Alibaba Opens New Data Center in Singapore

Alibaba (NYSE: BABA, market cap $186 billion) is a giant tech force and competes against Amazon in more ways than one. One of the ways is in the cloud computing business, where Amazon serves a huge number of companies via its Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Alibaba has Aliyun. Alibaba has data centers in mainland China, Hong Kong and Silicon Valley. The latest addition is in Singapore, and will open in September 2015. Alibaba stated that Southeast Asia is a major growth region now especially for its Chinese customers, and the company plans to serve them wherever they go.

LinkedIn Reports on China Game Industry Talent Pool

Based on its database of game industry professionals, LinkedIn released the “2015 China Game Industry Talent Pool Report.” The report shows that China is home to 4.6% of the worldwide game industry. Most are located in prime game industry cities, including Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Hangzhou, and Chengdu. The ratio of management to staff positions is 39:100.

Q2 Revenue Reports Show Continued Growth in Chinese Online and Mobile Games

Market leader Tencent Q2 revenue is $3.8 billion, and the company reported H1 revenue of $7.5 billion, up 20% YOY. The rate of growth in online games slowed to 17% YOY in Q2 from 28% YOY in Q1, though that seasonal fluctuation may be in line with the market in the region. Nexon too saw Q2 growth of 16% YOY, whereas NetEase showed 63.7% growth in Q2 YOY. Tencent also had huge increases in the number of people using QQ. QQ mobile MAU rose by 20% to 627 million, with PCU of 233 million. WeChat MAU rose by 37% to 600 million, and Qzone’s MAU rose by 15% to 574 million.

Niko Partners on Twitter

Follow us on Twitter @nikochina to see these comments in real time as we publish them! Here are a few of our tweets from last week:

  • China’s Growth Data https://nikopartners.com/chinas-growth-data/ …
  • Alibaba buys into electronics giant Suning http://en.people.cn/business/n/2015/0810/c90778-8933930.html …
  • ChangYou announced it will sell off $205 million in assets including 7ROAD and two ChangYou overseas subsidiaries http://www.gamelook.com.cn/2015/08/225461
  • ChinaJoy 2015 Recap https://nikopartners.com/?p=2033&preview=true …
  • Niko’s senior analyst Xiaofeng Zeng interviewed by Dean Takahashi in an article about China’s market opportunity: http://bit.ly/1gjm3Oc
  • Videogame Makers Battle Chinese Censors to Win Over Gamers https://nikopartners.com/videogame-makers-battle-chinese-censors-to-win-over-gamers/ …