dailynews.yahoo.com
Singapore Trio Tune In To Sino Cyberspace Via TV
By Matt Pottinger
BEIJING (Reuters) - A trio of young entrepreneurs from Singapore say the best way to bring Chinese people online is through their television sets. And they plan to spend $100 million to prove it.
The three masters of MyWeb Inc.com began marketing the firm's TV set-top boxes and Internet service in Beijing this week.
MyWeb's locally made boxes, which sport a slimmed-down operating system and a phone jack, sell for 1,488 yuan ($180) -- a fraction of the price of a personal computer.
''Markets where there is low PC penetration and low purchasing power are ideal for MyWeb,'' T.S. Wong, the company's 28-year-old president and CEO, said before a launch ceremony in Beijing Thursday.
Several Chinese firms already sell Internet set-top boxes, and Microsoft Corp (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) is scheduled to market its own system called Venus later this year in China.
Wong said MyWeb seeks to out-pace the competition by offering an expansive Chinese-language portal that features advertising, financial services and electronic commerce.
Set-top box owners would automatically be routed to MyWeb's homepage (www.myweb.com.cn), much the way subscribers to America Online are directed to the company's content.
The company would earn money from online advertising, e-commerce, partnerships with Internet service providers and royalties from boxes sold, Wong said.
Wong -- who co-founded the firm in 1996 with fellow engineers at the National University of Singapore, Danny Toe and Jason Chan -- said the model was pioneered in Malaysia and Singapore.
The company has sold 20,000 boxes to those markets and attracts one million visits each month to its English-language Web site (www.mywebn.com.my), earning revenues of $1.4 million and profits of $350,000 in 1998, he said.
The company listed on NASDAQ's over-the-counter bulletin board in February through a merger with a U.S.-based firm, and has amassed a market capitalization of $100 million and a world-wide staff of 100.
The Internet is still in its infancy in China, with official estimates of fewer than 3 million Internet users, online advertising of only $3 million in 1998, few credit cards and prohibitive telecommunications fees.
But Wong pledged a $100 million investment in China by the end of 2000, much of it to promote the firm's brand on TV and in newspapers.
He projected Chinese sales of 200,000 set-top boxes this year, one million next year and 1999 revenues of $5-$8 million.
As China's credit infrastructure slowly matured, he said, e-commerce would account for the lion's share of revenues.
''We realize that there's very low credit card penetration here,'' he said. ''We want to first build the confidence of buying online.''
|
