China Internet and Other
Services
Key Takeaways from Our
Internet Trip (Jan 6-9)
We observed healthy progress in mobile Internet
services, yet competition remains intense, and
near-term investments should remain high to
capitalize on the market growth. We expect
monetization of mobile services to reach its
inflection point in 2014 with a positive outlook on
mobile gaming.
Ctrip: Ctrip plans to turn more aggressive in market
share expansion and is willing to give up margins if
necessary. Market share gain is its top priority in 2014,
and it expects margin volatility in the near term. Ctrip will
step up its investments in brand building, competitive
pricing, new product development (e.g., car rental,
attraction tickets, group buying services), and M&A.
Youku: Mobile monetization is on track with close to
10% of its total revenues in 4Q. Its multi-screen strategy
(i.e., bundling advertising services with PC and mobile
with attractive pricing) should help increase advertising
inventory and spur budget allocation on mobile.
Performance-based advertising attracts more
effectiveness-driven customers (e.g., online gaming and
e-commerce), and its newly launched mobile app store
may generate incremental revenues in 2014 with better
margin. While competition for premium content remains
intense, Youku is differentiating by focusing more on
in-house production and user-generated content (UGC),
which offers opportunities for soft advertising services.
YY: Core businesses (i.e., music and web game)
continue to perform well, partly benefiting from the
holiday promotions and strong seasonality towards end
of the year. Web game market growth is slowing down,
due to low base, but YY should continue to grow faster
than the industry. YY plans to introduce some dedicated
services for its education channel with the priority of
driving usage in the near term. Its game broadcasting
business has ramped up very strong recently.