The Launch of China-channels.com: One of the Largest Company Directories in China and Asia

EC Group announced the launch of its B2B online company directory, China-channels.com, with a view to connect the best qualified companies from China and Asia to the rest of the world.
Hong Kong, China (PRWEB) March 28, 2008 -- EC Group, an IT and online community development company, announced today the official launch of its B2B online company directory at www.china-channels.com, aiming at connecting the Asian and Chinese companies to their counterparts from the rest of the world.

China-channels provides business details and contact information of more than one million companies in Hong Kong and China. Companies are divided into 5000 categories for the ease of browsing. Most of the information is accessible without login.

"In order to lower the operating costs and make efficient use of resources, many companies would like to outsource their labour-intensive services to China and Asia. However, most of them have no idea where the most suitable companies could be located," said Kenny Lam, Chief Operating Officer of EC Group. "At the same time, many companies in the Asian-Pacific Region are eligible for serving business corporations from all around the world. The problem is that they do not have any appropriate channels to publicize themselves. China-channels.com is established to serve as a platform to connect both parties."

"There are a few B2B websites, such as alibaba.com and globalsources.com, which try to connect the Chinese companies with the foreign buyers. Most of these websites, however, focus only on trading, wholesale and manufacturing companies," Kenny Lam continued. "Other than such companies which sell products, China-channels.com will also cater for industries which only provide intangible services like design, IT and marketing."

China-channels features a "rating and comment system", so that from time to time, users can differentiate the better companies from others. According to Kenny Lam, companies with more positive feedbacks will rank higher in their categories and it means more exposure and more business opportunities.

The original content of the website is in English and seven other languages, including Simplified Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, are available through the built-in translation function.

For additional information about this B2B website, please contact EC Group at 852-3105-1566 or visit China-Channels.com at www.china-channels.com.

Based in Hong Kong SAR, China, EC Group (http://www.ec-computer.com) specializes in IT and web programming, developing online community (http://www.ec-photo.com) and online store (http://www.asia-product.com), search engine optimization, search engine marketing, web analytics and web site design.

China Law Could Impede Microsoft Deal for Yahoo

SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft’s hostile-takeover attempt against Yahoo may encounter an unexpected hurdle in August after a Chinese antimonopoly law takes effect that will extend the nation’s economic influence far beyond its borders.

The law, which goes into effect on Aug. 1, is intended to strengthen an existing set of antitrust regulations the Chinese originally established in 1993. It will make China a third sphere of regulatory influence, matching the power of the European Union and the United States, according to legal specialists in this country and in China who have studied it.

Formally enacted by the National People’s Congress last year, the measure gives Chinese regulators authority to examine foreign mergers when they involve acquisitions of Chinese companies or foreign businesses investing in Chinese companies’ operations. Beijing could also consider national security issues, according to a report by the official news agency Xinhua.

The law could give China influence in Microsoft’s courtship of Yahoo because in August 2005, Yahoo, a premier search portal, invested $1 billion in Alibaba.com, China’s largest e-commerce business. The investment gave Yahoo about a 40 percent stake in the Chinese company. Alibaba officials have said they believe that a Microsoft takeover of Yahoo would set in motion a buyback provision, making it possible for them to gain independence from Microsoft.

Nathan G. Bush, an antitrust law specialist with O’Melveny & Myers in Beijing, said the law represented the ascendance of China “as another regulatory capital contending for influence with Brussels and Washington.”

“Multinational corporations will need to develop strategies for all the markets they operate in,” he added, “and China is a big market.”

Whether China would seek to review a Microsoft acquisition, and what kind of posture it might take, would be closely watched by regulators and global companies as an indication whether it will play a conciliatory or a nationalistic role on the world stage.

“I don’t think anyone has worked through the issue of where an Internet merger should be reviewed, given that it truly is a World Wide Web,” said Andrew I. Gavil, a law professor at Howard University.

There are potentially dozens of jurisdictions that could claim oversight in such a deal because of the global business interests of the two huge companies and because it could potentially transform the Internet into two megaportals, Google and Microsoft. Other parts of the world that might have an active interest in the outcome of a merger include South Korea, a vibrant Internet economy where an antitrust investigation into Microsoft was previously opened.

Executives at Microsoft and Yahoo declined to comment on the possible effect of the new Chinese law. In rejecting Microsoft’s takeover bid in January, Yahoo’s chief executive, Jerry Yang, said in a letter to employees that the offer substantially undervalued the company, in part because of the significant growth potential of the Alibaba business in China.

The issue of whether the Beijing authorities will harmonize the law with foreign antitrust laws or use it to fire a shot across the bow of global businesses was sharpened last week after an effort by Huawei Technologies to invest in 3Com collapsed in the face of national security concerns in Washington.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States had examined the purchase, through which Huawei would have gained a stake in 3Com. The American company’s Tipping Point subsidiary makes Internet intrusion-detection software, a technology that the United States maintains has national security implications.

Before the attempted investment fell apart, senior Chinese officials were quoted as saying they thought that the deal did not have national security implications, and that American regulatory efforts were a cover for protectionist trade practices.

National security has played a role in other attempted deals involving Chinese companies. In 2005, the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation made a high bid to acquire Unocal, leading to a vote in the House of Representatives to block the deal. Soon afterward, the Chinese company, known as Cnooc, withdrew its bid and Unocal was acquired by Chevron.

In the case of the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo transaction, the Chinese have in recent years become more and more alert to the role the Internet plays in their economic and political affairs.

Last week, a vice minister in the State Council Information Office, which oversees the Internet, said there were 230 million Chinese users of the Internet. He said the Internet sector accounted for 7 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, and he expected that to rise to 15 percent in three to four years, according to a Reuters report.

The official, Cai Mingzhao, warned that foreigners should not use the Internet to interfere in Chinese internal matters, according to a report in The Guardian.

Even if the Chinese government did not try to prevent a takeover by Microsoft, a prolonged review could substantially damage the value of the business, a number of Internet industry executives said.

What’s Yahoo worth to Microsoft without Alibaba?

One of Yahoo’s best arguments for getting Microsoft to raise its offer to acquire the company–the portal’s stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba–is in jeopardy courtesy of antitrust regulations in China.

The New York Times reported Friday that a Chinese monopoly law that goes into effect in August could likely throw a roadblock in front of Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo.
According to the Times:

The law, which goes into effect on Aug. 1, is intended to strengthen an existing set of antitrust regulations the Chinese originally established in 1993. It will make China a third sphere of regulatory influence, matching the power of the European Union and the United States, according to legal specialists in this country and in China who have studied it.

If Chinese authorities raise any objections to Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo–and they will because hometown favorite Alibaba is against the purchase–the argument that Yahoo is worth more than $31 a share becomes laughable. In fact, you could argue that Yahoo is worth less than $31 a share. In its pitch to investors arguing that it’s worth more, Yahoo figured that Alibaba was worth $2.25 a share and had a market value of $3.2 billion.

What happens if Alibaba is removed from the equation? Given that Microsoft is already a regulator whipping boy in the EU it may not want to tussle with China too–especially if Alibaba management doesn’t want to deal with the software giant.

Bottom line: Microsoft isn’t likely to lower its price, but these China regulator concerns mean that the company isn’t about to raise its bid any time soon.

Chinese exporters shun flagging dollar

Rising numbers of Chinese exporters are shunning the US dollar or devising ways to offset the impact of the falling currency as they confront rising labour and raw material costs at home.
According to Alibaba.com, the online company that matches Chinese suppliers with international buyers, the vast majority of their almost 700,000 Chinese suppliers no longer use dollars to settle non-US transactions to minimise foreign exchange risk.

“They are moving to euros, pounds, Australian dollars or even quoting prices in renminbi,” David Wei, chief executive, told the Financial Times. Moreover, he added, prices quoted in dollars were now often valid for just seven days compared with the 30-60 days common previously.

The dollar has long been the currency of choice for Chinese and other exporters around the world. However, the impact of its recent weakening has led exporters to begin questioning its place as the de facto world currency.

The renminbi, which western governments have long alleged is undervalued, thus giving Chinese exporters an unfair advantage, has appreciated 6.7 per cent against the US dollar in the past six months. Economists expect it to rise 10-15 per cent against the dollar in 2008.
Quanzhou Leething Garment & Knitting, a Chinese men’s underwear factory, said it had started encouraging clients to pay in euros instead of dollars in November. While the Chinese currency has appreciated against its US counterpart in recent months, it has moved little against the euro.
Other companies have taken more unusual approaches, such as setting their own exchange rates and therefore in effect raising prices.

Xiao Zheng, chairman of Dongguan City Shima Toys in southern China, said its price quotations were valid for three months but were calculated based on an exchange rate of Rmb6.6 to the dollar.

With the official exchange rate at Rmb7.01 to the dollar on Thursday, this in effect raised prices 5.8 per cent.

“We are thinking about renewing our quotations every other month and we are also going to offer quotations in euros very soon,” said Mr Xiao.William Fung, managing director of Li & Fung, a global supply chain company, said international buyers would have to accept higher export prices from China, especially for goods such as toys that are largely made only in the country.

Alibaba boosts e-commerce for SMEs

Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba.com Ltd will launch a project in April to subsidize small and medium companies to use its online services. From yesterday, users were invited to subscribe for a free trial on caifu.china.alibaba.com, with a quota of 6,188 people.

The project will lower the threshold for domestic firms to use the e-commerce service, said Chief Executive Officer David Wei.

Hong Kong-listed Alibaba.com reported its net profit more than quadrupled to 967.8 million yuan (US$136.3 million) in 2007 from a year earlier due to rapid expansion of paying users.

Alibaba, Foshan Government Ally on E-commerce

Yesterday, the government of Foshan City, Guangdong Province signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Alibaba (1688.HK) to make Foshan the key e-commerce development base in South China. This follows Alibaba's earlier plan to invest USD 200 mln to create a Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan e-commerce operations and development center headquartered in Guangdong. In addition, Alibaba also hopes to jointly launch a "Guangdong SME's E-commerce and Online Management Software Start-up Fund" with the provincial government, which would be used to support small and medium enterprises. Investment in the fund would come from the government, enterprises, and Alibaba, with each party contributing 1/3 of the total.

Alimama offers free services

Alibaba Group's online ads subsidiary Alimama said yesterday it will make most of its services available free of charge, as it tries to challenge market leaders like Baidu and Google.

Alimama said it will scrap an 8 percent commission on sales from cost-per-time ads on its websites starting from next month and will open its advertising tracking system to users for free.

But it will continue to charge for pay-per-click ads, which account for 20 percent of the company's ad sales.

"China's online advertising market is in its infancy and for companies like us, the future is definitely to embrace the country's huge number of small and medium-sized enterprises," Wu Yongming, general manager of Alimama, said.

"By making our services free, we can significantly help China's huge number of website publishers and bloggers - and differentiate ourselves from the competition."

Alimama is an online advertising exchange set up by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group in November last year. The website connects advertisers with the country's countless small and medium-sized websites and bloggers. It takes revenue from each ad sale, in direct competition with market leaders like Baidu, Allyes and Google.

The company claims to have signed up 330,000 small and medium-sized website publishers and 170,000 bloggers in China.

Alimama's latest move is reminiscent of another Alibaba subsidiary, Taobao.com, which beat auction giant eBay to become the largest player in China's customer-to-customer market in 2004 using a similar strategy.

Winning customers with free services has become a proven practice for many latecomers to China's Internet market, as the monthly income of nearly 70 percent of the country's Internet users is below $280.

Baidu Inc yesterday declined to comment on Alimama's latest strategy.
Domestic research firm Analysys International said the move will help Alimama win new users.

Alibaba.com gives UK route to China

For years, the glut of cheap imports flowing from the huge manufacturing zones of southern China on to shop shelves across the world has resembled an irreversible tide.

The result? An escalating trade deficit which has come to underline China's role as the West's factory floor.

Now, the largest internet company in China is attempting to help swing the pendulum back in the other direction.

Alibaba.com, the e-commerce firm headed by Jack Ma, the man dubbed China's "internet godfather", is to launch an online platform which will encourage the owners of British small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to export their products to the world's most populous country.

Called Export to China, Export to the World, the new service, which will be launched in the second half of this year, will target the 268,000 Britons who are already members of Alibaba.com.

The website is currently recruiting new members in this country at a rate of 2,000 every week.

David Wei, chief executive of Alibaba.com and a former executive at B&Q in China, said that the new platform would appeal to British SMEs operating in industries in which Britain retained a prominent international role.

"In high-technology engineering products, where the UK is still very competitive, and in areas such as patents and intellectual property, there is a major opportunity for UK SMEs to export to China," said Wei.

Alibaba.com is the Hong Kong-listed unit of Alibaba Group, which also includes one of China's biggest consumer websites and a substantial online auction business.

Wei said the company continued to keep an open mind about stock market listings for other divisions of the group.

"We are keeping all options on the table," said Wei.

Last week, Alibaba.com reported its maiden results as a public company, unveiling a 200 per cent rise in operating profit to RMB804m.

The Chinese company may play a significant role in the ongoing takeover battle between Microsoft and Yahoo!, which owns a 39 per cent stake in Alibaba Group.

Ma is understood to have appointed Deutsche Bank to advise him on the situation and is in talks with potential investors who may be interested in co-funding a buyout of the Yahoo! stake.
On Friday, Ma was one of a number of senior Chinese businessmen who attended a discussion in London with government ministers about the future of the internet.

Alibaba looking to buy back Yahoo stake

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Alibaba Group is reportedly looking to buy back the shares owned by Yahoo Inc. in a bid maintain its independence in the event of a Microsoft Corp. takeover of the beleaguered Internet portal, according to media reports.

Such a move could have a major impact on Yahoo's valuation as the company remains the target of an acquisition bid from Microsoft according to some analysts.

Alibaba Group, the Chinese Internet giant which is 39% owned by Yahoo has been meeting with investors about possibly financing a buyback of Yahoo's ownership stake, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, both of which cite unnamed sources. A clause in the contract between the two companies would reportedly give Alibaba the opportunity to buy back Yahoo's stake should a change of control occur at the Internet giant.

The reported talks are taking place as Yahoo is trying to convince Wall Street that Microsoft's blockbuster bid, initially valued at $44.6 billion, is grossly undervaluing the Web portal.
Yahoo's stake in Alibaba.com, a key component of Alibaba Group, and in Yahoo Japan are thought to be major components underlying its valuation. Yahoo itself values the two investments at about $12.5 billion, or about $8.90 per share, according to an investor presentation filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday.

Yahoo shares were trading down 1.1% at $27.34 by midday Wednesday.
"We believe this makes the deal less attractive from Microsoft's perspective as Yahoo's strategic China assets were a significant part of its bid for Yahoo," Brian Pitz of Banc of America Securities wrote in a note to clients Wednesday.

Some say the move also appears to be a stunning vote of no confidence against Yahoo from a major partner in the increasingly important Asian market as the company struggles with an unsolicited merger offer from Microsoft.

"They're separating themselves from Yahoo probably due to the instability and to concerns that Microsoft may end up owning that stake," analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group said. "They don't want that turmoil to reflect on them... You don't want the concern over Yahoo to transfer to you."

The move, he continued, also makes it harder for Yahoo to highlight its strengths in Asia because "if you are showcasing that region and have someone in that region separating from you, it's not a comfortable situation to be in."

Analyst Crawford Del Prete of International Data Corp. said Alibaba's purchase of Yahoo's stake would mean a cash infusion for the Web giant, but it "could be a signal that they are not interested in a Microsoft ownership position for Yahoo."

"Or it's a signal that they are not buying into Yahoo's future vision and the valuation expectations they have," he added.

However, analyst Steve Allen of Sierra Tech Research offered a different view, saying Alibaba's reported efforts to break free from Yahoo actually gives the Internet giant an opportunity to highlight its value as a tech giant with a global footprint. He said Yahoo could argue that Alibaba is trying to "get rid of us because the opportunity is so great they want to grab it themselves."

Alibaba reports massive boost in profits

China based online company Alibaba has reported a massive boost in their 2007 net profits.
The company has posted a 340 percent jump as they gained from growing Chinese economy.
Alibaba continues to dominate the China’s online business to business market. Market analysts put their market share at around 57 percent.

Company Chief Executive Officer David Wei spoke about the global economy worries: “We don’t see the slowdown in the U.S. economy having a major effect, as our customers are working on expanding our merchandising channels and diversifying our supply chain.”

Alibaba overall reported a 2007 profit of 967.8 million Yuan. This is a major improvement from figures of 219.94 million a year earlier.

Alibaba Becomes ICANN-Accredited Registrar

HANGZHOU, Mar 17, 2008 (SinoCast via COMTEX) -- Alibaba.com Ltd. (SEHK: 1688) has become the an accredited registrar of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), said market sources on March 13, 2008.

With the license, Alibaba can provide top-level domain names for companies and individuals. And it plans to launch a new project to add a new source of charges. The company might buy the nation's major domain name service providers to provide better and more diversified services for small and medium companies, said people closed to the company.

As the B2B arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, Alibaba.com now has two paid products - China Supplier and TrustPass. It went public on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong on November 6, 2007. To improve its performance, it has been finding ways to turn its registered users into paid members after that. For instance, it launched plans of hiring 2,000 sales staff around the nation and cooperating with banks to provide lending services for its clients.
Alibaba previously said that it had 24.6 million registered users, among which around 250,000 are paid members by the end of June 2007.

Alibaba's Jack Ma: I Won't Die Until Taobao Tops RMB10 Trillion

Alibaba Group CEO Jack Ma has put his team in charge of bringing annual transaction volume on Alibaba's consumer-to-consumer (C2C) site Taobao.com to over RMB10 trillion before he dies, reports qq.com. In the next ten years, Ma is dreaming of Taobao transaction volumes surpassing that of Wal-Mart Global's RMB3.5 trillion total, said the report. This year, Ma is targeting annual transaction volume of RMB100 billion for Taobao. Taobao transaction volume increased 156.3 percent year-on-year to reach RMB43.3 billion in 2007

E-commerce gaining a foothold in China

SHANGHAI (AFP) — With more Internet users than any other nation on the planet, China's e-commerce is booming, but obstacles remain before the full business potential can be unleashed, analysts said.

China's online population is now at 220 million, Beijing-based research firm BDA China said late last week, overtaking the United States as the world's number one, highlighting the growth opportunities in the huge Asian market.

Fifty-five million of China's Internet users shopped online last year for a total turnover of 59.4 billion yuan (8.25 billion dollars), according to the China Internet Research Centre in Beijing.

That is up from 43 million online shoppers in 2006, when the value of transactions stood at 4.3 billion dollars, the centre said -- and an even larger jump from the 62 million dollars spent online in 2000.

Driving that growth were shoppers like Shanghai educational consultant Xue Ling, 27, who said she increasingly prefers to jump online to make purchases.

"It is much more practical," said Xue. "I'm sure to find everything that I want and it is sometimes less expensive than in stores."

By 2011, the centre projected that online spending will hit 406 billion yuan as more of China's Internet users turn to online shopping.

Yet the level of online spending remains modest: about 1,000 yuan last year per consumer, or 0.64 percent of total retail spending in China.

Growth in its e-commerce has lagged due to consumer concerns about reliable online payment methods and counterfeit goods.

"I'm still shopping in town more than on the Internet. I just don't completely trust Internet shops," said Lin Yue, 24, a businesswoman in Shanghai.

According to the centre Lin's concerns are well founded. "The purchasing of fake goods, credit card theft and other related problems emerge in an endless stream," it said.

For people like Xue, the educational consultant, that means online shopping can be an exercise in frustration.
"I have bought products online only to receive counterfeits," she said.

Nevertheless improvements in technology have meant that online payment systems are now safer and the challenge for Internet firms is to win over consumers' confidence.

"The online payment is no longer a technical problem for the Chinese portals, but a problem of confidence, as consumers continue to be wary of settlement systems via the Internet," Liu Bin, an Internet analyst at BDA China.

Another challenge that Internet companies in China face is the small number of credit card users, with 75 million credit cards in circulation by the end of 2007, according to state media reports.
Although credit cards are becoming more popular, Liu said their still low penetration rate along with quality controls and infrastructure issues explain why online sales in China last year made up little more than six percent of that in the United States.

"It gives the US an advantage that it will probably take China 10 years to catch up on," said Liu.

To overcome this difficulty, online business-to-business portal Alibaba has been relatively successful with Alipay, a system which allows users to pay in escrow only once the product has been received.

Despite the problems, growth in China's online shopping is nonetheless fast given the time it took to surpass the 50 billion yuan mark, a key threshold for a brick-and-mortar retailer, analysts said.

For instance Gome, China's leading distributor of electrical appliances, took 19 years to ring up that level of sales at its retail outlets, while China's online shopping sector took just nine to reach that figure.

"At this size, it can be said that the means of payment and logistics are well established. This indicates that the market has reached a certain stage of maturity," said Liu.

Currently, Taobao.com, a subsidiary of online portal Alibaba.com, in which Yahoo! invested one billion dollars in 2005, is China's dominant Internet retailer, accounting for 80 percent of the country's e-commerce turnover.

The site had sales of 43.3 billion yuan in 2007, the centre said, most of it in consumer-to-consumer transactions, but its profitability remains in question as it does not charge buyer or seller a transaction fee.
"The issue of paid and free online shopping has been the focus of controversy. Users of course want it to be free, but for shopping websites the fee is necessary," said the Beijing centre.

Global Sources Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2007 Results

2007 Annual Revenue of $182.1 Million and Fourth Quarter Revenue of $60.8 Million, Both Up 16% Compared to Respective Periods in 2006, Reported 2007 GAAP EPS of $0.51 and Non-GAAP EPS of $0.73,

Global Sources Ltd. (Nasdaq: GSOL) ( http://www.globalsources.com ) reported financial results for the fourth quarter and year ended Dec. 31, 2007.

Global Sources' chairman and CEO, Merle A. Hinrichs, said: "We had a very good year in 2007 financially, and in making investments to establish the foundation for continued success. In 2008 we plan to invest even more heavily in our online and trade show businesses.

"For our export-focused online business, last October we launched Global Sources Online 2.0, offering what we believe is the premier search experience in our industry. In January 2008, we introduced significant additional enhancements with the Six Star ranking system that provides buyers with third party credit check information on all verified suppliers. In January we also rolled out an end-to-end repackaging and repricing of our marketing programs for suppliers.

"We also continue to build on the outstanding success of our China Sourcing Fairs. They address the essential, face-to-face stage of the buying process. Ten new shows are scheduled to be added in 2008 in mainland China, Dubai, Hong Kong and India. To support the investment in our products, we anticipate a substantial increase in our sales representation.

"As we begin 2008, we are extremely pleased with our position in the market, with our products, and with our growth prospects. Our supplier customers typically have three primary objectives: lead generation, branding and differentiation, and opportunities to meet face-to-face with buyers. With our integrated offering of online marketplaces, trade shows and magazines, we address all three objectives, a clear and powerful differentiation from our online competitors who only address the lead generation objective."

Alibaba Sued For China Yahoo Infringement

E-commerce company Alibaba is being sued by Chinese broadband portal Bbvod.com for video broadcasts offered on China Yahoo's website, reports The First. Bbvod.com is suing Alibaba for RMB300,000 in the Beijing Chaoyang District Court over the TV series, "Struggle", said the report. Bbod.com claims it has the exclusive online broadcasting rights to the show. Bbov.com successfully sued Chinese online peer-to-peer (P2P) television broadcasting site UUSee.com for RMB150,000 over the same TV series in January. China Yahoo is an Alibaba subsidiary.

CCID Consulting Analyzes Alibaba's Strategy Implementation

BEIJING, Feb. 29 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- CCID Consulting, China's leading research, consulting and IT outsourcing service provider, and the first Chinese consulting firm listed in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Stock Exchange: HK08235), recently analyzed Alibaba's implementation of its new corporate strategy.

Towards the end of last year Alibaba made a high-profile announcement about the reorganizing of its corporate structure, as well as senior management changes and the reduction of staff at Yahoo! China. Alibaba has defined for itself a magnificent goal, as declared at the Company's IPO -- 'to build a perfect ecological e-business chain and make Alibaba a great world-class company created by Chinese people. After the successful listing, Alibaba acquired necessary capital as well as incentive mechanisms for sustainable development. In the next stage, Alibaba will enter the phase of strategic goal implementation, going along with great challenges.

In Alibaba's development history, Mr. Ma Yun considers mission, value and strategic targets as his life. Alibaba's mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. What's more, Alibaba considers team spirit, quality, facility, passion, openness, innovation, service and respect as its core values.

During the establishing of a global e-business operating system, Alibaba needs to build a more robust and stronger e-business infrastructure, which will form the key competence of Alibaba. As the number and involved area of transactions increase rapidly, e-business infrastructure will become the engine of Alibaba's e-business transactions to ensure a more reliable, robust and smooth transaction environment. Also, its e-business infrastructure will help Alibaba to integrate its different business mode to satisfy the demand of business innovation. It is obvious that Alibaba's e-business infrastructure will be an important investment direction that Alibaba will benefit from.

It is necessary for Alibaba to clearly define its strategic focus clearly in order to achieve solid development. During the establishment of an ecological e-business chain, Alibaba should think about its business development strategy deeply: In B2B, should the focus be on expanding business scale or optimizing business structure? In B2C, should the focus be on extending business scope or enhancing business profitability? In market development, should the focus be on opening up a new overseas market or deep ploughing on the stock market? In strategy making, should the focus be on integrating resources among the industry chain or developing new business?

Taking the business structure and layout of Alibaba into account, the recent focus of Alibaba is to accelerate the growth of B2B and B2C business, speed up overseas market development and strengthen platform resource integration. In the current industry chain of Alibaba, the market scale and customer aggregation of Yahoo! China's network search didn't reach the expected target. Yahoo! China is currently not a contributor of income and profit for Alibaba. Hence, the restructuring of Yahoo! China was inevitable. In December 2007, Yahoo! China cancelled the original three departments (new media department, network search department, and communications department), and established two new departments (Website operating department, and Mailbox operating department). The merging of network search and e-business and digging in potential value of network search will be the future development direction of Yahoo! China. On the other hand, e-business search technology development will be a focus, which takes network search from a profit center to a cost center.

Integration will be another important step for Alibaba. Alibaba integrates information flow, capital flow and logistics into a uniform ecological chain, of which the majority of customers are 'long-tail' customers distributed all over the world, including SMEs and individuals. The service mode comprises B2B and B2C. The integration of different regional resources and integration of business resources are two key parts in the implementation of resource integration. The establishment of the Group Search Technology Development Center, P4P Operating Center, and Media Sales Center should focus on the resource integration to promote the common value of B2B and B2C business.

The implementation of new strategies requires Alibaba to have new abilities. World-class companies need world-class leadership and entrepreneurial spirit, which means Mr. Ma Yun and his leadership team have to have global viewpoints and strategic visions. World-class companies require heads to be experienced in international operations and global value chain operations, while also being familiar with business and legal environments among different countries. These requests cannot be covered by the young employees of Alibaba, hence, Alibaba's decision to launch another strategy: the study, dismissals, and upgrading of the current management team. Suitable people will be promoted to higher positions, while the unsuitable will be further educated, or possibly even dismissed. In December 2007, Alibaba Group announced several personnel changes: Mr. Zeng Ming of Yahoo! China transferred back to Alibaba Group; Mr. Lu Zhaoxi, the original CEO of AliPay transferred to CEO of Taobao.com; Mr. Jin Jianhang, the vice president of Alibaba Group transferred to CEO of Yahoo! China; Mr. Shao Xiaofeng, the vice president of Taobao.com transferred to CEO of AliPay; Ms. Zhang Yifen of Yahoo! Search transferred to vice president of Group P4P Operating Center; while Mr. Sun Tongyu, the president of Taobao.com, Mr. Li Qi, the COO of Alibaba Group, Mr. Wu Jiong, the CTO of Alibaba Group, and Mr. Li Xuhui, the Senior Vice President were all dismissed. And then, on January 24, 2008, Alibaba announced the layoff of 100 employees in Yahoo! China. From all these activities, it is clear that Alibaba is determined to build a world-class team and make this team suitable for the development strategy.

Facing all the challenges, a successful strategy implementation can realizes Alibaba's goal, that is, market value reaching $100 billion in three years, while also becoming one of the top three Internet companies within ten years.

US Website Moves To Traditional Media, Chinese Companies Already There

A Techcrunch story about wedding site The Knot buying a magazine company wondered "if we are going to see more Web-buy-print deals". While this may be a new phenomenon in the US, severalChinese companies have used this model. Wedding preparation and home decoration community site Liba.com has a very successful online storefront model, but has also been publishing a magazine since December 2006 and acquired another in November of last year. Another company, Co-op Land Corporation, also targeting the home decoration crowd, launched its website www.E-jjj.com in 2000 and has been publishing magazines since 2001. Co-op Land also plans to launch a TV channel in 2008 (See PE's interview with Co-op Land here).

From the broader perspective, almost all companies looking to make some money in China have to use the online/offline model. Job search company 51job (Nasdaq: JOBS), still makes over half its revenue from its offline recruitment newspaper. Travel booking services providers Ctrip (Nasdaq: CTRP) and eLong (LONG) are essentially call center businesses that also happen to have (pretty bad) websites. All the game companies rely on offline sales channels-such as Internet cafes-to get their prepaid game cards in the hands of gamers. Baidu and Alibaba have thousands of salespeople blanketing small and medium enterprises (SME) hawking their marketing platforms. And a lot of "e-commerce" transactions are completed using the cash on delivery payment method.

Alibaba takes us a step closer to real m-commerce

There's a very interesting post at the China Web 2.0 Review (they often are!). Alibaba's Taobao has launched a WAP version with a limited feature set at wap.taobao.com Interesting enough as a way to expand its reach to those 500+ million mobile phone users, many of whom do not have easy Internet access of their own.

More interesting still is the way in which the sit is served by a mobile interface for Alipay. As Luyi Chen points out in his post, payment for most m-commerce in China so far has been processed by the mobile service providers as part of the consumers' bill. I'd assume that China Mobile won't be too tickled by Alibaba's move to skirt around that with its m-Alipay service. But, however, big and powerful they are, its hard to imagine they can stop it in the long term.

Alimama Offers Better After-sales Service For Online Advertisers

Alimama, an online advertising business unit of Chinese online e-commerce service provider Alibaba, has announced plans to provide a better after-sales service for its online advertisers.

Alimama is recruiting credible small and medium-sized websites. It says it will provide a "3 Packets of Plans" to qualified websites by ensuring their profit-making, guaranteeing their compensation and recommending businesses to them.

In the initial stage, Alimama will choose several thousand websites and mark each of them with a "3 Packets of Plans" sign. After making sure that each of these websites has a real-name certification and stable traffic, Alimama will purchase advertising placement from them to ensure that they will earn stable income.
Wu Yongming, general manager of Alimama, says they hope to build a basic standard for online advertisements and improve the service of the online advertisement sector through the "3 Packets of Plans".