Sina Corp and other NASDAQ-listed Chinese Internet companies are profiting from the US-led attack on Iraq, by offering China's 216 million mobile-phone users instant message updates on the latest war news.
Beijing-based Sina, whose share price has more than quadrupled in the past year, said traffic on its short-message service was 10 times the average level on March 20, the day the attack began. The company charges anywhere from 8 yuan to 72 yuan (US$0.97 to US$8.70) a month to subscribers for war news updates, according to its Web site.
Sales at Sina, Netease.com Inc and Sohu.com Inc have risen by more than 90 percent in the past year as Chinese people increasingly turn to the companies to supply them with news, sports scores and dating prospects, highlighting the decreasing influence of state-controlled media.
"They are genuine media alternatives -- it's a way to get better news at your convenience," said Walter Price, who helps manage US$35 billion, including shares of Sina, Sohu and Netease at Dresdner RCM Global Investors in San Francisco. "I can make a lot of money on these stocks."
Price was in Beijing for a meeting with Sohu.com. Sina, Sohu.com and Netease.com last year turned to profit for the first time as revenue from short messages surged. Sina's non-advertising sales, mostly from messaging, more than tripled last year and make up almost half of its total revenue.
Sina's Web site displays pictures of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and US President George W. Bush facing each other, flanking a fireball. Pop-up windows allow viewers to sign up for several messaging plans, one offering as many as eight war updates daily for 0.3 yuan per message.
Sina's Iraq war news Web page was opened 200 million times on March 20, and short messages climbed to a record, company president Wang Yan said. He declined to provide numbers.
"Events like soccer's World Cup, the Columbia space shuttle incident and the attack on Iraq bring more users," Wang said in an interview. "People can get all the information they want on demand."
The message might have been received by China's state-run media, which had a near monopoly on news distribution for most of the past half-century. China Central Television showed US.
President George W. Bush's March 19 address live, and has provided blanket coverage of the war, complete with pictures from Cable News Network and Qatar's al-Jazeera news.
While the Internet companies beat the government news agencies on speed of reporting, and often include material from foreign news sources, they still have to toe the line on reporting, employing censors dubbed "net nannies" to remove politically sensitive material, including reports on the banned Falun Gong sect and reports critical of China's leaders.
News of a pneumonia outbreak in Beijing and Shanghai, reported in the foreign press, couldn't be found on the Sina Web site, although the site did cover recent outbreaks in Hong Kong and Vietnam. The government banned reporting on the disease, the Washington Post reported last week.
Sina and its competitors share their revenue with China's two mobile phone operators, China Mobile Communications Corp and China United Telecommunications Corp.
The Internet companies take anywhere from 60 percent to over 90 percent of the proceeds.
Sohu.com and Netease.com are also trying to increase message revenue by offering more war-related news. Sohu's Web site features campaign maps of Iraq, indicating possible advances by US and UK forces.
"We're beefing up our coverage," Netease CEO Ted Sun said.
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