What Valley Companies Should Know about Tencent

techcrunch.com

20 points·jasonlbaptiste··6 comments

Although a bit sensationalist, articles like this recall the fact that China will "soon" be a huge market effectively invisible to the English-speaking world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_...

English does well for itself. Better if you include that it's effectively the unifying language of the eurozone.

http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/CN

There's QQ. But what English-speaking tech companies are making inroads into China? Microsoft, Google (who "pulled out") and Amazon.cn (a '04 acquisition) are the big ones I see. It it a matter of money to get the foot in the door?

Um, eBay tried and failed. I worked for PayPal China and it's been a rough slog for them. The only inroads for them was all the cross-border stuff.

Alibaba (the other big Chinese Internet giant) accepts PayPal now.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870446470457520...

The valuation of any company that lists on the chinese stock exchange is highly suspect.

Overvalued or not, Tencent is gold.

Actually it lists in Hong Kong. Tencent has always shown good growth figures (see http://tencent.com.hk )

Tencent has also made forays in online payments and ecommerce, but it has had the least success in that category. The company isn’t giving up. I met with Tencent’s CTO Jeff Xiong in Hong Kong last week and when I asked him what the company’s core strength was, he answered “patience.”

Good answer.

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