Motorola vice president and China mobile terminal business general manager Ren Weiguang said on Thursday that he intends to resign this week. Motorola China president Gao Ruibing will serve as general manager in the interim.
Ren joined Motorola in April, 2004, is responsible for all China GSM-related businesses, but the badly performeance of mobile phone business become the the main reason for Ren's leaving.
Background:
Motorola plunged to a US$397 million loss in the third quarter, unable to control costs to match its declining revenue. The company announced plans to cut costs by $800 million in 2009, but has postponed plans to sell its loss-making mobile devices division until 2010. Instead, it will revamp its product line to focus on phones running software from Google and Microsoft.
The company reported revenue of $7.48 billion for the three months ended Sept. 27, down from $8.81 billion for the year-earlier quarter, and made a net loss of $397 million, a sharp drop from its net profit of $60 million a year earlier. The company losses amounted to a loss of $0.18 per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected earnings of $0.02 per share.
Revenue from mobile devices totalled $3.1 billion for the third quarter, down 31 percent from a year earlier, while the division's operating loss ballooned to $840 million from $248 million a year earlier. The quarter's losses include charges related to the company's plans to simplify its product portfolio and the software platforms it uses.
Co-CEO Sanjay Jha confirmed reports that Motorola will develop mobile phones for the Android platform. The company is also abandoning the Symbian UIQ operating system, and its proprietary mobile Linux OS, to focus on the Google-backed platform and Microsoft's Windows Mobile.
Defending the decision on the company's conference call with analysts on Thursday, Jha said that the experience of trying to commercialize a proprietary operating system and create an ecosystem of third-party developers around it has demonstrated the difficulty of the task. "We see a large ecosystem centered around the mobile Internet, Android, Windows Mobile," Jha said. He added that Motorola is working closely with the Android platform group and plans to open an office in Seattle to work more closely with Microsoft on Windows Mobile.
Motorola aims to have an Android-based handset out in time for the fourth-quarter holiday sales season in 2009.
Originally Posted: China Business Daily
Author: Angulo Fu
Friday, October 31, 2008
Motorola Loses $397M in Q3, China General Manager to Resign
Haikou Free Trade Zone was Established
Haikou Free Trade Zone was established on Oct. 21, 1992 upon the approval of the State Council with an area of 1.93 km2. It was opened for formal operation on Apr. 13, 1993 upon the approval of the General Administration of Customs after examination. Jiang Zeming, former Secretary-general of CPC Central Committee, President of PRC and Chairman of Central Military Commission of PRC, and other heads of the state attended the opening and operation ceremony. From then on, the zone has shouldered the exploration into free trade zone development with Chinese characteristics and started its unusual journey.
The zone is located in the south of the central area of Haikou City with charming tropical scenery, only 3 km from Hainan's busiest Xiuying Port, 18 km from Haikou Meilan international Airport, and 10 km from the approach of Yuehai Railway. It enjoys very convenient traffic where the Nanhai Avenue links up with the Eastern and Western Expressways and middle national highway.
In the past 16 years, adhering to the principle that "development is of overriding importance", the zone made its interior construction scientifically, intellectively and ecologically with new and high technology as its leading industry to foster warehousing and logistics, and undertook function development according to the strategy of promoting peripheral economic growth with structural innovation, technical innovation and preferential policies, all of which had made satisfactory achievement. So far a Hi-Tech industry complex has been set up in the Area with biological pharmacy, automobile manufacturing, IT electronic information electronic machinery and processing as its mainstay. The Area has become a Hi-Tech industrial development base and demonstration plot of Hainan Province and efficiently fostered the peripheral economic growth.
Originally Posted: China Business Daily
Author: Angulo Fu
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Novartis Focus on China OTC Business
October 30, 2007, the chairman of Beijing Novartis Pharma Ltd. Liu Zhenxian said Novartis China would continue to increase OTC products, convert smoking cessation products Nicotinell to OTC products, recover the sales commission of Lamisil form GSK, and introduce new types of OTC drug. Beijing Novartis planed to increase the ratio of China OTC business from 10% to 1/3 in 3 to 5 years.
From the end of 2006, Novartis had made all-round plan for the development of the OTC business, and set up a separate OTC division. Novartis China OTC Division is a relatively independent business, including sectors of market, HR, finance, drugs registration, business. The division was managed by Liu Zhenxian.
It is learned that Novartis China Nicotinell had been converted from prescription drugs into OTC. Novartis China will pay more attention to multi-level sale channels, including hospitals, pharmacies and supermarkets.
Originally Posted: China Business Daily
Author: Angulo Fu
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Alibaba Stop Running Ads on Baidu
It is confirmed by Alibaba that Alibaba B2B had sent a formal notification to Baidu about the termination of the advertising contract on October 10. All ads will terminate soon.
Alibaba said that the termination of Baidu's advertising contract is based on the effect. Alibaba said that according to the analysis of customer data, the quality of Baidu's traffic has decreased year by year, there is a considerable proportion of unknown sources of invalid traffic.
As early as the end of 2007, Alibaba's brother company Taobao had been stopped running ads on Baidu. Taobao yesterday announced that over the past year after shield Baidu spider, the traffic continues to rise, up 180 percent. Taobao has been one of top three domestic sites. The growth of transaction volume is up 240 percent, as of September this year, monthly transaction volume has exceeded RMB 10 billion.
Originally Posted: China Business Daily
Author: Angulo Fu
Google Released G.cn for Chinese Users
On October 29, 2007, search engine giant Google registered g.cn in China. It is the shortest domain name in the history.
Google said that this short domain name would help the web users in the country as they would be able to type it in fast.
Market analysts believed that this is one of the most interesting steps taken by the company as they aim to challenge Baidu in China market.
Google had continued to use Google.cn in China market. Currently, g.cn domain is forwarding to Google.cn domain name.
Originally Posted: China Business Daily
Author: Angulo Fu
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