Amy's busy busy days

It's been very busy for the past ten days. I am in Beijing, meeting a lot of different people, senior government officials, businessmen and enterpreneurs. Getting up at six is not one of my strength, and it makes the life those days quite terrible. Luckily, it came to the end and I will be back Hong Kong very soon.

I especially like talking to enterpreneurs, the group of people very candid and frank. I remember one billionaire told me about the government capital granted to support the rural development. "Only 20 percent of the money could be received by the farmers, while the other 80 percent is spent on building nice offices of local government, repaying loans as well as eating and drinking by officials." Those words are very true, but not many people dare to speak it publicly. Now he raised some proposal to the central government avoid those misuse of funds.

Those enterpreneurs are the first group to benefit from the economic reform policy, and you could say a few of them may have some bad behaviors just as you read from media everyday. But some others are becoming more and more responsbile on the society development, and they have become a power to balance with the government. and they are likely to have stronger voice.

Beijing is snowing today

Beijing has one of the most beautiful views today. It is snowing. Viewing from the window of my apartment, the rooftops are fully covered by the white snow. It was quite cold today, even below zero in the evening. However, the air is very refreshing. I just love it. Don't get surprised that I am still in Beijing. I guess I almost fell in love with this city. (though I love Hong Kong, too)

Pity didn't take pictures today. Let me try tomorrow if the snow doesn't melt.

some business opportunities in the BJ subway

The subway in BJ has the largest network among all mainland cities, I guess. What people normall do in the subway?

From my experience in Hong Kong where subway covering much smaller area than Beijing, I usually read the news from my mobile phones via GPRS. I use CSL service now, and I could enjoy the news channle, including Reuters and Dow Jones for free. Though the content is much more limited compared to the wires terminal version, it is a good resource to spend the time and learn new things.

In Beijing, seems many people read newspaper or send messages in the subways. However, if some service providers could serve the passengers free or charged mobile content, such as e-newspaper, e-game. etc, when they get onto the train, it will attract many passengers as well as advertisers, and more efficient than sending the content to someone who are working in the office or sleeping in the home. It will also be more diversified than the TV carrying advertisements all the time on the trains.

However, the problem is the mobile network doesn't really cover the BJ subway very well. sometimes when you call, the signal suddenly disappears, friends told me. So here is the tricky, don't hang off immediately, hold on for another one to five minutes with patience and the call will go through again.(hope the other party has the patience too) . The cut off of the signal will be a bad experience for passengers, but there must be a way to solve the problem some day.

Kind of like location-based service, but should be more professional and legal.

I want some good tea

The best Chinese tea has Chinese tea: different taste after several round of drinking. But seems people nowadays already used to the quick tea, such as Lipton Yellow Tea. After one round of drinking, the teabag remains no taste at all. Is there a way to create teabag with really good tea and different rounds of taste as well?

Is there a future for IPTV in China?

I visited my aunt in Tianjin during the Chinese New Year. To my surprise, her home is already equipped with three television sets, one carried with satellite channels, and the other two are equipped with digital channels.Pretty advanced among all Chinese families, however, my uncle still complained on the channles the family have.

"The satellite one has a lot of nonsense channels such as channels from Middle East or Europe and we couldn't understand even a single word, while we have to pay as much as 20 yuan per month each to the two other sets". My uncle said he will be pretty confused on if he should add another set some day to watch the nonsense satellite TV or pay another 20 yuan per month to add it into the digital channel as required.

With hundreds of TV channels available, we still ended up at watching CCTV 1 together, the general channel you could see even in the most distant corner of China. I couldn't watch Bloomberg though the satellite provides it because none of my other family member could understand it. That's called compromise.

In China, the tradition is still for families to watch TV together after the dinner. I couldn't imagine three or four family members(the normal number for a single family) to watch TV in eachone's bedroom. You could choose not to watch TV, but watching a different one in the different room will be considered as unloyal to the family.

That's exactly what I did. I will watch the "national geography" with my father though I don't really like it. I just enjoy the feeling of watching and talking together. That's why family means.

A bit out of the track. Here back to IPTV, transfering the TV through the telecom network. The technial working theory is the same, but the culture is different. A family could own one single TV, but it is rare that a family could own one mobile handset or talk on the fixed-line phone together. So it leads to the different business operation practices. Telecom operators couldn't just copy their business practice in telecom industry to the TV industry.

Reuters reported today that "BesTV, a Web TV joint service between China's largest fixed-line company China Telecom Corp. and Shanghai Media Group, is talking to potential foreign media partners as it eyes a three-fold rise in viewers by year-end." It is not new, in fact; it was reported earlier that an Australian software provider would invest $7 million to set up a channel on the BesTV on the health development. On one hand, it shows the shortage of content for Chinese operators; on the other hand, it tells that the market need more specialised professionals to provide the best content suited to IPTV. IPTV's advantage is its capability to personalize the content as well as watch any program any time. However, the content itself is much more valuable. And researching on what kind of content will attract the family audience will be much more useful.

TV is public, telecom is private; IPTV, the co-product between the "public" TV and "private" telecom, is yet to position itself properly.

The latest figure on SMS, 14 billion

14 billion pieces, this is the latest figure for the number of short messages in the Spring Festival. It means China Mobile and China Unicom will at least make the revenue of over 1.4 billion yuan in one night.(at least 0.1 yuan for one piece)

The latest figure from Ministry of Information Industry, the regulator of telecom sector:
The mobile users sent over 430 billion pieces of SMS in 2006, rose by 41 percent from last year.

Seems SMS is still the most popular telecom services now. The market needs something new. Standing in the view of mobile users, people will need something more customized and characteristic than a common SMS. And text is not the only way to show the wishes too.

Happy the new year of Pig

Here, I want to send my best wishes to readers of this blog, since I couldn't send the wishes one by one(neither do I know how many there are).

It is the year of the pig in China. and everyone is happy about it because pig is a lovely animal. You could hear Golden Pig all the time, which means you will have great fortune and luck this year.

I am back to the hometown, one of the few times since I started my career in Hong Kong. Yesterday I watched the traditional Spring Festival Show held by CCTV in home, which is really not that bad this time.(Maybe because I have a lower standard towards the show now). Plus, it is quite related to the telecom and IT companies. China Unicom is the sponsor for the call center, while you could send the SMS to either China Mobile or China Unicom to vote your favorite programme. Baidu.com is also one of the sponsors to help vote for the best Chunlian, the couplets written on red papers posted on each side of the front door to get good luck. Even many of the songs got the opportunities to join the show just because they are the most popular rings downloaded to the mobile handsets.

Besides the show, there are plenty of advertisements on the value-added services such as "Color Ring" and songs downloading.

More interestingly, I start to send SMS very frequently to send the New Year wishes, so does my parents. We sit together and send the messages, written by "professional SMS makers", to all the friends, and then enjoy the feeling when someone send back another different ones. There must be a good revenue generated during the period.

Then my father asked: "those SMS, in fact, are really boring, right? There really aren't many customized ones where you could read the sincere heart of others. " Exactly, maybe how to make those SMS more human-related and more characteric to individual people will be another wave of new revenue.

be careful to your mobile, a risk to leak where you are

With the era of 3G coming, are u prepared for the era of leaking more of your privacy?

You may know that there will be more multimedia content in the 3G era, but do u know that 3G network could give the mobile operators a thorough picture on the location of mobile users anytime? Those information is attractive to many parties, including the advertisers, investigators, your friends or even your enemies? How to protect the privacy should be on the agenda of every country to protect the mobile users.

A South Korean media reported that the three largest mobile operators in South Korea(SK Telecom, KTF Telecom and LG Telecom) made a revenue of at least 230 billion S.Korean won by providing location information illegally from August 2005 to June 2006. (Chinese version of the story is here) The story said the three operators provided the location infomation of the mobile users to the third parties without the users' permission.

It should not be a problem in South Korea. In the 3G network, it is easier to get the location information in a dynamatic way. However, the location information should be the privacy of the mobile customers. You don't want to be followed all the time, isn't it?

Google is turning to cable TV?

Google is turning to cable TV to provide more service. This is undoubtfully, no matter whether the Reuters report quoted the exactly right words.

Since Google's successful experience in the searching service, its following moves, from email to blog, have leaded several rounds of revolution in the Internet world. This time, it jumped beyond the WWW world to the cable business.

It's good move in terms of basic concept to give different function to Internet and Cable. Internet will deliver text information, while cable will be still in charge of the transfer of multimedia info. However, the two have totally different character. Internet is a worldwide network, while cable is still based in different geography. Google may be right to lead the technology trends, but how to cooperate with cable to deliver the content is still a problem.

For cable TV operators, Google, to them, may become a threat that they may be reluctant to partner with. They are also carrying more cashes than Internet operators and telecom operators, so the incentives to cooperate with Google may not be that strong.

Anyway, unless Google could buy some cable TV to expand,(better with a controlling stake), things will turn around faster, maybe.

one-way billing model

Major mobile operators in China annouced the one-way billing models from February this year, including China Mobile Beijing, China Unicom Beijing, China Mobile Guangdong, China Unicom Guangdong. I still remember last December when I first disclose this in our paper, many people were suspious of it, and even some analysts from investment banks called me to confirm. Now I could finally tell everyone that I am right and they should have trusted me at the first hand.

Speaking of this, two things I would like to expand a bit more. First, the power of media. The Internet really made the world flat. I remembered when my story was published that day, many mainland newspaper translated and republished again. Checking Sina.com, the best news website in China, you could find at least one hundred translated pieces in print media and online media citied our paper. That's amazing. No one could believe it ten years ago when a Hong Kong newspaper published something and the next day the whole story spread nationalwide. But today it is true. Even big financial media such as Bloomberg and Reuters even quoted some newspaper from nowhere on specific news. My question is how we could clairify the quality?

The next thing is whether mobile operators will suffer from this one-way billing model. Haven't really read some pieces thoroughly covering the whole effect brought by this new model. But I always believe the mobile operator stocks have changed from "fast growers" to "Stalwarts" in the past years. They could generate a lot of cash but not grow as fast as before. They are still good companies with strong cash flows to support, but don't expect it could add another 400 million users in five years. So the one way billing model to them may not be a good news at first, as it will immediately suffer from the loss of revenue from the receivers' side, but in the longer term, it will benefit because of more active calls and talking minutes. So better grade it as "sell" in one year, and then "buy" after that.

The thing I don't quite figure out is the China Mobile stock rose by 1 percent when my story on the introducing of one-way billing system was published that day. Come on, everyone knows it will be bad news. Sigh, the capital market is always hard to beat.

why linkedin is down?

Amazingly, I found blogspot.com works in China now, and I could reply the comment on my blog finally. That's good.

But Google Cache is still down. And if someone could tell me why the linkedin.com, one the most famous social network, is also down? It worked pretty well before as I remember.

Investor Relations "Fundamentals"

When the market goes up and down but not based on the company fundamentals, there are usually some bubble in. Seems Hong Kong and mainland markets are doing so these days. The same company may have different valuation in two markets, while finance-related stock seems so hot among investors.

But one thing Amy always believes is the fundamentals, not only the fundamentals on the financla report, but the "fundamental" for a company to treat its investors, both big ones and small ones. I just wonder how many percent of HK investors, excited on the mainland's financial stock these days, have really called the investor relations offices for mainland financial companies, such as banks, insurers. etc. The response from the difference company will at least give them the credit being a good or bad listed firm.

The only way for individuals to beat the institutional investors is to believe in the fundamentals. And I always believes so.

run across the familiar face

Hong Kong is small. This is the conclusion I have come with after living here for almost three years. I always run across some familiar faces, either friends or strangers or someone I know but will never say hello. For the last circustmance, I always wonder if I could meet him again and then I always will, and still just pass by without saying anything.

Today in the crowds on Queen's Road Central, I run across a familiar face again. A girl with a big hat, but her face, especially her eyes, is just so familiar. I know she is a model, but couldn't remember she has done commercials for whom. We just passed by and I know she is looking at me too(or maybe staring is a better word).

Bearing the question in mind for the whole aftertoon, I went back home looking through all my fashion magazine. Bingo, here she is, the jewllery model for Chow Sang Sang, (the girl in the yellow skirt). CSS is a Hong Kong jewllery maker. But I still couldn't find her name.

When could we have the search engine matching keywords in pictures? That will at least help me solve a lot of my questions for the passers-by.

Do you want a iphone?

Just having dinner with friends. A friend who will go to U.S. this March said she wanted to go there in June to buy the latest iPhone. "It is just fashion; imagine how people envy you when you use the iphone on the street", she said.

Steve always brings miracles, from Mac book to the lovely iPod. Using Apply products is just a brand of fashion. But if iPhone will succeed this time remains a question.

When iPod was born, not really many electronic gadget makers were dedicated to making mp3 players. In a Hong Kong electronic store such as Fortress, you could really find a hard time to pick a right one as there are many brands but not any very very famous ones.

But for mobile, it will be hard. As the big producers such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola have been dominating the market for a long time: they have reputation among customers and more importantly, have a good sales network and relations with mobile operators. iPhone will face stronger rivals compared with iPod's situation a few years ago.

Will Steve bring miracle this time? at least the stock market seems agree with a 7 percent increase on the stock when the annoucement was made. Let's wait and see.

big handbags, health hazard

I like big bags a lot, with everything I need inside. but seems it is really a serious health problem from this Reuter story.

wow, really scaring. i will carry a small bag today.

Finally merging between blogger.com and Google

Today, I switched my blogger.com account to Google account under the suggestion from the website when I logged in. so now I could use my Google account to write on my blog on the Blogger. com. Seems Google will not waste its money on blogger for a longer time. But would be more than happy to do it. but if someday who could merge my accounts in the paypal.com and Google Adsense, I would be shocked, but also excited. That's always the amazing thing of Internet. You couldn't imagine what will happen next.

Culture execution

Not sure if "culture execution" is the right word for the things Blogbus.com meet. Hengge, the founder of blogbus who dedicated to provide the best experience to Chinese bloggers, said in his blog that his company had to pay several tens of thousands of yuan several days earlier to a government agency named "the cultural execution agency" in Shanghai as Blogbus don't have a so-called "Internet multimedia license". Because several Blogbus users only uploaded some music as the background of their blogs, so Blogbus violated "the rule" and had to be fined for that, even if they could delete those music.

As Keso commented, it's the hardest thing to "don't be evil".

In most successful countries, the growth of economy is created by millions of small companies with enthusiasm to try anything and to sacrifice at last. See Sillicon Valley in U.S., where lots of companies have free cultures to do everything they want. In China, it is also true, with small companies making up of the country's 80 percent of the GDP, though they are suffering from a not-favortable policy. China, due to its traditional scheme, has some big "monopoly" giants such as banking, oil and telecom carriers. So when the country opens, people think investment in those companies will bring them great benefit. But in fact, the country has been boosted by many more smaller and unknown companies whose leaders are working hard to improve their business. Blogbus is one of the many examples which just want to do something, but unfortunately, they have to bear more pressure. According to Hengge, the government officer in Shanghai told them that the companies with more financing from venture capitals should be fined more. Is that fair? if more financing means more fines, then how about those monopoly which have a billions-of-U.S. dollars IPO? hoho, I guess the offcials willl not dare to fine them, as they are "big companies" with "big background".

If I were Hengge, I would try to check the "exact rule" for the fines, and possibly, go to court to sue them. I may not win, but I just want to show the due right of a small company in a legal country.

TVB's move in China

TVB, the bigger one of HK's citywide TV station, seems doing a good job in covering China. At least it sent a lot of reporters in China to cover spot news. Today, when I watched the news programme at 11:30 pm, it had one journalist reporting from Anhui province on the H5N1 case, and another in Sichuang province reporting the government's response on the kidnapped workers in Nigeria. If the first one has something related with HK, then the second piece is more on the nation. That's what I always love to see. If HK starts to care about the nation, it will definitely become an important zone in China.

Another interesting point in the second piece is a provincial propoganda official said they will upload the progress to save the kidnapped workers on their wbesite. Wow, my first response is "that advance?", then I realized that all their actions are resulted from the attention of the traditional media such as TV and newspaper. So in that sense, the traditional media is still playing an important role in pushing the new media development via pushing government officials. Putting everything on the website doesn't mean we will have the most accurate and fair informations. But the TV camera in front of the officials would urge them to work a little harder.
I always thought TVB is some local TV station that couldn't be compared with Phoenix TV. But now I find it is catching up via another way. I still remember one day when my friends and me watching Phoenix's report on the city people's protection on the removing of clock tower in the old Star Ferry, the "analyst" or "expert" (I couldn't remember clearly on his title) explained as of the reason related with politics.( couldn't remember how he connected it with politics). My friend, who is a local Hong Kong, said it is totally rubbish as the clock tower is just something accompanying Hong Kong people for a long time and people just have feelings of this old tower. When Phoenix is proud of its many watchers in China, it still has a long way to go to become the top TV station in the Chinese world, including Hong Kong.

In terms of that, TVB have done a better job in reporting the kidnapped workers.

financial jobs hunting in HK

Seems because of my reply on a job-hunting enquiry last time. Now I got another reader Levy asking for the investment banking job market in the city. Gosh, I am not an investment banking expert. But I will try my best to give some suggestion here.

Levy, as you graduated from a Finance major in a top 3 university, I guess your knowledge is already enough for u to work in an investment bank, though maybe hard to join the "investment banking" branch of the IB. I guess you could easily find a trader/sales position in an established IB with your undergraduate major as well as internship in a London investment bank. But you certainly needs a MBA degree to further develop your career in IB.

So my suggestion is: if you have enough money to go for a MBA, then go to a brand one and come back to HK in two years. That will save a lot of time for your career development. Or if you want to work in IB for a few years to see if you really like it, then start job-hunting in HK now.

But several tips:

(1) if you are still a student now, u will not have to pay application fee for the MBA, which will save a lot of money.

(2) HK market is bullish now, so the job market is really good now. Many IB have new openings, so great opportunity.

(3) Don't only ask financial journalist for suggestions. Try some real I-bankers, and you will benefit from an internal view.

Hope this will be helpful to you.

Wedding

One of my best friends got married today. It was such a touching ceremony, especialy when the bride burst into tears after making their wedding pledge. A nice girl now married to a nice guy, and they will have a nice life in the future. My sincere best wishes.

Joing the wedding ceremony always make me excited, especially when I am so lucky to get the bridal bouquet. Thanks, Jamine:)