Connecting Globally

The rising adoption of smartphones worldwide has made mobile Internet a booming industry in recent years. South Korea, China and Australia have the highest smartphone penetration rates worldwide at 67 percent, 66 percent and 65 percent, respectively, according to Nielsen. In China, smartphone adoption has grown 401 percent over the last year. Revenue in the mobile Internet hit 54.97 billion yuan ($8.7 billion), with an annual growth rate of 96.4 percent. How will Internet companies get a bigger share of this growing business? Beijing Review reporter Chen Ran brought back fresh thoughts of tech leaders from the Fifth Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing on May 7-8. Excerpts follow:

Ma Huateng, Core Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tencent

The booming mobile Internet industry creates a gold opportunity for Asian countries to shine.For the first time, we are at the same starting point and even take a minor leading position over some of the American giants such as Facebook. It remains a challenge for Internet companies to cope with PC clients while shifting to the mobile arena.

I found that the biggest opportunity came from industries crossing over. For instance, I was in communications some 20 years ago,and quite familiar with the Internet at the same time. So we did something that combined both areas. That was why instant messaging and online communities were Tencent’s trump cards in the early years.

To be honest, we had setbacks as well,such as in e-commerce and the search engine market. I think crossover still works today. Some of the popular products in the United States feature communications.Internet companies in Asia, however, are moving beyond communications—they make communications, social networks and platforms into one. Tencent’s WeChat, which has more than 300 million users, is the first of its kind in the world.

Internet companies, big or small, have to be aware of the industry’s transformation and cautious about every step in the wake of the mobile Internet era. We are lucky that we experienced a smooth shift from traditional Internet to the mobile one, and we still have space for improvement. We should create a win-win solution from multiple aspects involving developers, platforms, and partnerships.

The industry is on the rise and its beauty lies in its uncertainty, but we are passionate and interested in exploring the unknown.

Yu Yongfu, Chief Executive Officer of UCWeb

Big Internet names in both China and the United States make people bored. various thirdparty applications from startup companies contribute to a more colorful mobile Internet world.

I think three variables, namely technology,development models and companies, could change the industry.

Web browsers that focus on layout design rather than technology would hit a dead end. Take UCWeb as an example. We were the first in the world that managed to use cloud computing in the browser’s structure.As a result, the penetration of our browser into smartphones, both in Android and iOS systems, reached 71.2 percent. The figure for 360.com, the country’s biggest PC web browser, was only 4.3 percent.

FORWARD LOOKING: The Fifth Global Mobile Internet Conference is held at the National Convention Center in Beijing on May 7-8

In the past, most Chinese companies did not take overseas markets into consideration. Today, that’s the case for American Internet companies when it comes to mobile Internet. Not surprisingly, business in Asia started booming earlier than in the United States. For instance, Japan witnessed rapid growth in its mobile Internet sector beginning in 2001, and China since 2004. The United States did not reach this new chapter until the advent of the iPhone by Apple in 2007. Asia will continue to succeed as long as we keep the momentum.

We were one of the few Chinese companies with global ambitions early on. Emerging markets in Brazil, Russia and India were within our strategy.

As for the last variable, 99 percent of Internet companies in the world are small and medium-sized ones. As startups, we could bring vitality and variety to the industry.We have been in the gaming industry for 12 years, and we want to keep our business growing in China, where the market is very promising.

Phil Larsen, Chief Marketing Officer of Halfbrick

Our base is in Brisbane, Australia, and our business structure is mature. We need to do research and evaluate the potential for growth before opening a branch office somewhere outside Australia. We want to make sure that we know about the market.

We have a lot of partners worldwide, which means we do not have to do it by ourselves. We focus on game development, and our partners could provide a creative vision. We have a publisher here in China. They have a good sensibility for both Chinese and Western markets. Besides translation from English into Chinese, we can also use local social media for better marketing. So far, 30 percent of Fruit Ninja players are Chinese. We can produce unique and exclusive content for Chinese clients through such cooperation.Our goal is to make the world a little bit smarter,one person at a time. We cannot do it by ourselves or do it overnight. That is why Evernote came to China a year ago. Today, we have 17 people working in Beijing, and we have 4 million users in China out of almost 60 million worldwide. We have many local partners, big and small, that can make our product better.

Phil Libin, Chief Executive Office of Evernote

To realize this ambitious goal, a simple and direct business model eliminates customer and partner con flict. Business is not a zero-sum game. Companies should help each other. We should make a product that is so good that a billion people would love it, and some of them would choose to pay for it.

Being global does not mean what it used to mean. We are in Beijing not because we only want to sell products here for the Chinese market, but we want to sell products everywhere in the world.

Some of the most dramatic transformations will be in the area of business software, particularly in China. The engine of the country’s economic growth in the past 10 years was manufacturing.But now, we see changes from manufacturing to knowledge-based growth. Millions of small and medium-sized companies realized that their productivity relies on the capability of handling information. It’s a brand-new field.

China will be the crucible of innovation over the next decade. Frankly speaking, Chinese companies do not have a good reputation for innovation because people in the West believe they just copy things. But they aren’t just copying things. They’re improving upon them.Copying and improving is a method for innovation anywhere.

Many of the great Chinese companies realized that their products needed to sell worldwide. They are setting a vision that goes far beyond China. That will also work for non-Chinese companies that want to succeed in China. ■