iPhone 5 Launch and Christmas: For Apps, The Most Wonderful Times of the Year

Like all its predecessors, the newest Apple iPhone 5 is set to make waves in the app industry.  In America alone, iPhone 5 preorders topped 2 million in 24 hours — more than double the amount of preorders it had for the iPhone 4S. Apple is known for impeccably timing its execution for big product launches and upon reflecting on the importance of timing, we’ve noticed how seasonal trends play a big role in boosting app downloads and sales. We can’t stress enough to developers how critical it is to be prepared for the Winter holiday season this year because its going to be huge!

Like clockwork – Apple app downloads and revenue jump  around two events of the year

Like the increase of sales for ice-cream in summer and ski gear in winter, mobile app downloads are also subject to seasonal fluctuations. However unlike the weather, app seasonality is controlled by the Master of the iTunes App Store universe – Apple. To analyze these trends, we studied downloads and revenue across the iPhone in the U.S. market1 and discovered some common themes.

iPhone Device releases make apps go hyper

The first boost to Apple app downloads is of course the release of next generation iDevices.  On September 12th, Apple CEO Tim Cook recently unveiled the longer, sleeker, more advanced iPhone 5 to the world. Apple addicted consumers will camp and line outside Apple flagship stores for days in order to grab the first release of coveted devices.  When the iPhone 4S was released in October 2011, downloads grew a modest 2% between October to November but revenues jumped by a strong 22%. This higher revenue than downloads growth trend signals how iPhone users are comfortable with spending more and more on apps.

Christmas is a merry time for apps 

The second sharp rise in Apple app downloads and revenues is clearly around Christmas time. Christmas or the end of the year is a time for giving lavishly and Apple devices are on many people’s wish lists. One of the most successful developers in the world, Rovio of Angry Birds, took advantage of the Christmas trend with a special Angry Birds Christmas edition in 2010 and on Christmas Day of 2011 alone, there were 6.5 million downloads across all of its games.

In relation to the app market, we classify the Christmas period being from November to January, since November to December is when device sales increase and December to January is when app downloads and sales related to those devices sales flow through.

To see the incline and decline before and after the Christmas period, we zoomed in on the period from September 2011 to February 2012 for app downloads and revenue for iPhone in the U.S. market.

As expected, there was a marked uptick in app downloads from November to December of 39% and a related 45% jump in revenues. At the tail end of the Christmas period there was a decline of  14% in downloads and 7.1% in revenue. For iPhone developers, it is important to capitalize on the Christmas spike by preparing to release and market apps in October.

Double dip app-cession

Of course the natural dips in downloads and revenues occur in-between the peaks of device releases and Christmas time. Like many other industries, the after-holiday period takes a while to wind back up to full capacity. That is why it is important for developers not to arrive at the party too late, because once February comes, app downloads and revenue will drop off suddenly.

Know the seasonal trends and get ready for them

Knowing that device releases and Christmas are two factors that consistently influence apps, app developers, publishers and marketers must prepare to take advantage of the natural trends. One strategy is to create Christmas themed games like Rovio with Angry Birds. Another strategy may be to get featured in the ads of the newest iPhone release.  To investigate the impact of the hotly anticipated iPhone 5’s market debut, we will follow up later with analysis of iPhone 5 app download and revenue trends in the coming months. For now, everyone in the app world should prepare for the Christmas and Winter burst of activity because we don’t want to say ‘We told you so!’
Notes:

1. All data The analyses and insights discussed were drawn from App Annie’s Intelligence data for the U.S. market.  App Annie takes responsibility for the claims and insights in this article which are based on this data and research. However, App Annie does not take responsibility for any actions or outcomes undertaken by 3rd parties, as a result of this article or the analyses or data contained within.

Related posts:

1. Apple Is Recruiting In China, Preparing For iPhone Launch
2. Meizu M9, Looks As Good As iPhone 4, Out Before Christmas
3. China Unicom Offering FREE iPhone 4s with 3 Year Contracts

“Capturing Investment Opportunities in the TMT Sector in Changing Times”, a Wharton Club of Beijing Panel Discussion

On Saturday evening, the Wharton Club of Beijing invited a panel of distinguished Wharton MBA alumni in the Chinese TMT investment sector to share their thoughts and insights into the exciting market. As Wharton is world renowned for their strong financial academic rigour, it is only fitting to listen to the panel about the direction of the TMT investment space.

The panel consisted of Michael Yin, Managing Director and Founding Partner of Summitview Capital; William Qu, Managing Director of Zero2IPO Ventures, Forest Lin, Executive Director of M&A Tencent Industry Collaboration Fund and Marvin Mao, an entrepreneur and Venture Partner of Morningside Capital. The panel was moderated by Kai Hong, CEO of Capvision Partners.

The US$10 Million Investment Idea

Kai posed a hypothetical question to the panel about how they would invest $10 Million into the TMT sector in China today.

Lin of Tencent said that $10 Million could buy 2-3 stage A investments of 1 Stage B investment. He also expressed his “huge belief in companies that can create new demand or enhance efficiency of an existing market that can make people’s lives easier.” He noted one start-up from the U.S. called ZocDoc as an example that helps improves the efficiency of booking doctors based on public ratings and reviews.

Yin uses a more ‘bottom-up’ investment thesis that is based on fundamental market conditions. Yin says “the trick is to understand the sector and next product cycle and identify the winner in the next 6-12 months.” Given China’s rapid economic development, sectors like online travel and job recruitment are providing attractive investment opportunities.

Mao is a strong advocate of mobile internet as he was a successful entrepreneur of start-ups like Pica and ShareWithU. Now as an investor he is using his experience to identify other high potential investments in the mobile internet space that can meet consumer demand with a solid business model. He feels Mobile commerce presents a good opportunity because it is close to cash and won’t take too long to generate revenue. Another view is to go after niche markets where big players aren’t looking. He advised to venture out into 2^nd and 3^rd tier cities of China and even rural areas to observe their behaviour and lifestyle needs. In this way it is possible to discover opportunities that are not “hot right now but will be in the future.”

Copy to China doesn’t work

Many entrepreneurs in China are asked by VC’s which U.S. start-up their business most closely resembles. It is partly this mentality of VC’s to follow U.S. investor deals that stifle creativity in China. Qu of Zero2IPO believes that copying to China exactly simply does not work. He used the example of Meilishuo and Ganji as two extreme examples. On one hand, Meilishuo looks like a clone of Pinterest, but it more quickly figured out a way to monetize shared pictures by acting as a lead generator to Taobao. On the other hand, Ganji is a classifieds clone of Craigs List in America. But with less than 30 staff Craigs List generates over US$10 Million in profit but Ganji has still not broken even with over 2,000 employees. Qu’s point is that it is not enough simply copy to China but rather adapt to China by “looking at the deep details of the Chinese market.”

Don’t be scared of the Tech Giants

As a Founder of Pica, a mobile communication app, Mao was clearly a little frustrated at Tencent moving into the space with the now dominant Weixin app. Lin of course defended Tencent saying that the Weixin team just executed with relentless focus and tenacity and this made all the difference. But the reality is that Tencent had an army of QQ Penguin followers to boost Weixin users and surpass every other walkie-talkie style app, including Talkbox. Despite the somewhat bitter history between Tencent and Pica, Mao suggested that entrepreneurs should not be afraid of giants like Tencent or Baidu because they are too big to move as quickly as start-ups. Small start-up teams are more agile, so can make quicker decisions. Moreover, in the mobile space the technical barrier of having to test across multiple mobile form factors is a common challenge for both start-ups and giants.

TMT is still a great sector to be in

Despite negative reports about the ethical financial governance of NASDAQ listed Chinese tech companies and the poor stock performance of companies like Facebook, Zynga and Groupon, the Chinese TMT investment market still provides strong opportunity for both start-ups and investors. Start-ups that focus on fundamentals of a big potential target market, strong product and team with a solid business model will always be in a favourable position no matter if investors want to invest or not. Like Lin said during the panel, companies are ultimately not created for an exit through IPO or M&A but rather to create value to customers and society.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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360 VS. QQ War Starts Again, And They Just Do Not Want To Stop

It has been almost two years since the first clash between Tencent and Qihoo360 started. In case you have lost some previous plot as I did, please look it up on Wikipedia or on this blog. The boring news for today is, they are suing each other again!

Previously on 360 VS QQ War:

Tencent sued 360 for the “QQ Bodyguard” software which was released on Oct 29th, 2010. Tencent claimed that many functions of this software including “Accelerate your QQ”, or “Healthcheck QQ” are “damaging and violating the functions under the cover of helping users”, and are “encouraging users to delete some plug-in services, and replacing some ads on QQ’s interface.

So Tencent asked the defendant company to stop the vicious competition and apologize publicly with RMB 125million compensation. However, 360 refuted that “over 50% users are not willing to see ads inserted in IM softwares according to a ’2003 China IM Market Research Paper’”, and thus “QQ Bodyguard is doing something catering to the benefits of the consumers.”

The result is that currently the “QQ Bodyguard” is not available on Qihoo360′s website any more.

Note that this is just one of the many disputes within these 2 years and there are still many cases unsettled and unsolved.

Even the clashes between the two have been very complicated and interweaved, they can still find out something new to fight against each other. The newest case will be called in court on September 18th in Guangdong province. This time, both sides demanded compensation claims.

This August, Tencent first handed over a document named “The value assessment of the brand damage of ‘QQ’” during the evidence exchange part, in which the company claimed compensation of RMB 734million for the brand damage caused by 360. And the other side surely does not agree with this report, and doubted that, “It is unacceptable, and it has clearly violated the objective reality and professional ethics.” Accordingly, Tencent is now working on an assessment again, the number listed there might be smaller than the first one though.

As a response to Tencent’s claims, 360 soon sued Tencent for anti-monopoly (that Tencent is making use of its market dominant place and forcing users to uninstall Qihoo 360 products) and the compensation required is RMB 150million.

[image credited to gadgetsrepublic]

No related posts.

SmartMouse: Turn Your Smart Phone Into A Wireless Multi-touch Magic Mouse

SmartMouse is an application (available on iOS, Android and Windows desktop) which can easily turn your smart phone into a super wireless multi-touch magic mouse.

It’s quite easy to use. First install SmartMouse client on both PC and smart phone, and then connect two devices by WiFi or Bluetooth. Then like using Macbook’s multi-touch trackpad, you can just lay your fingers on your smart phone screen to tap, double-tap or tap with two fingers (to simulate the Right Click) to remote control your PC. It’s very handy!

And what SmartMouse can do is more than that. It also developed some finger gestures to cater to different situations. When doing presentations, you can slide on the phone to turn to the next page on screen. When browsing websites, you can roll the web pages with two fingers sliding up and down. It’s also convenient to do simple action such as switching off and stand-by your PC. With SmartMouse, transferring files between your smart phone and PC become deadly easy, just more your finger and tap to choose the files and send. You may check the video demo below.

SmartMouse looks tiny but is a really cool application. It’s good for those lazy guys who like to connect his PC with bigger screen like TV to watch movies, so they can just sit in their sofa and remote control it with smart phones; it is also useful when we’re giving presentations. It also reminds us of previously covered app called WoAiDianShi (literally meaning I love TV) which’s fantastic as it changes a mobile phone into a TV remote. Smart phones are dominating the market now, but obviously besides making call and taking photos etc, there are still lots to discover what we can do with them.

SmartMouse is developed by Beijing Ti Qu Network & Technology co., LTD, a self-funded team of ten people based in Beijing.

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1. Alibaba, Tencent to Release Smart Phone
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3. PQLabs, A Lightweight Multi-Touch Screen Technology From Shanghai

Weiyuyin: An Interesting Vocal Plugin for Weixin

With Tencent Weixin/WeChat penetrating into Chinese people’s daily life, it’s becoming an platform that more plugins are expected to be developed to enrich its functions. Weiyuyin is an interesting vocal plugin for Weixin. When using Weixin, you might feel embarrassed when you have nothing to say? Are you reluctant to send a piece of voice message to a stranger? Weiyuyin provides you with interesting solutions.

Weiyuyin includes different styles of voice messages, such as animal’s sounds, popular slogans, amusing dialogues and so on. You may insert these voices to express your emotion or to change the atmosphere. What’s more, you can DIY your own voice messages! After recorded in Weiyuyin, your voice can even be changed into robot’s voice or cute baby voice if you like.

Weiyuyin could help users make friends with strangers to an extent. It’s obvious that vivid sound effects make interaction between friends more absorbing. But to strangers, its vocal messages can break the ice and melt down the tension. And, with Tencent Weixin’s Open Platform launched in May 2012, an increasing number of plugins or services can be integrated in Weixin such as very popular application Changba (sharing your karaoke songs with friends on Weixin). With these third-party service  installed into Weixin, users can play games, record songs, and do anything you could on the mobile phone. Eventually, Weixin may become a very influential platform that every application might rely on it, just like Facebook’s open platform. Note that Weiyuyin is already among Top 25 in Chinese App Stores!

Weiyuyin is developed by Shortail Lab, a Shenzhen-based company. It has launched several social-networking apps before, including YueYue (an LSB app inviting people near you to do something together), HuaHuaCai (similar to Draw Something) and HeHe (a service allows you to post weibo with more than 140 words).

Related posts:

1. Tencent Weixin’s Open Platform Launched
2. Tencent Has A Tiny Gadget For Weixin Lovers, An Earphones With a Push-to-Talk Button
3. Weixin 4.2 to Come with Video Chatting

Pony Ma Shares Thoughts On Mobile Internet, Says Weixin Users Hit 200 Million By This Month

In the 2012 China Internet Conference, the penguin kingdom leader Pony Ma shared his opinions on the mobile internet. Here’s some key notes.

The Trend

Pony Started the speech by quoting some latest data that by the end of June, Chinese mobile internet users have reached 388 million, and the number has passed 400 millions till September. “It is very clear that the mobile internet is the future trend, and we are all facing a brand-new area in which there are new rules and new user habits ahead of us.”

To illustrate this point, he showed some facts of the Tencent community, “According to our analysis, more than half of the messages on QQ are sent through mobile devices. On our SNS platform QZone, everyday about 200 million pictures are uploaded there. And now over 53% of the pictures are taken by phones. This is very prominent growth.”

“Our mobile IM Weixin was first launched 14 months ago, and now in this March we have already had over 100 million registered users. And I believe that by the end of this month, the number could have been 200 million. ”

The Critical Period

There is one particular difference between the products on mobile and on fixed internet access as to Pony. “On PC internet, the traffic entrance is mostly realized through several search engines or client tools offered by a small fraction of tech companies. However, on mobile internet the stage could be everyone’s thanks to the open Appstore market. Even a less-than-2-person team can create the hottest product overnight.”

The new mode surely brings along a higher standard for product quality. “A user can install an app within seconds, but he can also uninstall it right away if he gets confused or dislikes it. On the other hand, if he finds an app useful or interesting within a minute, he will very soon share this with friends through SNS or mobile tools. And this could be even quicker than you could imagine before this app hits the No.1 place on the Appstore ranking list.” Pony explained.

“I found it that the critical period of an app was less than a month. Usually a successful app would become very popular in 3 to 7 days after its release. If your product hasn’t seen any good mark after a month, you have to think about innovating and change.”

The Security Issue

“A recent report on 7 popular Appstores showed that about 58% of the apps are suspected of revealing users’ privacy. This could not necessarily be illegal, but users are innocent for they can not really make sure if their information is safe or not.” Pony also pointed out that Tencent was very serious about the security issues on mobile, and that the company urges the whole industry to take notice of it.

At the end of his speech, Pony announced that “Tencnet will put in totally RMB 10billion as a security fund to encourage more enterprises working on the safety of mobile internet. I hope that in this filed, all the players can work together and never stop looking for a better solution to provide a safer user environment.”

Related posts:

1. Breaking, Pony Ma Confirms that Tencent’s Weixin Has Reached 100 Million Users
2. Unstoppable Tencent? 310 Millions Weibo Users and 20 Millions Weixin Users
3. Papaya Mobile, Over 20 million Users

Benlai.com: B2C eCommerce Site Selling Safe and Healthy Food

Benlai (literally meaning Original) is a B2C eCommerce site providing safe and healthy food. Currently, its service is only restricted in Beijing.

Benlai offers a wide range of food, including vegetables, fruits, poultry, egg, milk, fish, seafood and so on. The company has established relationship with Chinese and oversea high quality food suppliers. Users make the payment online and the food will be kept in cold-storage and delivered directly to their home.

To ensure food safety, the company need pick some samples from each batch of food and test 43 routine items. Buyers are encouraged to compile experiences of purchasing into stories and post them on the website with nice pictures. Of course, these types of food are more expensive than those you get in the local market, so it aims at middle- and high-income people.

It’s not new for a startup tapping into the food industry, but it’s rather difficult to stand out we have to say so. The entire process, such as quality control, restoration of fresh food and transportation are all hot potatoes to tackle.

Benlai is founded by a former executive in Netease (NASDAQ: NTES). We’ve been told that it has RMB 50 million registered capital, planning to stretch their service from Beijing to Shanghai and Guangzhou with its RMB 200 million funding.

Related posts:

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3. Food SNS Douguo Raise US$ 1.54 million in Shanda Funding

360Buy Is Bored With The Price War, To Launch Its Web Game Platform

Recently insiders revealed that eCommerce site 360Buy would launch its brand-new web game platform before this October. It would have become the second B2C player stepping into gaming industry. Taobao had just secretly launched a web game platform wan.taobao.com this June.

Staff of 360Buy said that the platform would be built on its POP platform (360buy’s open data platform), and be operated jointly with some game operators. Users can log on, play web games or trade related virtual products on this platform.

According to the latest data released on 2012 ChinaJoy, by 1H this year, web games had totally created RMB 3.82billion, grown by 46.7% YOY. We once reported that web games could be a blue sea for game companies. Now it seems that this market is also quite attractive for any internet companies which have good traffic. Baidu, Tencent, 360 and RenRen all have their own jointly operating game platforms right now. The Q2 financial reports of the later two players 360 and RenRen showed their game revenues have increased by 167.2% and 122.1% respectively. No wonder even the B2C teams are marching in as well. Rumor has it that 360Buy’s recent biggest rival Suning is also planning on entering social shopping game area.

You may never imagine that an eCommerce company could cross the line to touch the gaming space. 360buy’s idea is to drive its huge traffic into the new game platform, but do note that online shoppers usually have clearer goals so it would be a big question that how to convince them who originally come just for shopping to addict to online games.

Maybe 360buy is bored with the price war it initiated, and web game platform might bring it better and easier cash too.

Related posts:

1. YY Inc. Acquires Chinese 3D Game Platform, ECitySky
2. Exclusive: 360buy to Open up Platform in 2 Months
3. The Bloody Price War Starts At 9am Today, 360Buy Vs. Suning/Gome/DangDang/51Buy

[TechNode's Santa Clara Event] All About China Startup Ecosystem: Startups, Investment and Innovation

China’s becoming the second hottest startup ecosystem. It’s not only about the massive user base, but a very different internet culture; it’s not just about hot money and venture capitals, it’s now more about angel investment, incubators which could drive truly innovation from China; it’s not only about China local market, it’s now with more focus on global market, thanks to global mobile industry; Silicon Valley is no doubt the best place for startups and the centre of innovation still. But we’ve heard more and more great startups curious in Chinese market, Silicon Valley based Chinese faces are doing their own startups with interests on Chinese local market. Still lots of questions about China internet waiting to be answered: How’s the current startup environment there, how’s the venture capitals doing, what’s the hottest area for investment, what’s the to-do and not-to-do of doing startups in China,etc.

On 24th Sept, TechNode, InnoSpring, Lenovo Innovation Centre and ZhenFund will together host an event sharing their knowledge about startup, investment and innovation in China. If you are doing a startup potentially targeted at Chinese market, you are also welcome to come and do a 6min demo pitch to experienced investors and experts. Please just send us your company profile and contact information to [contact At technode.com]. The best startup presented will be awarded a nice prize from Lenovo Innovation Centre.

The event will be hosted at InnoSpring. Address:

addy.co/innospring

Suite 107, 2901 Tasman Drive, Santa Clara, CA 95054

Agenda (speakers to be announced soon):

1:00pm – doors open and registration starts

1:30pm – 1:35pm welcome speech by TechNode

1:35pm – 1:50pm speech by InnoSpring

1:50pm – 2:05pm speech by Lenovo Incubator

2:05pm – 2:20pm speech by Zhen Fund

2:20pm – 2:50pm Panel and Q/A

3:00pm – 4:30pm DEMO Pitch (6min pitch time + 2min comments from judge)

4:30pm – 5:00pm Social networking

Register for the event NOW (link to Eventbrite)!!

Event management for All About China Internet: Startups, Investment and Innovation powered by Eventbrite

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AcceleratorHK, Hong Kong’s Accelerator for Mobile Startups On Hybrid Development

Hong Kong was reported 13.8millions mobile subscriptions by 2010, which means around 2 subscriptions for each local citizen. There are 5millions smart phones in Hong Kong, which also implies ~70% of local populations has a smart mobile device to access the internet. So clearly, mobile market is every HK based startup should consider seriously.

AcceleratorHK, is funded and supported by Telerik (the maker of KendoUI and Icenium, tools that make cross platform mobile development easier), and is organized by Stephen Forte and Paul Orlando, two successful entrepreneurs and educators with a passion for startups and disruptive technology. AcceleratorHK invests US$15,000 in each company for 5%-8% equity, and it also provides co-work space and mentorship program to the startups invested.

The interesting point about AcceleratorHK is that it focus on mobile with the emphasises that the startups’ apps must be hybrid development meaning a native, downloadable app, that runs all or some of its user interface in an embedded browser component, i.e. HTML5. Talking about reason, Stephen Forte mentioned on his blog, Gartner predicts that by 2015, 80% of all mobile applications developed will be hybrid or mobile-Web-oriented.

AcceleratorHK’s first semester ((Nov 5, 2012 – Feb 8, 2013)) has opened for applications. As Paul told us, 5 startups are expected to participate the program.

 

 

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Hotel Booking Application ChuJian Raised $10M

ChuJian, origianlly a booking app for budget hotels, was co-founded by Zhen Nanyan (co-chairman of 7daysinn, an economy hotel chain), Quan Manwu and one other friend. Last month, this young startup secured $10million funding, and is planning on expanding its territory to social networking.

As a veteran in hotel industry, Zhen is very good at running booking services on mobile. Within less than a year Chujian has partnered with over 5000 hotels, and claimed to have 2million users and 7000 rooms booked per night. With a very quick booking system in which users can make orders and payment promptly on mobile and its wide network of budget hotels, the company has already started profiting.

It seems that in hotel booking area, ChuJian hasn’t really seen any player catching up yet. However, in the area of lifestyle service which ChuJian is now aiming at, we have seen some more rivals. For instance, the popular social rating site Dianping, and the food recommendation app company Lehe, who had also closed $10million funding from Sequoia Capital.

Chujian’s secret is: an O2O (Online-2-Offline) model targeting at friends circle. According to the co-founder Zhen who has tried out in many area including hotel, B2C or C2C, his biggest interests still go for the O2O sector. When talking about the app’s name ChuJian (meaning “first sight” in Chinese), he said,

Thanks to internet, people are more connected than ever. However, the meetups in real life among friends are getting less and less. What we want to do is to create more opportunities for people to enjoy life, to share wonderful moments together, and feel fresh and excited just like meeting each other for the first time. We are looking for a mobile O2O model among everyone’s freind circle.

Zhen explained, Chujian make the difference by introducing a personalized recommendation page, a picture-oriented UI and some intersting social functions. For example, if you use the app near Beijing Workers’ Gymnasium(a pub street) at 10p.m., you will probably see a personalized merchants list of hot clubs or night snack shops. Again, when you use it in the morning, you’ll find recommendations for breakfast stores nearby. Of course, you can also resort
to search box if the results are not what you want.

Apart from a magazine-like UI, Chujian also add some social fun to attract users. The function of “Gathering” allows people to add their friends in a dialog in which the details of the date, such as who,where and when, are shown. Thus you don’t need to inform everyone by phone or wait for their confirmation.

ChuJian, is the mix of a booking service and social networking application.

Related posts:

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3. Dingzai, the Mobile Photo-Sharing Application Raised Another $1.5Millions

App Annie’s CEO, Bertrand Schmitt Gives Advice for China Based Startups to Go International

At the recent 10×10 Beijing event on August 18, App Annie CEO Bertrand Schmitt spoke about Going International. He shared insightful tips and strategies on taking a China-based global startup international, drawing from his own experience growing App Annie as a global company.

Along with talking about understanding product need from a global perspective and why you should go international, Bertrand shares about where to find funding, saying that for Series A funding, “you can find China-based investors with an international mindset.” Series B funding is a different story, and Bertrand suggests going outside China to find investors “only if you have demonstrated the ability to scale your business and interest from foreign users and foreign customers.”

You can watch video of Bertrand’s full presentation below:

Related posts:

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B2C eCommerce Site Yaodian100: Not A Happy Ending

Since this April, rumor has been whirling that the B2C site Yaodian100 (site currently unavailable) would stop its business soon. Unfortunately, four months later, the company closed the door of its Shanghai office, with tens million unpaid loans left behind. This B2C platform was first founded in 2009, once had millions registered users and selling many Taiwan imported goods.

“To directly copy the Taiwanese B2C mode obviously doesn’t work. What’s more, it even has led to the collapse of the company.” said an insider. Actually it is reported that over 50 former suppliers of Yaodian have allied to safeguard their legal rights and claim back the debts. Things don’t look so nice.

Some clues showed that problems and difficulties of this e-tailer have appeared long ago. According to a personal letter from a Yaodian staff in April, “Senior executives haven’t got paid for more than 3 months, common staff also haven’t seen salaries for 2 months. The 2 founding members left for Taiwan and the whole company is in a mess now. ”

Someone told the media that, “The unpaid loans of Yaodian is over tens millions, involving thousands suppliers. It has not declared bankruptcy yet, but the money shortage has started since September 2011.”

A former supplier of Yaodian revealed, “I tried to contact some staff, and they promised to pay the loans immediately on the phone. I didn’t take notice at all until none of the staff is available. It came to me that earlier this year, Yaodian was dealing with some stock offline, and I realized now that it posiibly wanted to cash out at that time.”

How could a 2-year -old young company be in a dilemma like this? A B2C insider told us that,’It was due to the fault of a wrong mode. Mainland China and Taiwan are two different markets and Yaodian innocently expected a same model go smoothly on either side. Thid is impossible.”

In Taiwan, B2C sites don’t keep stock, companies deliver goods directly through suppliers and manufacturers. While in Mainland China, a B2C platform will first purchase its stock, and suppliers do not share any of it. “In the early stage, Yaodian did it in a Taiwanese way, and found it not suitable afaterwards. Then they tried to transform into a local mode, but failed for lacking purchasing experiences.”

Currently the site is not available any more and the official announcement on its weibo said it was due to the relocation of the machine room. And the only contact available now is an email address.

Related posts:

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3. Page Rank Site, Alexa Closes Chinese Site

From Tabloids to Tablets: Commercial Opportunities On Apple’s Newsstand

Before the Internet and personal computers, people relied on daily newspapers to stay up to date on current events. Seemingly overnight, the rise of the Internet put our paperboys out of work and crowned digital news king. People began using desktop or laptop computers to access news anytime, increasing the velocity of information in the news world. In the last five years, however, it’s the Web that’s been gathering dust. The rapid proliferation of smartphone devices has enabled audiences to consume news not only at any time, but also from any location and through apps that optimize the reading experience. In the past five years, Amazon and Apple in particular have built entire ecosystems from the ground up, and have turned on their heads the entire content distribution and monetization strategies of just about every major publisher in the world. Time Inc’s CEO Laura Lang echoes this wholesale change: “People love reading our digital magazines already on iPad and we are confident we can deliver an even greater consumer experience on Newsstand with digital subscriptions.” Whilst the printed newspaper was invented over four hundred years ago, it’s the last decade that has changed the face of the written word.

Tabloids to Tablets: we’ve come a long way.

So nearly a year after Apple launched Newsstand, and on the day that Amazon comes to the world with its rumored release of the newest Amazon Kindle device, App Annie wanted to provide some market insights to assess the opportunities that lie in mobile apps for news and magazine publishers.

Readers are reading (and spending) more on mobile

Readers are reading more. A recent study by Pew Research Center found that nearly a quarter of Americans regularly get their news from a mobile device (smartphone or tablet). Not only that, those using mobile devices for news consume more content and return to the news site or app more frequently than they do on computers. The Apple App Store is capitalizing on this new consumer trend, by organizing the world’s digital news into a virtual newsstand. As is the Apple mantra, this vastly improves the total user experience for the reader – thereby driving greater traffic and revenue opportunities for media properties trying to reach these audiences.Readers are spending more. Over the past five years, Apple has built an audience with the sales of over 316 million iOS devices, more than all the Macs sold in 28 years of Apple business. Consequently, the iOS Newsstand has seen an impressive revenue growth of 407 percent since it launched. It’s clear that Apple’s user-centric and simple approach to design is making it easier for readers to reach into their virtual wallets and pay for content.

iOS Newsstand Revenue Grows 407 percent over 10 months

  Traditional news adapting to the new world of app monetization

The biggest challenge publishers face is how to monetize in a digital world where so much content is free. Unlike the web, app stores are at least minimally curated or filtered, making it a great place for quality brands to monetize loyal audiences within a controlled environment. But how to monetize?

Since before we were all born, the publishing industry has been built off a combination of subscription, pay per issue and advertising business models. And although there are those that write it’s a completely new world out there, the truth is that it’s more of an evolution, not a revolution. Pay per issue becomes pay per download, stamp-licked subscription is replaced by subscription through In-App Purchase, and print advertising models are being replaced through digital advertising models. But of course, it’s not quite that simple – a few trends to point out.

In-App Purchases are your best gateway to revenue generation. If the numbers are anything to go by, then if you haven’t integrated in-app purchases, you’re likely not making much money on Newsstand. We’ll give you two stats to illustrate that – 88% of Newsstand apps globally have in-app purchases integrated into their app, but 99.5% of all Newsstand revenue is generated from that 88% – meaning that those 12% of apps without in-app purchases are generating less than 0.5% of Newsstand global revenue.

 

iOS Newsstand Apps with In-App Purchases Generate Higher Revenue

 Publishers are experimenting with alternative forms of monetization. In June, Flipboard announced its plans to use paywall to monetize The New York Times content, a system that prevents Internet users from accessing webpage content without a paid subscription. For other publications, they’ve focused their efforts on avoiding the standard platform 30 percent cut through mobile web apps. Last September, The Financial Times defiantly pulled their paid app from iTunes and exchanged it with a free web-based HTML 5 app to drive subscriptions outside the app store and out of the grasp of Apple. However, with so many smartphone users discovering apps through the app store, this is an undertaking that only a brand with an already huge base of loyal users can even consider. Building a mobile audience through mobile web user acquisition is not impossible, but has its challenges.

iPad still dwarfs iPhone for Newsstand revenue. Readers favor the larger screen, so focus your efforts on monetizing iPad users, even if the overall audience is smaller. Newsstand revenues on iPad are currently three times the size of those on iPhone, although iPhone revenues have grown at a lightning pace of more than 3200% since Newsstand launch.

iPad dwarfs iPhone in Newsstand Revenue

Brand names taking all the headlines

Amongst the most popular Newsstand apps, established brand names in the ‘News’ and ‘Lifestyle’ categories shine. Unlike other apps, where new start-ups like Instagram, Rovio and Path dominate the charts, the Newsstand charts are dominated by brands that have dominated publishing for decades. The top five apps by downloads and revenues are made up of the likes of The New York Times, Cosmopolitan and The New Yorker. The New York Times deserves special mention for occupying the top spot both by downloads and revenue. The Daily also deserves recognition for being the only first to app store brand on the list.

Top 5 Apps by Worldwide Downloads and Revenues

However, you also have the aggregators – Flipboard, Zite and Pulse who combine content from a variety of partners to offer the ultimate in convenience and user experience. These well-designed apps allow users to discover content not just from the publication brand names they know, but also from the ones they may discover from publisher curating, social recommendation and other viral mechanisms. In a world where a reputation going back hundreds of years is not solely enough to build, engage and retain an audience, the publishing industry has realized the need to engage with these new forms of content discovery whilst also adapting to the new app store platform.

Global Trends In A Global Newsstand

The key advantage afforded to publishers by app stores is the ability to publish content to 155 regional stores worldwide, optimized for a mobile experience. Where are the readers of the world, and where are the major commercial opportunities for global publishers?

The China Hot Air Balloon. Due to its astounding population and growing access to smart phones, China overtook the U.S. to become the leading country for number of Newsstand downloads from Q1 to Q2 this year. However, by revenue, America dominates, while China finds itself in 19th position.

The China trend doesn’t end there. With most app categories, China audiences are consuming a combination of local and foreign content (think Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja). Not the case with Newsstand, where language is much more critical than with the games category. It’s largely Chinese audiences consuming Chinese content from Chinese publishers which drive downloads. Looking at the Top 20 downloaded Newsstand apps by country origin of the publisher, China accounts for 7 apps, followed by the US, UK and Canada. By revenue on the other hand, the US dominates with 16 apps, followed by the UK and Norway.

 

7 of the most downloaded apps in the world are from Chinese publishers; the most lucrative apps though come from the US

The China Newsstand. Top 10 Free dominated by Chinese apps, Top 10 Paid dominated by English language apps

Revenue generation still dominated by Western countries. By analyzing revenue per download, the top ranked countries are Norway, Australia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, with the U.S. further down the pack in the eighth position. Across the top ten countries, the average revenue per app is $0.97, more than two times the worldwide average of $0.45. There are several interesting threads across these lucrative countries – seven are English speaking, nine are in the Top 25 by GDP per capita and five are European. If you as a publisher are looking to monetize off your downloads at a high rate, then you may want to focus your user acquisition efforts in these regions.

Top 10 countries pay more than 2 times the worldwide average

What is your Newsstand strategy?

Any newspaper and magazine publisher will need a multi-channel content distribution strategy to effectively reach their most valuable audiences. And Newsstand will need to be a key part of that strategy. Some key insights to take with you:

Readers are reading and spending more on Newsstand

– Apps with in-app purchases generate 99.5% of all Newsstand revenue
– iPad generating three times the Newsstand revenue of iPhone
– Newsstand is currently dominated by the big publishing brands
– Chinese apps consumed by Chinese audiences are dominating global Newsstand downloads, but true monetization opportunities lie in Western countries.

If the past five years of change are anything to go by, the next 12 months will be a big year for the publishing industry. The technology behind tablet, smartphones and app stores provide publishers with a more efficient way to reach their audiences – the question is, can they adapt their business models to capitalize on these trends?

Remember, keep yourself informed of the latest market data to ensure you’re ahead of the curve.

METHODOLOGY DISCLAIMER

The analyses and insights discussed were drawn from App Annie’s Intelligence data. App Annie takes responsibility for the claims and insights in this article that are based on this data and research. However, App Annie does not take responsibility for any actions or outcomes undertaken by 3rd parties, as a result of this article or the analyses or data contained within.

Related posts:

1. Chinese Wiki System Goes Commercial Market
2. Computex 2011, Chinese Tablets and the Chicken and the Egg Effect
3. Flipboard in China, Engaging Opportunities and Confronting Challenges

VC event Next Week in Shanghai – Silicon Dragon

For entrepreneurs looking for funding their startups this year, they might found the climate is much less forgiving than last year. I remember last summer almost anything can get a decent valuation. But this year, the VCs are much more cautious.

What are on the VCs’ minds these days? To find out, interested parties might like to join the event organized by Silicon Dragon next week. It said it has invited all the top VCs in Shanghai, including Steamboat Ventures, Qiming Ventures, GGV Capital, Morningside Ventures and Ceyuan Venture. Fritz Demopoulos, founder of Qunar will also be there, representing Queen’s Road Capital, an angle fund he recently founded.

As representatives of the entrepreneurs, David Li of YY and Feng Hong of Xiaomi Technology will also join the discussion. I guess a lot of people will be interested to know how Xiaomi fetched a US$4billion valuation, under current market condition.

Here is details of the event:
Link: http://www.silicondragonventures.com/Pages/SiliconDragonShanghai2012.aspx

Speakers: Alex Hartigan, Steamboat Ventures; Hans Tung, Qiming Ventures; Jenny Lee, GGV Capital; Richard Liu, Morningside Ventures; Fritz Demopoulos, Queen’s Road Capital; David Chen, AngelVest; Richard Chen, Ceyuan Venture/Yifei Investment; Joseph Chan, Sidley Austin; Frank Giglio, NASDAQ OMX;

Tech Star Founders: David Li, YY Inc.; Feng Hong, Xiaomi Technology

Program: A Dragon Enters The Yantgze in the China 2.0 Era
Discussion points:
- The Arrival of the Angel Investor & Serial Entrepreneur in China
- Exit Options: Going Public, M&A, Taking Private Again
- From Copycats to Chinese Micro-Innovations
- Tougher Deal Terms for Startup Financing
- Chinese Startups Going Global
- What’s Hot: Mobile Internet, Cloud Computing

When: September 13, 2012 4-8PM
Where: Knowledge & Innovation Community, Conference Center, Building 7, 1F, Seven KIC Plaza, # 388 Songhu Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai (nearby Fudan University)

Related posts:

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2. Entrepreneurs! Welcome to Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) CEO Dinner at 22nd September, Shanghai
3. Event: Google Technology User Group (GTUG) Shanghai Event on 29th Nov

The Curious Case of Douban

It’s one of the rare Chinese successes that is home grown instead of being imported or copied from overseas. It’s also a one of the few social networks that has attracted 100 million users and is nearing profitability, yet there is a million questions surrounding its business model.

The site referred to above is Douban. In its most basic form, Douban is a place where you can record films you have seen, records you have heard, and books you have read, then discuss it with others who share your interest. Later on, Douban also adopted BBS forum that has been enormously popular in China. There have been cases where power users of Douban’s forum have successfully transformed themselves into real world minor celebrities. Most recently, Douban has expanded in various directions, mimicking companies such as Twitter, Pandora and Groupon.

Douban has long intrigued observers. The first, of course, being Douban’s enormous success, especially considering its explosion is almost organic. In a recent interview of Douban’s founder Yang Bo, he confirmed that Douban is a product of idealism. At first, Yang merely wanted a place for like minded people to gather. No one had any idea Douban would explode and attract so many users.

But just as Douban’s success has been confounding, most people are also fascinated by the fact that Douban seems to have no idea where it is going. Many people don’t know what Douban is, at least in regard to its business model.

Recently, Douban has been in the news because it is rumored that people are fleeing from the company, which has inflamed people’s doubts. Many of Douban’s products, such as Douban FM, are not bad, but none of the existing products seem like sure bets. And those are some of Douban’s best products. Douban has experimented in products that no one knows the purpose of. For example, Douban dabbled in online gaming and commerce by introducing an ambigious product named AlphaTown. Neither Douban nor its hundred million users figured out what AlphaTown was for, and the effort has been mostly abandoned.

No one denies that Douban has been very successful in its niche, and has inspired Chinese companies and foreign companies alike. But if Douban ultimately fails, the niche mentality and the organic growth will also be its downfall. In a nutshell, Douban’s idealistic bend in the beginning has resulted in the site attracting millions, but has no idea what to do with them. Even worth, Douban’s main audience, the bohemian artistic type, is not a good target in regard to commerce perspectives.

In fact, one could argue Douban’s success has made it symbolic of what is wrong with many internet companies. Many entrepreneurs don’t realize that “girth” instead of “size” is of the uttermost importance. By girth, we mean willingness of the users to pay.

However, there is still hope yet, if not for Douban. The New York Times has pointed out that the Internet market, which used to be “neatly divided between the unglamorous business-to-business or B2B companies, operating mostly out of public view, and the flashier business-to-consumer or B2C companies”, is merging, and this is due to the fact that enterprise companies are much better customers in term of ability and willingness to pay.

Besides the movement toward serving “bizumers”, another trend noticed by the Times Is the shifting of attention from the “New New Thing” towards the more ordinary, as entrepreneurs are looking for the innovation in ordinary tasks and doing so based on leveraging pre-existing ideas and products. The future “may not lie in being enchanted about the newest social networking start-up. It’s more likely to be in the simple and ordinary. It’s about spotting the everyday problems and providing solutions”. After all, money is to be made.

Related posts:

1. Douban Raised US$50m Series C
2. Douban Selling Movie Tickets to Boost Revenue
3. UN Ban Ki-Moon Chats On Social Media; Douban Closes to Break Even; Twitter Comes To China

San Francisco High Tech Bloggers: Meet Your International Counterparts, Including TechNode!

Starting from 17th September, on behalf of TechNode, I will be in SF and join the Orange Blogger Bus Tour. A big thanks for Orange Silicon Valley  (the Silicon Valley arm of France Telecom-Orange), together with an elite team of bloggers from around the world, we will spend a week in the Bay Area visiting local companies and startups. And to start with, on behalf of Orange Silicon Valley, I’d love to invite all tech bloggers to attend Blogger Day event on 17th.

The following announcement is originally posted on Live Orange Blog.

On September 17^th, Orange Silicon Valley are hosting an exclusive gathering of local and international tech bloggers in San Francisco to ponder about technological innovation.

eCairn and Orange Silicon Valley (the Silicon Valley arm of France Telecom-Orange, one of the world’s leading telecoms with over 170,000 employees worldwide) have worked hand in hand to enable this congregating of tech enthusiasts and experts to take place in the world capital of innovation.

These men and women from around the world will explore cutting edge technologies and consider the following question:

Where will innovation in Silicon Valley come from and how will it disrupt everyday life as we know it?

Consumer tech demos from Orange Silicon Valley will be followed by discussions about innovation, talent acquisition and data infrastructure as it applies to Silicon Valley. This event will also enable bloggers from the Bay Area to share thoughts with their counterparts from France, UK, Australia, China, and Finland.

These international bloggers are all part of the Orange Blogger Bus Tour, an elite team of bloggers from around the world who will be spending a week in the Bay Area to find out how the Valley functions, and meet with companies and start-ups to get an idea of where innovation is heading in the near future.

If you are a blogger in Silicon Valley or San Francisco and you want to join in to share your thoughts about innovation and find out what Orange Silicon Valley are up to, then register now (all registrations pending validation by the organizers)!

Date and location

Monday 17^th September 2012, 11am-5pm

Orange Silicon Valley

60 Spear street, 11th floor

San Francisco, 94105

Related posts:

1. Meet TechNode at SXSW Technology Summit and San Francisco
2. San Francisco, the Next Stop of TechNode Tech Tour in Late June
3. TechNode SF Event – Meet the Best China Mobile Startups and Founders

GuoheAD MIX, Puzzle out the Marketing Dilemma for Mobile Game Developers

During the latest ChinaJoy game festival held in Shanghai couple weeks ago, we got constant lectures from big names predicting that client game is yesterday, web game is today, while mobile game is tomorrow. In what seems to be echoing the prediction, we’ve seen innumerable startup riding on the trends which supposedly lead to tomorrow and flocked to gold mine the future by making their contribution to the thriving mobile game world.

 

Burgeoning Mobile Game Market

According to a recent report, over 70% of Apple app store’s IAP (in-app purchase) were made within game apps, even though game only represents 17% of total apps in the Apple ecosystem. The sheer revenue potential speaks to a grand future picture. However, what always accompany the opportunities are risks and competition. Spotted the early promising sign of mobile gaming, in addition to some long-established mobile game developers like WiStone, PunchBox and so forth, big guys like Juren, Shanda and Renren also branched out to the new and untapped territory.

With deep pockets under their belt, they could hands down beef up a brilliant team during short amount of time to craft mobile games and then splash tens of millions RMB to promote the outcomes. So facing the mounting competition and changing landscape, how to stand out from the crowd and bring as much attention as possible  to its offerings at minimal and even no cost becomes a big challenge for small and medium-sized mobile game startups.

 

Unmet Needs of Low Cost Marketing

Previously at the very early stage of mobile gaming sector, “free for limited time” is one of the most common tricks developers resort to when coming to marketing within the Apple ecosystem. It’s free and generates a lot of buzz, which is good, but the practice is neither scalable nor durable. For example, when an app is provided “free for limited time”, in the first few days the downloads might be skyrocketing, then gradually it’d decline.

Often times, other than “free for limited time”, developers’ll have to seek help from CPC-based mobile ad platform. With more and more developers entering the market, the costs for CPC-based ads are rising irrationally. For example, UAC (user acquisition cost) has hit RMB 20 per user which is unaffordable for smaller teams. Given the fact that most mobile games won’t last for 3 months, you might not even able to make enough revenue off the players during such short life cycle to justify the marketing cost.

According to Neo Zhang, founder of GuoheAD, with traditional mobile ad platform, you won’t know who’ll see your ads featuring your latest title which costs you ten months and big money to get shipped. Sounds like the classical problem of “Yeah we knew that half of our ads budget was wasted, it’s just we didn’t know which half”.

On the other hand, it seems that CPC-based mobile ads were employed to do some tricks working around Apple’s App Store. According to some industry insiders, developers buy mobile ads in an aim to play around with ASO, namely App Store Optimization, to rank up in App Store. It works for a while, but requires a lot of input and you better pray that Apple doesn’t alter its ranking algorithm from time to time.

So are there any decent ways of promoting mobile games that are cost-efficient, durable and actually effective?

 

Cross-promotion Platform MiX to the Rescue

Well there might be. Leveraging on the experience in its well-received mobile ad platform and understanding on the needs of small and medium-sized game developers, GuoheAd, one of the leading mobile ad platform in China debuted the first Chinese mobile game-centric cross promotion platform MIX to make app marketing an easier task for developers with limited budget.

The CPA-based platform delivers GuoheAD’s interpretation of mobile game startups’ needs in marketing: it should be targeting the right AUDIENCE in the right CONTEXT with delightful EXPERIENCE, or ACE by initials.

MIX gives developers the opportunity to pop up full-screen billboard ads in game apps when someone is playing with the game, which gives you the right audience (players) in the right context (while they’re playing games). And since the ads was fully customizable (appearance, when and how to show up), the ads experience is also good without interrupting users too much. For example, ads can only show up when player pause the game or level up in the game. And you can change the ads appearance like backgrounds, buttons, images and so forth to make it fit in. This is utterly important if you don’t want users to get fed up with pop-up ads.

Most importantly, MIX is totally free to use for now. It comes along with an Exchange community where you can find other developers whom you can do cross-promotion with. Better yet, you can cross promote your own game pipelines to route users from faltering games to new titles. That could be a very practical solution for small time developers with big pipelines.

The service which can increase conversion rate by 10 times has been sent live here http://mix.guohead.com/home/, you can check it out and give it a try if you’re currently developing and marketing you own mobile games. At the end of the day, what could be the better place to advertise a mobile game than do it within a mobile game?

Related posts:

1. Top Casual Game Fishing Joy CEO Expresses Concerns for Chinese Mobile Games Developers
2. Global Mobile Game Awards at GMIC2011 – Submit Your Mobile Game!
3. Only 2.1% of Chinese Mobile Developers Plan Working on Symbian Platform, Says 2011 Chinese Mobile App Developers Report

SlideIdea, A New Presentation Tool To Get Audience Engaged

What is the most important thing for events? To get the audience engaged. If you ever hosted any event, spoke at conference or moderated panels, you might find that for a long time there’s NO easy way for speakers and audience to interact with each other. There were some ‘traditional’ ways, e.g. audience sends question in text message to certain gateway number, then the text could be picked up and projected to the screen. It sounds easy but remember the organiser should talk to SP to get a number set up which could be quite annoying. What if you wanted to do a ballot? Asking every audience to send keywords to the gateway number maybe. The set-up would be even more complex and you may also suffer a long delay if there is a large crowd.

Beijing-based startup SoftCompass developed a new Windows 8 based application called SlideIdea which might bring a good solution for the issues addressed above. SlideIdea is a new presentation tool designed for the new mobile era. It’s different from old tools like Keynote or Powerpoint in that sense that it focus on the actual showing of the presentation and include cool features where the audience can engage in voting or send speakers a message or post question simply using their mobile phones.

Since SlideIdea is based in Windows 8 which runs on both PC and Tablets, it is designed to enable you create presentation easily and smoothly on both PC and mobile devices. Like other presentation tools, SlideIdea comes with some handy functions for presentation, such as whiteboard, highlighter and pen. But the uniqueness in SlideIdea is the features which allow the audience become an important part in your presentation. Even there is a huge crowd, the audience can still ask questions, post comments or participate in surveys arranged by the speaker via their mobile phones or other connected devices (by accessing m.slideidea.com). The result will pop up on the screen so that the speakers are able to know what the audience think and wonder during the presentation.

You may question on how many users will actually use SlideIdea to create presentation as MS Powerpoint and Apple’s Keynote are very popular. Kristin, the lead of product & marketing for SlideIdea thinks it would not be an issue. “In our formal release version you will be able to use your ppt’s in Slideidea, as well as the other way around. The same with keynote, with the exception that you will not be able to use your Slideidea presentation in Keynote.” She said.

The iOS and Android version of SlideIdea will be available by end of this year. I asked Kristin why they decided to work on Windows 8 as the first platform. She told us that Slideidea was one of the first developer team in China to received a developer token from Microsoft for their new Windows 8 platform and saw this as a great opportunity to create something fresh and innovative for a new platform.

SlideIdea is a re-invented presentation tool for the mobile era. As a startup company it’s a challenge to release a product into a mature app store and your marketing activities needs to be really intense. To be one of the first apps into a new platform like the Windows 8 can therefore be a great opportunity for us and our app to get publicity and users attention.

The mission of SlideIdea, the new PowerPoint or Keynote of this new era where Share, Interact & Mobility is key works.

 

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2. Tonchidot in TechCrunch50: A presentation worth learning from
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NEST To Nurture Entrepreneurs in Hong Kong

NEST, a newly-founded investment venture is to support entrepreneurs and enterprising new start-up businesses in Hong Kong. Its mission is to eventually take HK brands around the world.

Founded by Mr. Simon Squibb,the founder of creative design consultancy Fluid, NEST is structured to deliver both financial, backing, branding, sales and marketing support, enabling the city’s entrepreneurs to build their businesses and help them develop new, iconic Hong Kong brands.

We talked to Simon who told us that Nest has historically invested sub $1 million per deal, and then brought in 3rd party investors for between 1-5 million USD follow-on capital.  The companies invested by NEST so far include successful new business concepts: Red Packet, Foodie, I-Love.com brand including iLoveSoHo and iLoveLKF,  as well as Loft-Asia and Millionaire-Asia. “We are most interested in technology-enabled and brand-driven consumer businesses”, said Simon.

Talking about the Hong Kong market, in Simon’s opinion,

HK market is a key test market and anchor market for branded consumer businesses. We enter at a stage where the supportive HK environment is highly beneficial to the early development and positioning of these businesses.

Besides funding, what NEST can provide for the startups is deal specific, said Simon. It’s an investment venture, but for Simon, it’s also a platform that provides not just capital but the business consulting, marketing and brand building expertise that is needed to grow a good idea into a great scalable business.

The way to connect with NEST and apply for the fund is very old-style, just like what you find on its simple website: Write to them.

The startups in Hong Kong might be different, but the startup space definitely is getting more and more active. (You may check our previous coverage on Hong Kong startups space).

 

Related posts:

1. Why Startups In Hong Kong Are Different
2. Hong Kong Opens New Incubation Programme to Focus on Web & Mobile, HK$408k Available!
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Once You Go Down the Wrong Path

Look here, here, here, even on our very own Technode, you can see a detailed description of the fall of Chinese luxury B2C. The high flying industry of yesteryear crashed and burned after several years of rapid growth. In this regard, it is better than the group-buying trend, which buckled almost as soon as it got started. But what’s devastating about the luxury B2Cs is that, almost everyone who was paying attention knows the business model was doomed right from the beginning.

The luxury B2Cs seem to share the vision and business model: China is rapidly becoming one of the biggest markets for luxury goods, and there is a large market untapped. The luxury B2Cs want to reach beyond the nouveau riche. By offering steep discounts to luxury goods, these sites hoped to allure the Silent Majority to splurge on LVs.

So basically, B2C sites will do what the Internet is good at, providing a democratizing experience and make a boatload of money doing good. This all sounds fine, except for one little glitch: this is not how the luxury goods business works.

Tod’s do not spend millions hiring the likes of Anne Hathaway to sell its product in shoes-for-less. While everyone is price conscious at some point, luxury brands usually don’t aim at the shoppers of 99 cent stores. So a person with the most rudimentary understanding of the luxury good business would know that these brands would do everything in their power to prop up the price of their goods.

That’s why famed American journalist James Fallows’ observation that there are no shoppers in Prada stores in China actually makes business sense: making profit is only part of the store’s function. Premiere brands need to have stores in the most exclusive part of the town even if the act itself loses money, because this is the only way to convince consumers the outrageous price of their goods make sense. Once the consumers buys into this logic, the brands can make money many times over.

That’s not to say luxury brands don’t give discount. But even when these brands are cutting price, they want to give off the appearance it is doing so as a special offer, thereby protecting the brands’ exclusive and high profile image.

This is something that Gilt grasped but most Chinese B2Cs didn’t. Gilt makes luxury brands’ discount seems exclusive, thereby enhancing the brands’ image even when it is actually offering a discount to consumers and getting rid of inventories for the brands. Chinese B2Cs, on the hand, emphasized cost saving. This act is almost sabotage against the brands’ efforts.

Therefore, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that no brands would provide these B2Cs with goods. Faced with this hurdle, the B2Cs had to resort to make individual purchases overseas, bring them back to China clandestinely, and then sell them on their sites. In essence, there is no different from individuals who buy from overseas then sell the goods in China, a trend that has been growing long before the B2Cs got started.

Of course, this is also a business model that cannot be scaled. In addition, this business model does not in any way enhance the capacities of the B2Cs. Without anything valuable and distinctive to offer to the brands, no brand will cooperate with B2Cs, and the B2Cs are forever stuck as very small time players. After all, once you go down the wrong path, there is no coming back.

Related posts:

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