Why Baidu Bought 91 Wireless ?

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Baidu 91 Wireless AcqusitionChinese Internet Giant, Baidu has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to fully acquire 91 Wireless (NetDragon’s subsidiary) for a total of US$1.9bn in cash. According to the agreement: 1) Baidu will purchase NetDragon’s 57.41% equity interest in 91 Wireless for US$1.09bn (~HK$8.46bn). 2) Baidu also agreed to purchase the remaining shares from other shareholders of 91 Wireless if they are willing to sell on the same terms.

Launched in 2007, 91 Wireless operates one the leading mobile app distribution platforms in China and has attracted over 10bn application downloads

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InfoEdge Growth Tapered in Core Naukri.Com Business

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Naukri Slowdown in All BusinessesInfoEdge India, owner of the Online Recruiting Business Naukri.Com reported a tepid growth of mere 8% YoY, reflecting poor demand conditions. Collections over half-year ended Jun-13 were up 9% YoY. Management remains cautious on the revenue growth outlook given no signs of a pick-up in the Indian economy, and therefore its core recruitment business. It reiterated its strategy of focusing on market share at the expense of near-term margins.

Overall, Standalone revenue grew 14% YoY and normalised profits were flat YoY. Collections growth for the six-month period ended Jun-13 for the Naukri.Com, and 99acres business was up 9% YoY and 50% YoY, respectively. In Jeevansathi (Matrimonial / Dating classifieds),

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Reliance Communications Drops 3G Mobile Data Tariffs by 50%

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Reliance Communications’ Reliance 3G mobile just a while ago has informed us that their is across the board Drop in 3G mobile Data Tariffs signalling the beginning of the 3G data Tariff War. Reliance Mobile 3G Data Pack which costed Rs 250 for 1 GB of Data will not cost Rs 123. 2GB Data Pack will not Cost Rs 246 and 4GB Data Pack costs just Rs 492. The Data Tariff cuts are applicable to

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The Great Broadband China Strategy Includes SmartCities

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China Broadband StrategyThe State Council announced several measures to encourage the growth of China’s IT-related sectors. First of all, a Broadband China strategy will be introduced to accelerate the construction of the country’s telco infrastructure. The government will promote further its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) scheme to enable broader access to higher internet speeds. The operators are moreover tasked to further expand the coverage of 3G networks, while the regulator will strive to approve 4G licenses by 2013-end. We expect these measures to improve the demand outlook

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Why India is a Failure in Telecom Technology compared to China ?

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Why is India Failure in Telecom TechnologyOne of the foundations of our China Telecom Technology is the development / support of the domestic technology standards, and domestic telecom equipment vendors is the Chinese government’s pre-eminent policy objective. This approach results no doubt in structural over-investment by the operators and lower returns on invested capital. The decisions to build three parallel national wireless networks based on three different standards and then deploy 4G TD before China Mobile’s 3G TD network is loaded may make no economic sense but

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Korea Leads in Global 4G / LTEvolution & Data Consumption

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Korea Leads the Global LTEvolution4G LTE has led to a big jump in data consumption behaviour as shown in Figure 3, with Korea leading the global curve with ~1 GB/month and ~1.8 GB/month of data usage in 2011 & 2012, respectively, versus the global average of 342 MB/month and 1.3 GB/month. The Cisco Visual Networking Index is forecasting a 30.8% CAGR for 2012-17 in average global traffic per device with smartphones accounting for ~70% of data traffic by 2017.

LTE ARPU lies in its tiered data plans. Unlike Korea’s 3G

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JustDial Facing Competition at All Levels

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Justdial CompetitionJustdial (JD) provides contact information and user reviews about local businesses, products and services to its users through telephone/SMS, Internet and mobile Internet platforms. JD database contains 9.1m business listings (as of March 31, 2013) – predominantly comprising small and medium enterprises (SMEs) – across various towns and cities in India. Some of these businesses pay JD for priority listing in its search results and also to get leads to potential consumers that seek supplier information through JD.

JD had first mover advantage and was one of the first companies to offer comprehensive local search services in India. However, alternatives have come up in niche verticals like burrp & Zomatio on the Mobile & Web, AskMe and GetIt in Calling and not to

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Google Online Ads Growth to be Stronger in Q2- 2013

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Google’s Domestic desktop CPC growth is likely to range in high single to low double digits yoy across our contacts. Growth in the proportion of lower priced mobile clicks was offset by growth in average mobile CPCs. A number of our contacts noted that growth in Product Listing Ads (PLAs) CPCs continued as more and more retailers continue to come to auction. Further, our checks indicate most advertisers have not yet adopted Google’s new enhanced campaigns in AdWords due to the need to rework their campaigns to reflect the grouping of tablets and desktops in enhanced campaigns. As such, we would not

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Philippines Mobile Data Services More Expensive than India

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Philippines Mobile Data ServicesAlmost 95% of Philippine Telecom’s cellular revenue comes from Voice and SMS. Internet penetration is fairly high at 35% in 2012 (Increased from 29% in 2011) but a large proportion of customers access the internet through internet cafes. Mobile data is growing from a very small base and contributes around 5% of mobile revenue now compared with 2.5-3% two years ago. High smartphone prices as well as high data tariffs have been the key hurdles to a pickup in data in our view. We believe that the key enablers for data growth, including cheap smartphones and network availability, are now in place, but the pricing of data remains high. Data can lead to a trade-off, as despite being the biggest possible growth avenue it also has the

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