Two topics for Today’s Update / Lesson. Tencent Quarterly Results Are Awesome, Yet Again It’s almost boring how these digital giants keep putting up fantastic numbers. Numbers that any other business would dream of. Most businesses are long, hard slogs where you struggle and struggle. Margins are usually small. And growth is difficult and expensive. […]
The Chinese services market is a hotly contested space, with Meituan, Ctrip, and Alibaba all vying for market share. In this episode of Jeff’s Asia Tech Class, Jeffrey Towson discusses the factors that will determine which company wins in this space. He talks about the importance of bundling services, network effects, and switching costs.
Zoom is a video communications company that has seen explosive growth in recent years. In this episode of Jeff’s Asia Tech Class, Jeffrey Towson discusses the factors that contributed to Zoom’s success. He talks about the company’s early focus on usability, its ability to scale quickly, and its strong marketing campaign.
I like audience builders as platform. They have interesting complexities and variations. They are more interesting than marketplaces and payment platforms. Plus, audience builder platforms are combining with e-commerce quite nicely. Spotify, TikTok, and China Literature are all audience builders I like. But they are really different, even though they all basically connect content creators […]
This past week, I’ve been talking about TikTok and Alibaba’s Tudou-Youku as examples of “audience builder” digital platforms. These are +2 sided platform that connect content creators (who want an audience and other things) with viewers (who want entertainment or other types of content.) And I’ve argued that audience builders are actually more fluid and […]
Jeffrey Towson, a China tech expert, believes that TikTok’s success is due to its addictiveness, ease of use, and highly shareable content. He also credits the app’s ability to tap into China’s growing digital consumer network.
In this podcast episode of Jeff’s Asia Tech Class, Jeffrey Towson discusses the competitive advantages of JD and Alibaba, two of the largest retailers in China. He argues that JD’s competitive advantages include its strong logistics network and its focus on customer service, while Alibaba’s competitive advantages include its large user base and its ability to connect buyers and sellers.
In previous Daily Updates, I presented 4 slides that showed the evolution of Alibaba as a powerful marketplace platform. A 3 Slide Summary of Alibaba and Marketplace Platform Strategy (Daily Update, Jeff’s Asia Tech Class) Alibaba and the Power of Externalizing Capabilities (Daily Update – Jeff’s Asia Tech Class) In the first one, I argued […]
In this podcast episode, Jeffrey Towson discusses four options for how Huawei can respond to the US tech ban on its smartphone business. These options include fixing the supply chain, becoming a digital platform, ignoring Europe, and trying to build an anti-US alliance for smartphone operating systems. Towson argues that Huawei’s best option is to become a digital platform, as this would allow it to continue to innovate and grow its business even in the face of the US tech ban.
Hi, I’ve been building out visual models of platform businesses for like 4 years. From Alibaba and JD to Google and MasterCard. The goal is to visually show the key interactions and sources of competitive strength. For simple marketplace platforms, like EBay, my pictures are pretty simple. But for companies like Alibaba and JD, they […]