YY CEO: Monetizing Mobile Is Easier than Previously Thought

November 8, 2013 Leave a comment

YY CEO: Monetizing Mobile Is Easier than Previously Thought

By Tracey Xiang on November 7, 2013 

On the earnings conference call for Q3 2013, David Xuelin Li, CEO of YY, said they found that it’s easier to monetize on mobile than previously thought. Small screen doesn’t seem a problem with YY users, he concluded, and there’s little difference for users to buy virtual items on mobile devices from on PCs. YY also saw increasing traffic on mobile and there are from three channels, said Li. One is from the existing PC platform; the second is YY’s game portal; the third is organic increase of new users who start using YY’s products from mobile devices.YY Inc. reported another strong quarter, with 113% year-over-year increase in net revenues and 239% in operating income.

Now what YY is operating are either the most popular or profitable online services in China, online games, music shows and gameplay streaming, or the promising like its online education platform. 47% was from YY Music and 32% from gaming. The company started seeing revenue from live game broadcasting. The rest revenue sources include membership program.

YY Music recorded a 161% year-over-year increase in revenue and 117% growth in paying user number in this quarter. The ARPU is 297 yuan (about $48).

In the past quarter the company announced strategic partnership with Asiasoft and S2 Games, aiming to try out the Southeast markets — the first try of expanding outside China.

Mr. Li said they didn’t expect the online education platform to make any income for the company very soon. He thinks at the moment the thing to do is help teachers on the platform earn as much as they can from offline classes. Thus teachers or lecture providers would be willing to join YY platform.

Filed under TMT Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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