Blog: Alibaba

Chinese tech major Tencent announced its first restructuring in six years and third in its 20 year history, including creating a new division to focus on business services such as cloud computing. This pivot comes off the back of the Chinese regulators freezing approvals for games licenses, a key contributor to Tencent’s revenue and an overall tightening in government regulations, which has seen a severe reduction in gaming approvals since March .

2016 was the year that streaming turned the recorded music business into a good news story, with revenue growth so strong that it drove nearly a billion dollars of total growth. Leading streaming services spent the year competing with ever more impressive metrics while playlisting and streaming exclusives became cornerstones of the wider music market both culturally and commercially.

Chinese tech giant Baidu announced today they will be acquiring xPerception, in what can be interpreted as a strategic play for the Augmented Reality market. At face value, xPerception covers much of 2017 in tech’s buzzwords: AI, AR and Deep Learning.

Two key developments in digital media that MIDiA Research has addressed over the past year are the emergence of both full-stack media and the tech ecosystem. These shifts in the digital life have recently emerged to define many people’s purchasing and social lives online, and whilst they share similarities, it is important from a strategic perspective for those operating in the space to recognise the distinctions between the two: Tech Ecosystems Technology ecosystems are product platforms defined by the core components built into the platform by theirowners.

For much of 2016 it looked nailed on that Spotify would IPO in 2017 and that the recorded music industry would move onto its next chapter, for better or for worse. The terms of Spotify’s $1 billion debt raise (which mean that Spotify pays an extra 1% on its 5% annual interest payments every six months beyond its previously agreed IPO date) suggest that Spotify was thinking the same way too.

So two weeks into the 2017 and it's another year and yet another twist in the ongoing saga that is Yahoo. On Monday, Yahoo Inc disclosed in a regulatory filing that it was splitting the company into two.

Chinese investment in sports is unique. True, there has been outside investment in the major European leagues for decades now, as well as the common occurrence of a former world-beater heading to obscure divisions for a final lucrative pay-day.

LeEco’s (formerly LeTV) $2 Billion acquisition of flat screen makers Vizio is a bold step in the development of full-stack media offerings for Smart TV. The deal essentially buys LeEco directly into the US market by giving them direct access to the customers of Vizio, the California-based electronics company whom have built a respectable niche by aggressively pricing their HDTVs against major competitors, consequently capturing a 20% market share in the US.