Alibaba: The Giant of e-Commerce

[jkroo]

How to buy shares in weixin now?

You cannot buy shares of weixin now because it is still a part of Tencent business.
With the process of globalization of weixin, I believe there s a need for Tencent to gotta more money.
But you can prepare some access routines to HK/SG/Shanghai security markets the possible IPO markets for now.

 

[mike2000]

Anything can be "tech". In this case, you are thinking "software". Japanese are riding primarily on its hardware achievements in the 70's and 80's and doing modifications on that. It simply never recognized the importance of software and internet connectivity in the 90's and is now losing out for it in all sorts of markets because simple connectivity is already past - what is important now is fully networked mobile systems, distributed computing, distributed memory, etc. There's nothing to be surprised about - if you miss an important technical development, don't be surprised if you fall behind on subsequent technical developments.

Yes I get what you mean. I guess I haven't been keeping up to date with the tech(software /internet connectivity wise ) industry in Asia. Will be interesting to see how these companies will fare in the coming years.

I'm surprised to see India with its huge market/population (as huge as China ) doesn't have its own internet behemoths like this BABA. At least south Korea has naver, and Japan has rakuten, Russia has Yandex.

Hopefully in the coming years more competitors will emerge from other countries. Monopoly is never beneficial to we the consumers . So I Welcome any company that can challenge established monopolies like google, Microsoft etc irrespective of the country.

 

[sweetgrape]

Hehe, some idiots jump out to politicize the affair, .

On topic, Alibaba deserve the price, it will be higher, and CRSC suck.

 

[Fattyacids]

How to buy shares in weixin now?

If you want IPO price, private bank. Once the stock is traded, retail brokerage, but it won't be at IPO price no more.

Weixin IPO is market rumor, nothing official at this point.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Yes I get what you mean. I guess I haven't been keeping up to date with the tech(software /internet connectivity wise ) industry in Asia. Will be interesting to see how these companies will fare in the coming years.

I'm surprised to see India with its huge market/population (as huge as China ) doesn't have its own internet behemoths like this BABA. At least south Korea has naver, and Japan has rakuten, Russia has Yandex.

Hopefully in the coming years more competitors will emerge from other countries. Monopoly is never beneficial to we the consumers . So I Welcome any company that can challenge established monopolies like google, Microsoft etc irrespective of the country.

Population does not determine internet company success, it is a factor. The #1 factor is the quality and quantity of the overall science and engineering workforce, especially mathematics, computer science and electrical engineering, and #2 is existing network infrastructure. Population is the #3 factor - just the market. But if you have a market, yet no domestic companies able to produce for that market, all that will happen is foreign companies move in. Why are Indians using Google or Facebook instead of domestic sites? Why are they using Youtube? Because no Indian companies, despite their IT strength, have moved in. There are actually several neglected Indian internet market niches, most obvious one being Hindi language search and regional translators, but none are being utilized.

India is not even close to globally competitive in online software products. They are not even up to the level of South Korea, much less the top 3 software players. Before India thinks about surpassing China in IT, it should think about surpassing South Korea, Japan and Russia.

 

[mike2000]

Population does not determine internet company success, it is a factor. The #1 factor is the quality and quantity of the overall science and engineering workforce, especially mathematics, computer science and electrical engineering, and #2 is existing network infrastructure. Population is the #3 factor - just the market. But if you have a market, yet no domestic companies able to produce for that market, all that will happen is foreign companies move in. Why are Indians using Google or Facebook instead of domestic sites? Why are they using Youtube? Because no Indian companies, despite their IT strength, have moved in. There are actually several neglected Indian internet market niches, most obvious one being Hindi language search and regional translators, but none are being utilized.

India is not even close to globally competitive in online software products. They are not even up to the level of South Korea, much less the top 3 software players. Before India thinks about surpassing China in IT, it should think about surpassing South Korea, Japan and Russia.

Well, yes i know India hasn't done that well in online software products/internet industry like its east asian neighbours like Japan, South Korea ,China and even Russia. However, im optimistic about India, they have a very young population, which is increasingly educated, ambitious and smart, plus they have a huge market which can enable them to test their product and obtain scale, thus enabling them to be able to compete with other global/bigger internet companies in the world from U.S or China etc.

Mind you market/population is a major factor as well(though not the main one) for sucess in this industry. Do you think Chinese tech/internet companies will have been as big as American ones had it not been for the large chinese market? The thing is even if a chinese company is mostly dominant in China alone, it can still easily be the largest in the world. So your market gives you a huge leverage, thats one reason its so hard for the U.S and we to contain you.(ok im getting off topic here.).

Coming to topic, India also has a developed Software/outsourcing/BPO industry, so this provides them a base/foundation from which to start. Plus they also have a large speaking English language pool from which they can tap to expand more globally than their east asian counterparts, who are more limited by language barrier. So in all, India does have all the necessary resources to breed a global/big internet company comparable to Google and Alibaba. It just needs proper planning,infrastructure, and better policies/netwrork infrastructure to kick start this growth. Hopefully in the coming years/decades we shall see some internet behemoths emerging from India. India still has alot of potential sont write them off that soon, its similar to China in early 2000

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Well, yes i know India hasn't done that well in online software products/internet industry like its east asian neighbours like Japan, South Korea ,China and even Russia. However, im optimistic about India, they have a very young population, which is increasingly educated, ambitious and smart, plus they have a huge market which can enable them to test their product and obtain scale, thus enabling them to be able to compete with other global/bigger internet companies in the world from U.S or China etc.

Coming to topic, India also has a developed Software/outsourcing/BPO industry, so this provides them a base/foundation from which to start. Plus they also have a large speaking English language pool from which they can tap to expand more globally than their east asian counterparts, who are more limited by language barrier. So in all, India does have all the necessary resources to breed a global/big internet company comparable to Google and Alibaba. It just needs proper planning,infrastructure, and better policies/netwrork infrastructure to kick start this growth. Hopefully in the coming years/decades we shall see some internet behemoths emerging from India. India still has alot of potential sont write them off that soon, its similar to China in early 2000

No, you are incorrect. English is actually a drawback, because it eliminates market niches for Indian companies. China in the early 2000's already had some of the world's largest hardware manufacturers and a complete telecom network infrastructure with Huawei, Datang, Lenovo, etc. China had a higher literacy rate in 1970's than India has today. India still has 25% of the people that don't even have electricity. People don't make a market, demand makes a market. There is no demand for Indian content at this point, because of English (making global companies able to directly compete in that home market) and because Indian internet companies are not exploring the niches of their own market. You can't expand globally if you don't even have a home market.

 

[mike2000]

No, you are incorrect. English is actually a drawback, because it eliminates market niches for Indian companies. China in the early 2000's already had some of the world's largest hardware manufacturers and a complete telecom network infrastructure with Huawei, Datang, Lenovo, etc. China had a higher literacy rate in 1970's than India has today. India still has 25% of the people that don't even have electricity. People don't make a market, demand makes a market. There is no demand for Indian content at this point, because of English (making global companies able to directly compete in that home market) and because Indian internet companies are not exploring the niches of their own market. You can't expand globally if you don't even have a home market.

hmmmmmm......you do make some valid points. China and to some extent South Korea/Japan seems to have done quite well in this sector/field, but i think India will be able to make it in future as well, if they plan properly, and make the right decisions. You should never say never. Afterall, who knows what tomorrow holds.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

hmmmmmm......you do make some valid points. China and to some extent South Korea/Japan seems to have done quite well in this sector/field, but i think India will be able to make it in future as well, if they plan properly, and make the right decisions. You should never say never. Afterall, who knows what tomorrow holds.

I did not use the word never. Let me put it this way: It is extremely unlikely for an Indian global competitor in internet software products, networked services or networking hardware to emerge within the next 10 years.

 

[xunzi]

This speak to the genius of our government than anything. China allows our internet firms to thrive when they were still young and developing and the result is this. Another smart play is our investment in infrastructure and network system. No matter how big of a population the Indian have, they have no means to exchange and trade within their population because their network is shit and infrastructure is laughable.

 

[zeronet]

hmmmmmm......you do make some valid points. China and to some extent South Korea/Japan seems to have done quite well in this sector/field, but i think India will be able to make it in future as well, if they plan properly, and make the right decisions. You should never say never. Afterall, who knows what tomorrow holds.

it is very hard for India to develop the online companies as big as Alibaba. Is there any internet company worth >200Billion USD today in Europe? English is a huge drawback for Europe. Nobody can beat USA if they run their web with English as the sole language. Even EU with their half billion rich people can not do it, how Indian can? China is a very special case that nobody else can repeat. Alibaba has to thank 1.4billion people market with completely different language and culture, China's world factories producing most of the commodities distributed to the whole world, and finally of cause, the great firewall. All above points combined create a very unique company that can not be created anywhere else in the world.

 

[ChineseTiger1986]

sad. jap boy didn't do much to deserve it. Why wasn't Chinese banks holding more of Alibaba's shares? Why some jap bank?

Because Softbank implanted their investment in 14 years ago when Ma didn't have the money to start his business.

Although Softbank doesn't have the power to take Alibaba in charge, but they still don't want to sell their share of Alibaba.

 

[bolo]

Huawei will almost certainly not go public. Interesting fact: Huawei is technically classified as a "worker's collective".

Huawei is great as non public traded company. public companies changes the dynamics of a company, where profit and not R&D is the only thing that matters. Look at Sony when it was private compare to now. It's going to bankrupt

 

[ChineseTiger1986]

Huawei is great as non public traded company. public companies changes the dynamics of a company, where profit and not R&D is the only thing that matters. Look at Sony when it was private compare to now. It's going to bankrupt

China is using Alibaba as a potential future online platform to push its goods further into the world.

Because of China's supply chain network, Alibaba, as part of the ecosystem, is going to become successful regardless of what.

 

[bolo]

China is using Alibaba as a potential future online platform to push its goods further into the world.

Because of China's supply chain network, Alibaba, as part of the ecosystem, is going to become successful regardless of what.

So Jack Ma is worth 14b now. Closing the gap with Li Kashing.