Chinese Expansion – Page 3

Narrative: Chinese Expansion

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LeEco Says Cash Situation Far Worse than Expected (Jun 28, 2017)

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LeEco

Chinese Expansion

Alibaba Provides Bullish Outlook as Slight Hit to Profits Funds Expansion (Jun 8, 2017)

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Alibaba

Chinese Expansion

★ LeEco Cuts 70% of US Staff, Refocuses on Chinese-Speaking Americans (May 23, 2017)

I’ve been both intrigued by and enormously skeptical of LeEco’s US market entry from the beginning, as this piece I wrote after its US launch back in October suggests. The company had been successful in China on the basis of a slow evolution from a content to a hardware company, and yet its US launch seemed to have turned that strategy almost entirely on its head without the compelling content that helped it succeed domestically. It also made many of the same mistakes as other Chinese companies attempting to expand into the US by not making enough changes to its playbook when it moved to the US. There have been reports for a few days now about an impending massive cut to the US business, and today has brought official confirmation. There’s no schadenfreude here from me given the large number of people losing their jobs, but hopefully LeEco’s story serves as a cautionary tale for other Chinese companies entering the US market. As the essay and video in the related narrative suggest, this has always been a tough task, and no Chinese company has really succeeded in building a big, successful ecosystem in the US. Even those that have done well more narrowly, such as in low-cost hardware, have taken years to get there and even then aren’t considered in the same class as leaders like Apple, Samsung, LG, or even Sony. Ironically, LeEco’s retrenchment now to serving Chinese-speaking residents of the US would have made a ton of sense as a market entry strategy last year, starting much smaller and more modestly, and slowly expanding out from that core into the broader US market. Instead, that new focus is the result of a somewhat humiliating defeat, caused in equal measures by an overly hubristic and poorly thought out market entry and financial constraints at headquarters that gave that strategy very little time to play out. This could – and should – have gone very differently.

via CNET

LeEco

Chinese Expansion

Didi Raises $5.5 Billion to Help Fund International Expansion (Apr 28, 2017)

Chinese ride-sharing company Didi Chuxing has raised what Bloomberg says is the largest single funding round ever, apparently to help pay for a long-expected international expansion. Didi now of course owns Uber’s business in China and also received a billion-dollar investment from Apple last year, but has mostly stuck to its home market for now. People in the know have been saying it was going to start trying to build a business outside of China for some time, so this move isn’t that surprising, but it’s almost certain to bump up against its part owner Uber in at least some markets given the latter company’s international reach, which could get interesting. Big Chinese tech companies have mostly failed to expand much beyond China with the exception of those selling cheap electronics, and Didi will face an uphill battle in ride sharing markets internationally unless it partners with local players (possibly including Uber). I’m very curious to see which markets it goes after and how.

via Bloomberg

Didi
Uber

Netflix Agrees to License Content to Baidu Subsidiary iQIYI (Apr 25, 2017)

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Alibaba Launches Program to Help US Businesses Sell Through its Site in China (Apr 25, 2017)

Alibaba is launching a program to help US businesses sell to Chinese consumers through its website. It’ll hold a conference in June at which it will offer training on all the ins and outs of doing business both through Alibaba specifically and in China generally, and all this is by way of fulfilling a promise CEO Jack Ma made to Donald Trump back in January. The US currently has a massive trade imbalance with China – exports from the US in 2015 were $161.6 billion, while imports were $497.8 billion – so rectifying that balance is a key priority for the US administration. But much of the current export volume to China is in categories that would be a poor fit for a platform like Alibaba – soybeans come top, both consumer and commercial vehicles are also major contributors, and much of the rest is made up by other commercial and industrial products. The US sells very few small consumer goods of the kind well suited to a platform like Alibaba, so any contribution made by Alibaba to reducing the trade deficit is going to be far more symbolic than material. In addition, the complexity of selling into China, where foreign-owned businesses are severely limited, will make it a fairly unappealing proposition for most US-based businesses relative to selling into the massive market on their own doorstep. I suspect this will be just another example of a Chinese tech company struggling to bring its model to the US (just as almost all US tech companies struggle going the other way).

via USA Today