Chinese Internet portal operator Tencent Holdings Ltd. said Wednesday its first-quarter net profit rose a better-than-expected 94% from a year earlier on higher revenue from Internet services. This figure breaks down into $278 million strictly from sales of Internet virtual goods and related services and $64.3 million from mobile sales of virtual goods and services. The remainder of Tencent's revenue, about $21 million, is accounted for by advertising.
But Tencent warned its performance this year will be hurt by the global slowdown. The company said it expects the economic environment to remain challenging in the midst of the global recession. "Our online advertising business would continue to be affected by the economic slowdown as advertisers remain cautious on their spending for 2009," Chairman and Chief Executive Ma Huateng said in a statement.
It should be noted that the huge increases reported in the Internet and mobile virtual goods categories may be affected by seasonal changes in consumer behavior patterns. Chinese New Year and student winter break periods bring major increases in spending on Tencent's QQ value-added services. For strictly game-related value-added services, Cross Fire, QQ Dancer, and Dungeon and Fighter all posted positive revenues and gains in numbers of users. Exact amounts were not disclosed.
Looking ahead to Q2, Tencent expects to see virtual goods sales decline as a result of seasonality while the advertising segment is expected to improve somewhat. Generally, though, Tencent expects users to continue spending a lot of time online.
So long as users are on the Internet in their day-to-day lives, then Tencent believes it has ample opportunity to engage users and encourage them to spend on virtual goods and other services.
Originally Posted: China Business Daily
Author: Angulo Fu
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Tencent earned $366.4 million in Q1, net up 94%
Monday, May 4, 2009
1st China-assembled A320 to be tested in May
The first Airbus A320 aircraft assembled in China is scheduled to make a test flight in May.
The flight will be held at Tianjin Airport, where a new runway is being built to facilitate trial flights of all A320 aircraft, Feng Zhijiang, head of the administrative committee of the Tianjin Free Trade Zone, said.
Five A320s are currently being put together at the Tianjin final assembly line, the first Airbus production facility outside Europe.
Several major parts of the aircraft were put together in Hamburg, Germany, before being transported to Tianjin for final assembly, Feng said.
"Twelve more A320s will be assembled in Tianjin and delivered next year," he said.
"They will incorporate some locally made parts, including the wings and fuselage. Assembly of the major parts will be done here in Tianjin."
The Airbus A320 final assembly line in Tianjin opened in September as the company's third general assembly line. The other two are in France and Germany. The Tianjin facility is used for assembling A319s and A320s.
The first Airbus A320 plane assembled in China's northern city Tianjin is due to be delivered to the domestic Sichuan Airlines. The second Tianjin-manufacturered A320 is to be delivered to the domestic Hainan Airlines, and the third to Shenzhen Airlines. The remainder of the eight planes on the delivery schedule for this year were either for China Eastern Airlines or Hainan Airlines.
According to a report by the Tianjin Airport-based Industrial Zone, China has become the world's second largest aviation market after the United States. The country is estimated to need 2,670 passenger planes in the next 20 years.
Originally Posted: China Business Daily
Author: Angulo Fu
Friday, April 17, 2009
Blizzard partners with NetEase for China opps
Blizzard just confirmed it's gone with NetEase for its Chinese licensing, as has been rumoured for the last few days.
The9 was the previous holder of the contract.
NetEase will now run the Chinese version of World of Warcraft “for a term of 3 years following the expiration of the current license agreement.”
“We appreciate the enthusiasm that Chinese gamers have shown us over the years, and we've always worked hard, in collaboration with our partners, to ensure that these players receive the same high-quality service and gameplay experiences that we deliver in other regions.” said Blizzard head Mike Morhaime.
“This new agreement with NetEase will support that goal for years to come, and we look forward to collaborating with them on a smooth transition for World of Warcraft moving forward.”
Blizzard didn't specifically say this morning why it's dropped The9 in favour of NetEase to run its Chinese WoW operation, but Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter's claimed the answer’s simple: it's going to make a mother-trucking boatload more money from the new deal.
“The company had previously contracted with The9, but the current arrangement will expire in June 2009.” said Pachter in a note this afternoon.
“Under the terms of its contract with The9, Activision Blizzard received a royalty of 22% on revenues generated in China. We estimate that the current arrangement generated revenues of around $50 – 55 million annually (using most recent subscriber figures), at close to 100% margin. Although the terms of the new arrangement were not disclosed, we estimate that the royalty rate will increase to at least 55%, and that the new arrangement will generate revenues of over $140 million annually.”
$90 million is probably a good reason to kick a partner into touch. But don't shit the bed just yet, share-buyers: Pachter said he believed the upside - approximately $0.04 per share - has already been factored into forecasts.
Originally Posted: China Business Daily
Author: Angulo Fu
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Aigo camera first time surpass Japanese brands
The latest survey in January, 2009 showed that the sales of Aigo digital camera T60 jumped to the first place. The survery is from Gome, China's largest home appliance retail chain store. This is the first time China-made digital camera sales surpass Japanese brands.
T60 is the flagship point & shoot digital camera of aigo’s with new generation dual core image processor, announced in summer 2008. It is featured with a size of 1/2.5 inch 8.0 Mega Pixel sharp CCD image sensor, a 3X optical zoom and 3.0 inch 230,000-pixel PURE-COLOR LTPS TFT LCD which are the mainstream of the current standard. Otherwise, it also featured with functions of face detection, the smiling face shutter, panoramic image stitching and manual exposure which make it a more competitive digital compact camera. For ordinary users, aigo T60 is quite a good choice.
Appearance
aigo T60 features a slim and fashion style metal body, the metal shell is dealt with technology, which make it looks precision, low glisten and feels good, better than that of many Japanese brand camera. The two upper and lower body positive arc made T60 appears to be simple and generous. aigo T60 has a 3x optical zoom lens, the mill lens ring makes the camera bright. The camera is light weight that only 120g (excluding battery), the body size is slim of 92.5mm x 58 mm x 19.9mm.
8.2 Mega Pixel Sharp CCD
aigo T60 used an advanced 8.0MP Sharp CCD Sensor which is world famous high quality and speedy CCD to bring you high quality images. The CCD size is 1/2.5” that is the popular application in the majority digital compact camera. With this high quality CCD sensor, aigo T60 offers expanded ISO sensitivity range to 1600.
Dual Core Image Processor
The aigo T60 built-in a high-performance dual-core 32-bit image processor, this powerful processor could deal with the task at a double the process in the same time, makes the intelligent focus more efngine to provide faster image processing; It features hardware 3A (automaticficient and more accurate. It the use of multi-channel hardware acceleration eally Coke, auto exposure, automatic white balance) to speed up function let the focus faster, exposure and white balance more accurate.
3x Optical Zoom Lens and 5x Digital Zoom
T60 introduced a mainstream 3x optical zoom lens which is composed of five Group total of six lenses, maximum aperture range from 2.9 to 5.3, equivalent to the 35mm camera focal length of 34-102mm. The mini focus distance of wide-angle is 10cm, telephoto focus is 35mm. T60 functions 5x digital zoom, and so you can get total 15x larger image view on your shooting.
3.0 Inch LCD Display
aigo T60 bulit-in a huge 3.0 inch pure color LTPS TFT LCD display for image preview or display photos or videos. Very reliable preview feeling, the color of display is fresh, the reduction of a variety of colors are accurate. The display offers 170 degree angle of wide view.
Face Detection and Smile Auto Capture
With Face Detection technology, T60 can automatically detect people’s face and adjust the focus when face move, this makes it a competitive powerful camera compare with Canon cameras. But more step-up is, T60 owns unique innovative smile face auto capture function that when a detected face smiles, the shutter automatically fires.
Panoramic Shooting and Image Stitching
What’s more impressive is actually for T60 is a how an innovative function this camera is. That is Panoramic Shooting and Auto Image Stitching. This mode allows you to shoot ultra wide panoramic shots. You can create wide-view photos by automatically stitching three images into a single panoramic scene.
Intelligent Multi Point Focus
aigo T60 features five focus point which one focus point is in center, four locate on up, down, left and right position, they are automatically selective appear based on the object you are focus on when you are half pressing the shutter button. With these five focus point assistant, you can get more clear and more details of image.
Intelligent Anti-Shake
With intelligent anti-shake function to prevent shaking shooting image, just need to press the anti-shake button in the camera when you are shot something, you can easily get a nice picture you wanted.
Manual Exposure and Custom Setting
T60 adopts turntable style function keys, simple to operate. It has some advanced exposure modes such as “Tv”, “Av”, “P” that commonly used in the advanced digital cameras. These modes are manual adjustable. The “Av” (aperture priority) mode that has two respectively adjustable aperture, that is, F2.9 and F5.3, and the “Tv” mode (shutter priority) has 11 adjustable scope of the regulation, from 2 seconds to 1/2000 Seconds.
Multiple Preset Scene Modes
aigo T60 has advanced presets for the best possible photos under certain conditions. With 16 shooting and Scene Modes, you're ready for whatever shot comes your way.
Originally Posted: China Business Daily
Author: Angulo Fu
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
China's Population Passed 1.3 Billion
China's population officially passed 1.3 billion citizens, with the birth of a baby boy early on Jan 6, 2005. The boy was born Thursday at the Beijing Maternity Hospital at 12:02 a.m. (1602 GMT Wednesday) to a father who works for Air China and a mother employed by Shell China, Xinhua said. The newborn baby's overjoyed father was quoted as saying his son would be blessed his whole life.
China's population is expected to increase by about 10 million a year, hitting a peak of 1.46 billion in the 2030s.
Originally Posted: China Business Daily
Author: Angulo Fu
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