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Technology Stocks : China.com Corp-(CHINA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gial who wrote (268)	7/14/1999 12:18:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 504

Funny these guys (IDC) must be making these things up you think? Sure,Taiwan,S.Korea,Singapore and other SEA countries are much more advanced than China when it comes to infrastructure and development right now but their potential is very limited compared to China on account of their size and population.Things in China are 'fast changing' (slower perhaps according Western standards),according IDC,Dataquest and others in couple of years China will take over Japan in total PC shipments and China has the fastest growing PC market in the world right now.Don't assume things will remain the same,they will not as you very well should know. ========================== (Courtesy:IDC) By 2000, the IT Market in China Will Be Valued at US$15Billion FRAMINGHAM, Mass., June 1, 1999 - China's IT market is the fastest growing IT market in Asia with a 1998-2003 compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.8%. In 1998, the overall IT market in China reached US$9.24 billion, which enabled China's IT market to surpass Korea and become the second largest in the Asia/Pacific region (excluding Japan). IDC expects China to pull ahead of Australia and become the largest IT market in the region by 2000. "Although China experienced low growth in the last five years, we expect that by 2003, China will represent approximately one-third of the total IT market in the Asia/Pacific region, excluding Japan," said Jared Peterson, Research Director for IDC China. "Hardware tends to overshadow other segments of the market, but IDC has witnessed strong growth in the data communications equipment, packaged software, and IT services areas, and we expect this trend to continue." In 1998, hardware accounted for 85.9% of China's total IT market. Data communications equipment, which represented 8.2% of the market, reached US$1.175 billion, an increase of 40.9% over the previous year while IT services experienced an increase of 50% and accounted for 5.9% of the total market. Finance continued to be the largest vertical industry in China, accounting for 32.2% of total IT spending. This was followed by telecom and transportation at 18.1% and 10.1%, respectively. (These findings stem from IDC's China IT Market Overview, 1999 (IDC #W18946), which provides both a qualitative and quantitative account of China's 1998 IT market and presents a projection for 1998-2003. The report provides coverage of multiuser systems, single-user systems, personal computers, the data communications equipment market, packaged software, and IT services markets. Information on distribution channels, the Internet, and end-user decision making is also included. This report is part of IDC's China IT Market continuous information service. For more information regarding this report, please contact Cheryl Toffel at 508-872-8200 or ctoffel@idc.com.)

To: gial who wrote (268)	7/14/1999 4:33:00 PM
From: James Strauss	Respond to of 504

Gial: Good point about the Chinese infrastructure... There is huge potential growth... The question is whether investors will have the patience to wait 5 to 10 years for an improved Telecom buildout... Most likely CHINA will be a trading stock in the short term, trading on the dream of the future rather than the substance of the present... Jim

To: gial who wrote (268)	7/15/1999 5:28:00 PM
From: Frank Z	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 504

Cultural and political difference b/w U.S. and China determines you can't apply the U.S. rules to Chinese games. Otherwise you can easily come up with wrong conclusions. Here are a few examples: 1) Government censorship risk Chinese governments impose tight censors ONLY on sensitive political issues ( i.e., you can't challenge governments ) However, how many chinese people are really paying attention to "democracy" now? They are more interested in sports, social chats, travels, sex, making money, bla,bla, bla... There are enough contents to attract people to visit the Web. Censorship has been imposed in China for more than 4 decades ( it is getting more and more loose,however ), but entertainment business and public media are booming. Censorship is bad politically, but it does not fed up audiance because this is the only way they get political news and they get used to it. Censorship has minimal impacts on china.com's bottom line. 2) Web pages are boring Allen Sloans' article says china.com web pages are boring. He forgets china.com target audiance is chinese, not americans. What interests chinese might not appeal to Allen Sloans and vice versa. 3) backward infrastructure This is a valid argument. However, just like "sharing phones" increase ACTUAL home phone coverage rate in china, "sharing lines" also increase ACTUAL number of internet users. As a matter of fact, "Web Bar" is becoming increasingly popular in china. People go to bars to buy hours to surf the net. Things are not as bad as they appear to be. As some posts have already pointed out, it is wiser to go after multinationals for investment advice than journalists. When covering international affairs, journalists do very poor jobs. They predicted chinese communist government would collapse after 1989 TianAnMen crackdown, the currency would collapse amidst asian financial crisis, blaaaaa. Often they write their wishes, not report facts. Just my two cents.