US Internet giant Yahoo Inc said yesterday that it plans an aggressive push into China, where it has so far had limited success in the face of stiff competition from local portals such as Sina.com.
Paid search services and online auctions are future key focal points as the company seeks to expand its presence in China, according to Terry Semel, Yahoo's chairman and chief executive.
"China clearly is right at the top of the list of that next wave of countries that Yahoo could and should be more aggressive about, do a better job in and provide better services in," he told reporters in Beijing.
The potential rewards for Yahoo and anyone else doing business on China's Internet are enormous as an online population of roughly 70 million makes it the world's second largest market after the US.
"You've started to see in the past few months Yahoo make moves in China that go beyond what Yahoo had done before," Semel said. "You will see other things coming from Yahoo."
Until last year, all Yahoo had in China was its portal yahoo.com.cn with free e-mail, as well as ringtone downloads, news, chatrooms and matchmaking.
Its popularity paled in comparison with home-grown portals such as Sina.com, Sohu.com and Netease.com.
But its renewed drive into the market started late last year when it paid US$120 million for 3721 Network Software Co, which provides the technology for the popular search engine 3721.com.
Yahoo aims to use 3721 to build up its paid search business and localize its own Yahoo Search Technology (YST).
"We are now entering the business of using keywords to help ... small and medium-sized businesses ... find customers, transactions,
enable e-commerce," said Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang (
In January, Yahoo announced its online auction joint venture with Sina.com.
"We will introduce that service in the next few months to consumers in China," Yang said.
The online auction market in China is booming, with industry experts forecasting the volume of transactions will surge 75 percent to 3.4 billion yuan (US$410 million) this year.
eBay Inc currently dominates China's online auction industry with an estimated 80 percent market share through Shanghai-based Eachnet, which it bought last year.
Yahoo is also looking at the online games market in China, which IT consultancy IDC estimates will grow 64 percent to US$262 million this year.
"We are doing some gaming outside of Europe but not nearly as much as we should. This is definitely an area that has experienced real growth, has real potential up ahead on a worldwide basis," Semel said.
While Yahoo has found two partners with strong brand recognition for two of its main busi-nesses -- search and auction -- it is still struggling with its Web-based communications.
"In China, there's always been the challenge of how do you overcome some of the local players," Allan Kwan, Yahoo's managing director of North Asia, said. "That's one of the reasons why we decided to focus on search and market place. Those are the two pillars that we believe will allow us to re-enter China in a major way."
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS