao’s competition advantage over Paypal in terms of turnover value.

Online Travel Market Revenue of China to Grow 27%

admin — Thu, 13 May 2010 09:40:57 +0000

China’s Online Travel Market is turning hot with the rise of the country’s middle class. The high growing usage rate of credit card and Internet will further strengthen this trend.
A local market research firm estimates that reservation service revenue for flight, hotel and online travel will reach RMB 4.75 billion Yuan (USD 659 million dollar) in 2010, with a growth rate of 27% over last year. The number will grow to RMB 90 billion Yuan in year 2013. The changing of living attitude, the fast growing expenditure capability of Chinese people are main factors that motivate the growth of this market.

Market trend has also drawn great attentions from international online travel reservation giants such as tripadvisor.com, hotels.com, booking.com and etc. To cut a piece of cake from the fast growing market, some of them have even created Chinese webpages on their websites and hired client support staff with Chinese language ability. Trip Aadvisor.com has even established their China branch called Dao Dao.Com.