 |
Yu Yongfu, CEO of UCWeb (TENCENT.COM) |
Yu Yongfu, Chief Executive Officer of UCWeb, shares thoughts on vitality and variety to the Internet industry at the fifth Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing on May 7. Excerpt follows:
Big Internet names in both China and the United States make people bored. Various third-party applications from startup companies contribute to a more colorful mobile Internet world.
I think three variables, namely technology, development models and companies, could change the industry.
Web browsers that focus on layout design rather than technology would hit a dead end. Taking UCWeb as an example. We were the first in the world that managed to use Cloud computing in the browser's structure. As a result, the penetration of our browser into smartphones, both in Android and iOS systems, reached 71.2 percent. The figure for 360.com, the country's biggest PC web browser, was only 4.3 percent.
In the past, most Chinese companies did not take overseas markets into consideration. Today, that's the case for American Internet companies when it comes to mobile Internet. Not surprisingly, business here in Asia started booming earlier than in the United States. For instance, Japan witnessed rapid growth in its mobile Internet sector beginning in 2001, and China since 2004. The United States did not reach this new chapter until the advent of the iPhone by Apple in 2007. Asia will continue to succeed as long as we keep the momentum.
We were one of the few Chinese companies with global ambitions early on. Emerging markets in Brazil, Russia and India were within our strategy.
As for the last variable, 99 percent of Internet companies in the world are small- and medium-sized ones. As startups, we could bring vitality and variety to the industry. |