One of the big digital China IPOs of 2020 was KE Holdings. Which does business under the brand names Lianjia and Beike. Lianjia, founded in 2001, is one of the biggest residential real estate brokerages in China. In 2019, it had +6,000 locations across China and +120,000 real estate brokers. In 2019, they completed 2.2M […]
I recently wrote about Baidu as an example of learning platforms (one of my five platform types). Located here, I said: “My definition for learning platforms has 4 key points: The primary purpose of the platform is to enable interactions between user groups within a greater ecosystem. It is, first and foremost, a platform business […]
In Part 1 and Part 2, I laid out Baidu’s core search engine and some of the complexities that have evolved in search over time. I have three strategy questions for Baidu going forward: How competitive will a stand-alone search engine be against China’s larger digital giants over time? Can Baidu create a second large […]
In this podcast, Jeffrey Towson discusses Baidu’s key strategic questions, including its best growth opportunity, whether it needed to go into content, and how it can compete in the attention market. He argues that Baidu’s best growth opportunity is in the cloud, but that it needs to be careful not to overextend itself. He also believes that Baidu needs to focus on its core search business and not get distracted by other ventures.
In Part 1, I laid out some basic theory for Baidu and search engines. I think it was a pretty solid picture for Baidu circa 2010. But strange things have been happening since then. Baidu has moved into entertainment, services (for a while), content creation and self-driving cars. I’m not sure if these were strategic […]
Fiverr is an Israeli company, so not an Asia tech company per se. But it has a lot of freelancers in developing Asia. And it has a particularly compelling marketplace strategy. So I thought it was worth covering. First, a bit of background. Fiverr is a typical marketplace platform for services. But for B2B, not […]
In this episode of the Tech Strategy podcast, Jeffrey Towson discusses the classic marketplace platform playbook, using Fiverr as an example. He explains how these platforms work, the competitive advantages they enjoy, such as network effects and economies of scale, and the challenges they face, such as competition from other platforms and the need to keep up with changing customer demands.
Baidu-controlled iQiyi (IQ) is one of the big leaders in video in China. And video is the most popular online activity in China’s massive market. That’s good. iQiyi also has powerful competitive advantages, similar to YouTube and Netflix combined. Overall, there is a lot to like about this company strategically. Its primary competitors Tudou and […]
In this episode of the Tech Strategy podcast, Jeffrey Towson discusses whether Huawei’s HarmonyOS can break Android’s global dominance. He argues that HarmonyOS has several strengths, including its security features and its ability to run on a wide range of devices. However, he also notes that HarmonyOS faces several challenges, including the lack of app support and the fact that it is competing against an entrenched incumbent.
Huawei is “all in” on building a third mobile operating system and ecosystem. This is the first major challenge to the Android-Apple iOS duopoly in almost a decade. And as iOS is a closed system, it is really about Huawei taking on globally dominant, open source Android. It’s a big deal. I recently spoke with […]