China ICT (Info Communications Technology) Industry, Infra, Commerce, Exports: News & Discussions

[TaiShang]

29 big data unicorn startups in China: Report
Xinhua | Updated: 2017-05-27

GUIYANG - China has 29 big data "unicorn" firms and 54 future unicorn firms, according to a report on China's unicorn firms development.

The big data unicorn firm refer to a startup whose market value surpasses $1 billion within a decade of setting up. Future unicorn firms are those valued over $100 million each within five years or over $500 million each between five and 10 years.

The number of unicorn firms is seen to represent the innovation level and entrepreneurship environment of a city.

The 83 unicorns with total market value of $220 billion are mainly in the finance and big data sectors, said the report released by Greatwall Strategy Consultants.

The market value of the four super unicorns, Ant Financial, Didi Chuxing, Meituan-Dianping and Toutiao, exceeds $10 billion each.

The majority of unicorns are based in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hangzhou.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2017-05/27/content_29531422.htm

 

[cirr]

China's first big data exchange breaks even

By Chen Meiling in Guiyang | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2017-05-28 17:15

Transactions of China's first big data exchange was expected to reached 200 million yuan by the end of 2017, the exchange's executive president said Saturday.

The value of big data lies in circulation and trading. Now the turnover of the exchange is 100 million yuan, one percent of that in the black market, Wang Sanshou, executive president of Global Big Data Exchange, said at the 2017 China International Big Data Expo in Guiyang, capital of Southwest China's Guizhou province.

As the first big data trading institute of China founded in April 2015, there are 1, 000 members now compared to 300 at the end of 2015.

Members included major domestic IT companies such as China Unicom, Alibaba Group, JD and Huawei.

"All the internet companies in the world will become big data companies in three to five years, " Wang said. "There is no industry which is not linked with data."

The exchange broke even in the first half of 2017, he said.

Since the government has 80 percent of valuable data, the exchange also established cooperation with more than 100 provinces and cities of China in the data development and sharing business, Wang said.

It set up more than 10 big data trading service centers across the country, including those in Beijing, Shanghai, cities in Central China's Henan province and North China's Shanxi province, he said.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/tech/2017-05/28/content_29537539.htm

Data expo closes in SW China

Xinhua, May 28, 2017

GUIYANG, May 28 (Xinhua) -- An expo on big data concluded Sunday in southwest China's Guizhou Province, with more than 16.7 billion yuan (2.4 billion U.S. dollars) worth of contracts signed.

During the 2017 China International Big Data Expo that opened on May 25 in Guiyang city, capital of Guizhou, 119 projects were signed, according to a press conference.

In addition, 77 forums were held, with topics ranging from digital economy and data sharing to artificial intelligence, according to Xu Qin, vice mayor of Guiyang.

A total of 316 exhibitors, including 51 international companies, displayed their latest technology and high-tech products in an area covering about 60,000 square meters.

The event, with the theme of "Digital Economy Drives New Growth," attracted more than 50,000 visitors.

http://www.china.org.cn/china/Off_the_Wire/2017-05/28/content_40916651.htm

 

[TaiShang]

Race between US and Chinese internet giants heating up
chinadaily.com.cn, June 1, 2017

Photo shows the logo of Tencent. [File photo]

A handful of US and Chinese internet giants are expected to do battle with each other in the next chapter of global internet competition, according to venture capitalist and former dotcom star analyst Mary Meeker, the Financial Times reported.

Meeker released her annual internet trends report, a guide to the global internet and technology industry's development, on Wednesday in the United States.

The expansion of internet companies in the last half-decade has been "epic" in Meeker's eyes. She pointed out that the rise of internet giants has not only brought threats to companies in other industries, but has triggered turf wars between themselves as they expand beyond their initial markets.

"People don't spend enough time looking at how intense the competition is," Meeker said to the Financial Times.

Five of the world's top six most valuable companies are internet companies, which includes Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook, according to rankings compiled by Bloomberg in April.

Chinese internet giant Tencent is also in the top 10.

Meeker said the internet markets in China and India have strongly benefited the two countries' economies.

In addition, their mobile payment infrastructure is leading the world.

Meeker said as the digital service market in India is expected to increase rapidly, both US and Chinese internet giants regard it as "a global priority".

Tencent made a strategic investment in Flipkart, India's biggest e-commerce firm, this April.

And Chinese fintech giant Ant Financial Services Group, Alibaba's payment affiliate and owner of Alipay, has acquired a stake in Paytm, India's largest mobile wallet operator by user number.

Meeker believes that US companies such as Amazon are making more aggressive approaches in new markets after they learned lessons from their failures of marching into China.

"These companies are making sure they put more capital to work earlier," Meeker said.

She expected that new companies will dominate emerging categories of online activity just as Uber and Didi Chuxing have dominated ride hailing.

http://china.org.cn/business/2017-06/01/content_40941169.htm

 

[TaiShang]

China's AI business ready to lead the world
Xinhua, June 1, 2017

Chinese Go player Ke Jie analyses the game after the second match against artificial intelligence program AlphaGo in Wuzhen, east China's Zhejiang province, May 25, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

Over the past week, the internet has yet again been buzzing about the future of artificial intelligence (AI).

And once again, the heat was generated by AlphaGo, Google's AI program, which completed a 3-0 clean sweep Friday over Ke Jie, the current world No.1 Go player.

In contrast to the generally negative reactions to AlphaGo's 4-1 victory over South Korean master Lee Se-dol in March last year, people are now more optimistic towards the future of AI.

"AlphaGo was not designed just to play Go," said Qian Jianlun, a Go teacher in east China's Zhejiang Province. "As an AI project, it will change a lot of aspects of our lives."

Full speed ahead

Qian's words echoed the overall positivity shown by the status quo of China's AI industry.

According to data from iiMedia Research, a major research institution, China's AI industry increased by 43.3 percent in 2016, surpassing 10 billion yuan (1.47 billion U.S. dollars), and is expected to reach 15.21 billion and 34.43 billion yuan in 2017 and 2019 respectively.

The numbers were driven by a boom in the amount of research taking place in the industry. China has applied for 15,745 AI patents, ranking second worldwide, according to Liu Lihua, vice minister of industry and information technology.

Favorable policies came as a consequence. Over 40 robotics industry parks have now been or are currently being set up around the country, and for the first time ever, AI was included in the government work report Premier Li Keqiang presented to the Fifth Session of the 12th National People's Congress in March.

"We will accelerate research and development, and commercialization of new materials, artificial intelligence [...] and develop industrial clusters in these fields," the report read.

"AI has become a key driving force behind Chinese companies," said Zhang Yaqin, president of Baidu, China's Internet giant.

"In the AI era, China can innovate not only in products, but also in technologies," he added.

Data set the base

For insiders, the further development of China's AI industry will continue to count largely on data.

"The core of AI development lies in the massive amounts of data," said Li Kaifu, chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital company aiming to create successful Chinese start-ups.

"In China, we have a huge database, and it has proved to be quite valuable for us," he continued.

Bai Chunli, president of Chinese Academy of Sciences, agreed. "By 2020, China will hold 20 percent of the global data, which is expected to reach 44 trillion gigabytes," he stated at an expo on big data Monday.

AI has been playing a bigger role in people's everyday lives. For example, an AI system monitoring vehicles to intelligently control traffic was applied in east China's Hangzhou, and increased vehicle passing speeds by up to 11 percent during its trial last year.

"China is already leading the world in fields such as computer vision and automatic speech recognition," Liu Lihua added.

"We believe that AI presents the most favorable opportunity for us to lead the world," Li resonated.

Business yet to unite

However, for some, what has been transpiring in the industry is not enough for it to successfully achieve sustainable development.

Despite predicting that China's AI market will enjoy a 50-percent annual increase, way above the global rate of 20 percent, McKinsey and Company, a worldwide management consulting firm, also noted that less than 25 percent of the AI industry insiders in China have over ten years of experience in the business, while in the United States that number is 50 percent.

Also, the country's AI companies are yet to join forces.

"There's been a lack of technical collaboration in our AI industry," said Wen Xiaojun from CCID Wise, a major Chinese think tank. "The inter-connectibility of products is poor, and there is no efficient coordination between upstream and downstream producers."

He believes an industry service platform needs to be set up to boost functions including research and development, application and product examining.

"We need such an incubation center for AI to prosper," he added.

http://china.org.cn/business/2017-06/01/content_40939148.htm

 

[Shotgunner51]

China Just Became The Games Industry Capital of The World
Global revenue passes $100 billion for the first time fueled by smartphone use
by Nate Lanxon June 1, 2017, 12:01 PM GMT+8

The global games industry will generate revenue of an estimated $109 billion in 2017, of which 42 percent will come from mobile. Photographer: Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg

Revenue from computer games exceeded $100 billion globally in a single year for the first time, while China has overtaken the U.S. as the "gamer capital of the world" in terms of market size, according to a report published by London-based venture capital firm Atomico.

The 600 million gamers in China generated $24.6 billion of the industry's $101.1 billion global market value over 2016, just ahead of the U.S.’s $24.1 billion. In 2015, the global games industry was worth $91.8 billion according to data from research house Newzoo. A notable contributor to the growth has been Apple's mobile app store in China. In 2016, China accounted for 31 percent of the total $18 billion generated by games on iOS, compared with just 3 percent of the $2.4 billion total in 2012.

Tom Wehmeier, principal and head of research at Atomico and author of the report published Thursday, said a number of other major milestones were passed in 2016. “We've got to the point today where there are now more than two billion gamers globally, and mobile has really taken over to the extent that it's the largest segment overall,” said Wehmeier.​

Mattias Ljungman, a partner at Atomico and one of its co-founders alongside Niklas Zennström, said “the average revenue per user is higher in China than the U.S., which to me would probably make most people fall off their chairs.”​

China's importance to the growth of the global gaming industry is not difficult to see. Tencent Holdings Ltd., China’s largest internet company by market value and one of the 10 largest public technology companies in the world, has seen enormous success from its mobile gaming and advertising divisions, including social networking platform WeChat and desktop game League of Legends. It also owns Honour of Kings, which analysts have estimated will contribute more than 50 percent of Tencent's smartphone game revenue this year and recorded monthly gross revenue of as much as 3 billion yuan ($440 million) in April.

In Europe and the U.S., numbers are still rising alongside investor confidence, according to Atomico. The global games industry will generate revenue of an estimated $109 billion in 2017, of which 42 percent will come from mobile titles. That will rise to as much as $129 billion by 2020, at which point mobile will overtake the combined value of all traditional platforms for games — console and PC — by generating 51 percent of the total revenue for the industry.

"Games have become truly mass market and it's a massive, massive opportunity that's only going to get bigger," Ilkka Paananen, the chief executive officer Supercell, the developer of the popular Clash of Clans mobile game, said in the report. "One of these days somebody’s going to build a game that reaches a billion users a month."​

Much of China's gaming market is contained at home, with little international appeal. Atomico's report, citing research house App Annie, states that as much as 93 percent of all money spent by Chinese gamers go to titles developed by Chinese-based companies. This compares to 56 percent of U.S. gamers spending on U.S.-developed games, and 36 percent of Europeans spending on games developed in the EU.

Many Chinese industrial companies, from chemical solvent producers to poultry processors, have recently been buying up Western games companies as a way of boosting their overall profit margins, thanks to the high margins so many of these entertainment businesses command. Bloomberg previously reported that as much as 70 percent of all acquisitions of games companies since 2015 have been made by Chinese buyers.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ecame-the-games-industry-capital-of-the-world

 

[TaiShang]

China's rural folk ride the $3b app
By Fan Feifei (China Daily) 10:02, June 05, 2017

A farmer uses mobile phone to do live streaming, Wuxiang county, Shanxi province, May 18, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

Kuaishou, a Chinese video sharing and live streaming app, has become popular among China's rural population as it brings them closer by allowing them to record and share their lives.

What makes Kuaishou distinct is its focus on ordinary people, not glamorous celebrities and stars who abound on mainstream short video and live streaming apps.

"The number of daily active users of Kuaishou has surpassed 40 million, creating millions of short videos via the UGC (user generated content) method," said Su Hua, its founder and CEO.

The next goal is to encourage rural folk to record and share lighter-vein videos.

For any social networking app, the key is daily active users. Considering the success of Instagram, Su believes there is still great potential for growing the number of daily active users of Kuaishou.

The APP is popular even in urban centers. Daily active users in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen number 10 million.

Stated differently, 30 million users, or more than 70 percent of users, come from outside first-tier cities.

And 87 percent of Kuaishou's users are from the post-'90s generation or the so-called millennials. "We are devoted to recording the daily life of ordinary people, giving them a stage to express themselves," said Su, adding the app aims to improve the user experience and attract more new users.

The app would recommend personalized content to users based on their browsing history and preferences with the help of artificial intelligence technology and a sophisticated algorithm. "We also pay attention to data confidentiality and user security," Su said.

Kuaishou was established over six years ago. The company is now exploring ways of monetizing its assets (user traffic). It believes online virtual tools, gifts, video advertisements, e-commerce, games and other value-added services could prove money-spinners.

Su said Kuaishou's ultimate goal, however, is not to commercialize the platform totally. "However, excellent commercialization programs will make us strengthen team building, hire more talent, and optimize our products."

In March, Kuaishou received 350 million yuan ($1.1 million) in financing. The funding round was led by Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. Last year, it received funding from internet search giant Baidu Inc and Sequoia Capital. Their investments valued Kuaishou at over $3 billion.

Apart from Kuaishou, the Su-led startup also provides two video-related apps, focusing on live broadcast assistance and short video, editing features.

Given its large number of short videos, Kuaishou feels the pressure to review all that content, to ensure it is safe, decent and compliant with existing regulations.

"As a video-sharing platform, we need to check the contents of uploaded videos in accordance with the national regulations, before recommending them to users," Su said.

"The pressure of manual review is huge. We have spent three years establishing our review system. The professional review team comes from television channels with rich work experience. We'll strengthen the monitoring of live-streaming content, and deal with users who disseminate inappropriate content, including pornography," said Su.

Zhuang Qiange contributed to the story.

http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/0605/c90000-9224172.html

 

[onebyone]

The world’s largest e-commerce platform operator said fiscal 2018 sales may increase by up to 49 per cent, 10 percentage points higher than estimates


PUBLISHED : Friday, 09 June, 2017, 9:30am
UPDATED : Friday, 09 June, 2017, 10:30am

Meng Jing

5 Jun 2017
Alibaba Group Holding is the most valuable Asian company, surpassing its nearest rival by more than 8 per cent, after its New York-traded stock soared to a record on the back of a bullish 2018 sales forecast that beat every analyst estimate.

Alibaba’s shares jumped 13.3 per cent overnight to a record US$142.30 on the New York bourse, boosting its market capitalisation to US$360 billion, 8.4 per cent more than Tencent Holdings as the most valuable Asian company.

The world’s largest online shopping platform defied every analyst estimate with an earnings forecast yesterday that topped average projections by 10 percentage points, as digital advertising grows while new ventures into cloud computing and digital entertainment begin to pay off.

Revenue will increase by between 45 per cent and 49 per cent in the year ending March 2018, said the Hangzhou-based company, owner of the South China Morning Post. That’s higher than the 35 per cent average estimate in Bloomberg’s poll of 43 analysts.
“The revenue guidance was a positive surprise,” said New Street Research’s analyst Kirk Boodry, who was expecting a 40 per cent growth, and has a “buy” recommendation on the stock. “The main driver is the power of their data analytics platform, as they can provide very detailed and accurate consumer targeting for advertisers, who are increasingly keen to spend money with Alibaba. ”

Founded by former English teacher Jack Ma Yun in 1999, Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall sites are the go-to platforms for China’s 448 million online shoppers, who buy everything from clothing, electronics to food and services through the internet.


That’s helped the company chalk up US$547 billion in gross merchandise volume -- the value of goods sold through the platform -- for the year ended March 31, for which the operator charges a fee. The company’s fiscal 2017 sales rose 56 per cent to a record 158.27 billion yuan (US$23.29 billion).

“Despite having a larger base, we continue to accelerate our revenue growth,” said chief financial officer Maggie Wu during Alibaba’s annual investor event in Hangzhou.

The revenue projection “is going to be voted by the feet of the merchants and consumers, and we have the confidence that based on the data and technology we have, we are going to achieve that,” she said.

Alibaba’s forecast is easing any concern that China’s slowing economy could weigh on online sales. Revenue growth and the increase of Alibaba’s retail transaction volume are “decoupling,” Wu said.

“Why is that? Because of the broader value proposition we provide to merchants, brands and customers,” she said.


The smartphone, increasingly the preferred medium for China’s online shoppers, is also becoming the content source for their entertainment, providing streaming video and digital music, Alibaba said.

To reflect its increasingly diverse customer base, Alibaba said it will start reporting active consumers, instead of just buyers. It will begin to disclose “customer management revenue” instead of just online marketing, to reflect sales from serving a broader base of advertising platforms.

Alibaba has made a big push in recent years into cloud computing, where it provides computing power over the internet akin to Amazon’s AWS.

The unit, which accounts for about 5 per cent of total revenue, is Alibaba’s fastest growing business. The company will push to expand its share of the cloud computing market in the subsequent quarters, while keeping the profitability of the division on a lower priority, Wu said.

Alibaba’s accelerated growth reflects the “winner takes all” trend in the global technology industry, said Hou Xiaotian , who has a “buy” recommendation on the stock.

“With Alibaba’s advantage in data and technology, it’s in a much better position in finding the next big thing and seizing new opportunities than any other smaller company.”

http://www.scmp.com/tech/enterprise...soars-record-us360-billion-bullish-2018-sales

 

[cirr]

I thought Tencent had a higher market cap. than Alibaba. No?

 

[Jlaw]

Wow, Alibaba has bigger market cap than India 's biggest tech company Infosys

 

[cdtiger]

Haha, it's not just "bigger than Infosys". It's 10 times bigger in terms of market cap.

Wow, Alibaba has bigger market cap than India 's biggest tech company Infosys

 

[Shotgunner51]

I thought Tencent had a higher market cap. than Alibaba. No?

At the moment Tencent is HK$2.603 trillion (roughly HK$335.9 billion), Alibaba is US$355.6 billion, so both about the same in market cap

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/0700.hk?ltr=1
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/baba?ltr=1

 

[Shotgunner51]

ZTE Signs Strategic Partnership with Telenet on 5G and IoT

BRUSSELS, June 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, today announced the signing of Strategic Partnership Agreement on 5G and IoT with Telenet, deepening the two companies' collaboration on next-generation technologies.

In a ceremony at the Castle Val-Duchesse in Brussels officiated by Prime Minister Charles Michel and Premier Li Keqiang, Telenet Chief Technology Officer Micha Berger and ZTE Senior Vice President Xiao Ming signed the new agreement that expands the partnership between the two companies to cover future network innovations.

Mr. Berger said: "We already engaged for a couple of months with ZTE now and are very happy about it. We are convinced this partnership will allow us to offer a top quality mobile network for existing and future needs all over Belgium."

Telenet is the largest cable broadband service provider in Belgium, listed on the Euronext stock exchange under the ticker TNET, providing a range of digital television, fixed and mobile services to residential and business customers across Belgium and Luxembourg.

In August 2016, Telenet selected ZTE to upgrade its national mobile network, deploying ZTE's world-class Uni-RAN technology. The network modernization project not only resulted in major improvements in performance and service quality for Telenet subscribers but also gave the carrier enhanced capabilities to manage its operations.

ZTE helped Telenet replace 2G base stations and optimize 3G, 4G coverage, delivering increased network capacity for enhanced user experience for subscribers, and supporting evolution to future network technologies.

With ZTE's industry-leading technology, Telenet completed field test and set a new European network speed record, achieving download speeds of 1.3 Gigabits per second, four times faster than existing 4G services.

Together with ZTE, Telenet is exploring technology solutions for IoT services and high capacity solutions using LTE Massive MIMO and LTE Broadcast solutions.

As a global leader in 5G technology, ZTE is committed to investments in research and development of core 5G technologies including Massive MIMO, MUSA (multi-user shared access), FB-OFDM (filter-bank OFDM), Virtual Cell and network slicing.

ZTE is a major participant and contributor to global 5G technologies and standards. The company is a member of over 70 standards organizations, alliances, and forums, including ITU, 3GPP, IEEE, NGMN, and IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group.

"ZTE is excited by our strategic agreement with Telenet," said Mr. Xiao. "This agreement provides a solid foundation for Telenet and ZTE to expand and strengthen the long-term partnership on the way to a new 5G era."

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-rele...hip-with-telenet-on-5g-and-iot-300468208.html

 

[onebyone]

A company as an economy? Alibaba says it can be world’s fifth-largest by 2036

E-commerce giant will serve 2 billion customers and support 10 million businesses on its platforms in 19 years’ time, says founder Jack Ma


PUBLISHED : Friday, 09 June, 2017, 7:36pm
UPDATED : Friday, 09 June, 2017, 10:55pm

Alibaba Group Holding, the world’s largest e-commerce platform operator, aims to become the fifth-largest “economy” in the world by 2036, founder Jack Ma Yun said on Friday.

In 19 years’ time, the technology giant would have created 100 million jobs and would support 10 million profitable businesses on its platforms as it strove to become a global business in the truest sense, serving as many as two billion consumers worldwide, the executive chairman told about 400 investors at its headquarters in Hangzhou.

The Chinese firm, which runs the popular Taobao and Tmall e-commerce platforms, has set a target to achieve US$1 trillion in gross merchandise volume in 2019 – the 2020 financial year – which would make it roughly the 16th- or 17th-largest “economy” in the world, according to Ma. He said Alibaba’s gross merchandise value today already made it the 22nd-largest “economy” globally, just behind Argentina.

“If a company can serve two billion consumers, that is one-third of the total population of the world. If a company can create 100 million jobs, that is probably bigger than most governments can do. If a company can support 10 million profitable businesses on its platform, this is called an economy,” Ma told the audience.

At that point, Alibaba would become the No 5 “economy” in the world, just behind the United States, China, Europe and Japan, Ma said, without specifying the company’s projected gross merchandise value number by that year.

The idea of companies as economies is not new. General Electric and Wal-Mart Stores, among the largest companies on the planet with the most extensive network of operations, have been compared to sovereign economies in the past. Wal-Mart’s 2002 sales rivalled the world’s 22nd-biggest economy, Australia.

Current international commercial trading practices are not helping small and medium-sized enterprises survive as big companies are expanding across the continents and eroding the market share of smaller players. People are also worried that they will lose their jobs as machines become more widely adopted.

Hangzhou-based Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post, is determined to become a global company that places importance on inclusivity by supporting small businesses and helping young people, according to Ma.

Targeting two billion consumers by 2036, of whom an estimated 800 million would be Chinese, meant Alibaba would look for 1.2 billion more consumers outside its home country, he added.

The company had been actively looking for investment and acquisition opportunities in a way that ensured the sustainable growth of the group, executive vice-chairman Joe Tsai said at the same event.

Over the past two years, Alibaba’s strategic investments have totalled US$21 billion, spread across various business sectors including digital media, entertainment, logistics, new retail and social media.

Alibaba’s future success will be driven by its ability to use data to increase user engagement further and deepen its relationships with brands
TSANG CHI, HSBC
Alibaba has also become the most valuable Asian company as its stock surged after it projected on Thursday that sales in the 2018 financial year might increase by up to 49 per cent, 10 percentage points higher than estimates.

Its New York-traded shares jumped 13.3 per cent to a record US$142.30 on Thursday, boosting its market capitalisation to US$360 billion.

Shares of Alibaba’s nearest rival in Asia, Tencent Holdings, gained 1.5 per cent to close at HK$277.40 on Friday in Hong Kong. Tencent’s total capitalisation of HK$2.6 trillion (US$333 billion) on Friday is about 8 per cent lower than Alibaba’s at the close on Thursday.

Alibaba’s success rests on two factors: as an early mover, it met untapped consumer demand and now boasts 507 million mobile monthly active users, while its huge user base has also made it a valuable partner for brands, according to Tsang Chi, HSBC’s head of internet research in Asia-Pacific.

“Alibaba’s future success will be driven by its ability to use data to increase user engagement further and deepen its relationships with brands,” Tsang wrote in a report dated June 9.

“Indeed, revenue guidance that far exceeded expectations and deep-dive discussions at its 2017 investor day indicate we are at the beginning of data-driven monetisation,” Tsang said.

HSBC has inflated its target price for Alibaba’s shares to US$162 from US$145 previously. The new projection is 13.8 per cent higher than the price at the close on Thursday in New York.


This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as:
alibaba aims to become fifth largest economy


http://www.scmp.com/business/compan...libaba-aims-become-fifth-largest-economy-2036

 

[cirr]

At the moment Tencent is HK$2.603 trillion (roughly HK$335.9 billion), Alibaba is US$355.6 billion, so both about the same in market cap

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/0700.hk?ltr=1
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/baba?ltr=1

Both will be 500 billion USD companies in a couple of years save a major stock market correction.

 

[open-source]

good to see the technology is reaching forward