Sohu News mobile app achieved 100 million users this May; but now, Tencent News surpassed Sohu News becoming the best mobile news app by the number of unique visitors and MAU.

During a 10-week period from 2 June to 10 August 2014 in China, a study from EnfoDesk shows that Tencent News and Sohu News apps are the top two mobile apps in news category by total number of unique visitors and MAU, with average weekly UV of 60.93 million and 56.47 million respectively.

The study analyzed traffic from popular Chinese mobile news apps including Tencent, Sohu, Toutiao, NetEase, Phoenix, Sina and other news apps.

The UV growth of the top three Chinese mobile news apps (Tencent, Sohu, Toutiao) were driven by the crash of Malaysia Airlines in the territory of Ukraine while Netease, Phoenix, Sina had no significant fluctuations.

Tencent News had 94.13 million monthly active users during the period studied, which ranked the top, followed by Sohu News (86.02 million). Netease had 12 million MAU, surpassing NetEase and ranking the third while Phoenix news is at the bottom of the list.

Read more: The number of Sohu News APP Users Hit 100 Million

Sina reported net revenues of $187.0 million, compared to $157.5 million for the same period last year. Gross margin for the second quarter of 2014 was 61%, comparing to 54% in Q2 2013 according to Sina’s announced unaudited financial results.

We are pleased with SINA’s second quarter results.

said Charles Chao, Chairman and CEO of Sina.

Weibo is executing well with strong financial performance, solid traffic growth and measurable progress toward building out a social commerce platform and offering native ads to large brand customers. On the portal side, we are making progress in building new businesses and leveraging SINA’s brand and media influence to capture mobile and vertical opportunities

Sina Second Quarter 2014 Highlights

• Net revenues increased 19% year over year to $187.0 million. Non-GAAP net revenues increased 21% year over year to $184.4 million, exceeding the Company’s guidance between $177 million and $182 million
• Advertising revenues grew 29% year over year to $155.8 million, exceeding the Company’s guidance between $152 million and $155 million
• Non-advertising revenues were $31.2 million. Non-GAAP non-advertising revenues were $28.6 million, exceeding the Company’s guidance between $25 million and $27 million
• Net income attributable to SINA was $16.6 million, or $0.25 diluted net income per share attributable to SINA. Non-GAAP net income attributable to SINA was $12.1 million, or $0.17 non-GAAP diluted net income per share attributable to SINA?

Sina estimates that its non-GAAP net revenues for the third quarter of 2014 will be between $193 million and $199 million, which excludes the recognition of $2.6 million in deferred license revenues from E-House.

On April 1 2014, Sina Weibo renewed its prospectus and announced that Weibo will be listed on Nasdaq as “WB”.

On March 15 in 2014, Sina Weibo submitted Form-1 to Securities and Exchange Commission for financing USD 500 million, half of which will be used to pay off debt and the other half will invest in technology and product development. In the updated prospectus, it is certain that Weibo will be listed on Nasdaq as “WB”, Goldman Sachs Group and Credit Suisse will be lead underwriters, as well as Morgan Stanley, Piper Jaffray and China Renaissance. But the IPO time and pricing range remain uncertain.

The name of the listed company will be “Weibo Corporation”, on March 27, Sina Weibo changed its logo to “Weibo”, removed “Sina” completely.

According to the prospectus, by December 2013, Sina Weibo’s monthly active accounts reached 129 million, with a 33.5% YoY growth. Daily active accounts reached 61.4 million, with a 36.1% YoY growth. Monthly average posts hit 2.8 billion, among which 2.2 billion included a picture and 81.7 million contained a short video and another 21.5 million shared music.

Sina Weibo has lost its best chances filing for IPO in 2011 and 2012 with highest valuation, but now is a pretty good opportunity, for it started to make profit for the first time. According to Sina’s latest financial report, Sina Weibo’s revenue reached USD 71.4 million in Q4 2013, with 151% YoY increase and 33.7% QoQ increase. In Q3 2013, Sina Weibo nearly broke even.

Sina Weibo’s total revenue in 2013 was USD 188.3 million with 186% YoY increase, net loss was USD 38.1 million decreasing  by 63% compared to 2012. In 2012, Sina Weibo’s total revenue was USD 65.9 million, net loss was USD 102.5 million. By advertising, games and other channels, Weibo began to make profits for Sina. The main revenue of Weibo came from advertising and marketing campaigns on the platform.

According to Weibo’s prospectus, in 2013, revenue from advertising and marketing reached USD 148.426 million, threefold of that in 2012. The cooperation with Alibaba contributed USD 49.135 million, and third-party advertisers contributed USD 99.291 million. Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall platforms had growing influence on Sina Weibo’s revenue.

Notably, Alibaba purchased 18% stake in Sina Weibo with USD 586 million in April 2013. The deal allowed Alibaba to hold up to 30%. The prospectus shows that Sina and Alibaba hold approximately 97% of Weibo’s stake, and Sina Weibo’s executive team holds the rest. Sina Corporation holds 140 million shares, which accounted for 77.6%. Alibaba Group holds 34.89 million shares and took up 19.3%. Sina Weibo’s executive team holds 5.42 million shares, accounted for 3%.

Since several sensational news in March 2014 (Kunming train station attack on March 1 and the missing airline MH370 on March 8), Sina Weibo has gained wide-spread recognition as an important media for information release. Because of a large number of professionals using Weibo, though the information sources may be various, Weibo’s self-correction and rumor identifying abilities are more powerful than private social networking apps’.

These public events rediscovered the positioning and value of Sina Weibo, offered perfect opportunity for IPO. Sina stressed that Weibo as a social media, rather than WeChat and QQ alike instant messaging apps. (Click here to check out event marketing on Weibo: How Brands Utilized Chinese Spring Festival Gala on Sina Weibo.)

Actually, Sina Weibo began its commercialization in 2012. With banner ads, promoted Weibo post, Weibo and Taobao account bundling and Weibo Wallet, Sina Weibo has built a complete advertising system targeting brands, SME and Taobao store owners. Insiders revealed that the major clients of Sina Weibo are SME, in the future, it will attract more brands to market on the platform.

Sina tech news released on December 18 2013, that Amazon Web Service (AWS) achieved strategic cooperation with cloud valley belonged to China Broadband Capital (CBC). AWS finally was ready to launch AWS in Chinese market.

It’s very likely that AWS and CBC would build data base in Ningxia province and locate operating center in Beijing. The specific cooperation between AWS and CBC was still unclear, but it might refer to Microsoft’s Windows Azure model.

On November 1 2012, Microsoft agreed with 21Vianet Group, a carrier-neutral internet data center services provider in China to launch Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Services Office 365 and Windows Azure in China. Microsoft offered technology support, and 21Vianet Group operated these two cloud services in China. Microsoft successfully avoided telecom value-added services license issues.

Word had been spreading that AWS to enter Chinese market so many times. The most recent rumor was in the beginning of 2013, actually, Amazon did made several preparations for entering Chinese market. Amazon launched Chinese website by the end of 2012 and began recruiting Chinese staff. Seemingly, Amazon was about to enter Chinese market very soon, but then the cooperation negotiation was dominated by Amazon American company and it didn’t end well.

Amazon chose CBC this time probably because the latter’s success in helping Evernote enter Chinese market. AWS had developed over 10 years, in 2001, Amazon global began offering web technology support and operation for offline retailers which was the predecessor of AWS. In 2002, Amazon offered AWS paid services to third parties. Now, AWS was one of the fastest growing business of Amazon, Evercore Partners analysts predicted that Amazon’s market value would surpass USD 50 billion in 2015.

AWS was invincible in the U.S. market, but it faced fierce competition in Chinese market with Alibaba Cloud Computing, Baidu Cloud Storage, Sina Cloud and Ucloud. Ucloud CEO told media that AWS entering Chinese market would be a good thing for Chinese cloud services companies, because of its high-profile in cloud services could help developing Chinese market.

AWS still faced localized operation difficulties, Ucloud CEO said that if AWS want to win Chinese market, they need to focus on product development, technology support and sales. Kaifu Lee once told media in May 2013, that the era of global enterprises operating their businesses in China through its subsidiary coporations had failed, AWS could only had the chance to compete in Chinese market by authorizing its technology to a single Chinese company.

36kr.com and 3g.qq.com did a survey about mobile internet user behavior online, collecting 92,000 sample via 3g.qq.com. Most of respondents were between 23-30 years old, with 41.9%.

About one thirds of respondents used 2 or more mobile phones.

Nearly 75% respondents in China used smartphones.

10% users spent more than 8 hours on mobile, which means mobile occupied one thirds of their daily life.

More than half of respondents claimed that increasing time spent on mobile decreased their time on PC.

13.7% users said they saved their documents via cloud storage, while 18% said they didn’t know about cloud storage.

Thunder Walkbox, Sina vdisk and Evernote were the top 3 cloud storage apps.

More than 60% worried about SNS privacy leak.

Mobile users would take measures to prevent privacy leak, such as downloading app from official channels, hide their real identity on SNS and other methods.

As for how much SNS would affect work, 12% users spent half their working time on social networks.

One thirds of respondents preferred stand-alone games, and another one thirds didn’t play games.

Over 40% users didn’t download apps over a month, merely 6.6% would download at least an app everyday.

Mobile app recommendation platform and third-party app stores were the main channels where users gained new apps information.

According to EnfoDesk, market scale of China advertising platforms in Q3 reached 28.77 billion yuan (USD 4.7 billion), 24.2% more than Q2 2013.

In Q3 2013, Baidu occupied 30.8% market share by revenue, and Alibaba ranked the second with 15.9%. Google came to the third place in China advertising operators with 5.5%.

China advertising market in Q3 2013 grew steadily due to the slight recover of macroeconomic and the coming of sales season. Baidu remained its leading in China advertising operators, and keyword advertising was still the top advertising choice.

Tencent, Sohu, Sina,ifeng and NetEase together occupied 14.7% market share. Portal websites had broke the traditional business model of selling ads, integrating other resources such as social network, videos, entertainment and life services.

Alibaba and Sina released “Weibo for Taobao” version on August 1, 2013. Before that, they had linked their accounts, and cooperated in various areas, such as exchanging and sharing their user data, online payment and internet marketing, etc. They combined social media and E-business platform to explore a totally new area: Social Commerce.

Billion User Base with Improved User experience

According to iResearch, in June 2013, the common visitors of Sina Weibo and Taobao accounted for 39.3% of total visitors, with 130 million users.

After their accounts linked, they have improved their user experience and get huge benefits.

• Convenience for user log in: user can use either Weibo or Taobao account to log in the two platforms.
• Easy to switch platform: user can buy products through “Card” directly and share their interests via posts. User also can jump to Taobao via Weibo.
• Advertising: the huge benefit for Taobao seller is that they can do advertising and internet marketing through Sina Weibo.

Alibaba: Get User Data and Avoid Cannikin Law

From the aspect of Alibaba, they acquired benefits listed below after cooperating with Sina Weibo.

• Internet Marketing: Sina Weibo can provide extra internet marketing model besides “Taobao Zhitongche” advertising.
• Data: Alibaba acquired user information and data from social media platform Sina Weibo. Alibaba also can do data mining accurately based on social media users’data.
• Cannikin Law: Alibaba has shortage in mobile areas,by cooperating with Sina Weibo, they avoided Cannikin Law and improved their mobile areas services.

Sina Weibo: Acquire More Information About Shopping and Ready to Commercialize

According to Q2 2012 Sina finance report,their revenue reached USD 10 million in advertising which showed great commercial value of social media platform.After cooperating with Alibaba, they can easily acquire data from e-business sellers and customers. They can perform data mining and improve their advertising and E-business.

On August 6 2013, Sina and NBA announced their strategic partnership. Sina is NBA’s official internet partner and online community partner, reaching to a deeper cooperation three years after their first alliance in 2010.

Their cooperation will begin in three areas: mobile broadcasting, community interaction and live video. NBA live games will attract lots of viewers both on sina web portal and Weibo (micro-blogging in Chinese) platforms.

Sina said this cooperation covered mobile NBA news, Weibo social network, e-commerce, membership bonus and other value-added services for the first time. NBA fans could interact with NBA offical Weibo account, participating in game forecasting and other games.

China online ad market in Q2, from iResearch data, reached 23.26 billion yuan (USD 3.8 billion), growing 17.4% compared to Q1 and YoY growth of 27.4%. China online ad market is entering to a steady growth stage.

In Q2, search, video, news and navigation monthly usage increased. NetEase, Taobao and eTao had more than 10% QoQ growth, Sina, Sohu and iFeng had more than 7% QoQ growth.

Search engine ads kept growing in Q2 with 36.4% online ad market share. Vertical search ads and brand banner ads dropped slightly compared to Q1, with 22.4% and 21.2% share. Video ads grow steadily with 6.7% share.

Baidu, Google and Sogou promote the grow of search engine ads, market new player Qihoo’s 360 will further push it. Vertical search ads is due to the fast growth of Taobao search, online shopping increase brings up vertical search ads. High quality video content, such as movies, TV dramas and shows boost video ads growth.

In China top 10 online ad market companies, Baidu was still the leader with 7.56 billion yuan in revenue. Taobao came to the second with 5.61 billion yuan. Taobao, Qihoo’s 360 and Sohu had grown by more than 40%.

Qihoo’s 360 main revenue comes from navigation, growing steadily. Qihoo’s search ads conversion keeps increasing. Taobao has lots of small business which provide growing need for advertisement.Sogou search engine and its video contributed to its revenue growth.