 |
Wang Zhidong: Winter in Beijing Really So Cold?
Wang Zhidong: Winter in Beijing Really So Cold?
"Harvest time for the Internet has not yet been around. However, is winter in Beijing really so cold?" Wang Zhidong, CEO of sina.com , told his mind on the trend of the development of China's portal websites Thursday.
Although many dotcoms saw slackened paces in business development last year, the Chinese Internet market still develops rapidly. China's Internet business is in the ploughing season, waiting for plentiful and substantial yields to come by.
In his "Opportunities and Challenges in China's Internet Market" lecture given at "Hong Kong Information Infrastructure Expo and Conference" Thursday, Wang said that irrespective of many Internet companies fighting in entanglements which made people think a "frozen time" has come statistics showed the Internet market had experienced a fast growth last year. In 1999, China reported 8.9 million netizens. In January 2001, the number topped 22.5 million. The band-width of the fiber connecting China's inland to international access has been expanded from 350MB to 2,800MB.
Wang pointed out that China will see an outstanding growth in optical fiber construction. The government has promulgated the law regulating the Internet market. The three main dotcoms, sina.com, suho.com and 163.com raised many funds before NASDAQ's plunge last year in laying a solid foundation for their development. Sina.com, for example, has US$122 million fund on hand, among which, US$50 million is to be used for development and US$70 million for practical investment. Its operation costs only amount to US$3 to 4 million per month.
Wang said that China has a population up to 1.3 billion, yet the population of netizens only reaches 20 million. Since most of Chinese netizens are of high educational level and income level, among the supposed 300 million persons of developed living standards, 100 million may use the Internet. Therefore the current population of netizens only accounts for 20 percent of the potential. As sources say, the ads income of a newspaper with 300,000 readers which is published in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou can reach 1 billion yuan. Comparing with the traditional media, sina.com has 20 to 40 million visits everyday and is expecting for a greater development in 2002.
Wang thought that China's Internet trade becomes internationalized in terms of capital, talents and management. With some foreign-funded dotcoms such as Yahoo and Microsoft entering Chinese market, the dotcoms in China including the three major net operators, need to seek proper positions. They should actively explore new business channels such as software, enterprise application and new network platforms instead of only staring at the development of portal websites, so as to make the dotcoms deal with concrete matters coordinating with their traditional business.
For a leading part it has played in China's Internet industry, Sina.com saw a US$24.2 million income last year. The number of its users has reached 16 million. Wang said that for a lower fee of telecommunication service in China and the promulgation of regulations on the Internet business, sina.com is confident in achieving a better business record in 2001. He believes that the "Springtime" for China's Internet industry has come. The annual income of sina.com in 2001 is estimated to exceed US$30 million and even as many as US$40 million.
By PD Online Staff Du Minghua
In This Section
|