Global Marketing News – 18th November 2015
Alibaba buys Youku Tudou
The Chinese internet giant Alibaba has bought the video platform Youku Tudou.
Youku Tudou is the most popular online video platform in China, with around 500 million monthly active users.
Its acquisition is Alibaba’s second foray into the Chinese video market, with the company having launched its own online video streaming service Tmall Box Office earlier this year.
The online video market is hotting up in China at the moment.
Last month, Paramount Pictures entered into a partnership with Youku Tudou, meaning that over 100 Paramount Pictures films, including Star Trek, Mission Impossible and Transformers, became available on the platform.
Also, earlier this year, Baidu-owned iQiyi announced plans to acquire 1,000 Hollywood titles to add to its collection.
The international giant Netflix is also set to enter the Chinese market later this year.
Hungarian ecommerce site to expand to 4 new countries
The Hungarian ecommerce company Extreme Digital is to expand into 4 new Eastern European countries.
It is due to expand into Romania, Croatia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic following investment from the South African retailer Steinhoff.
The ecommerce market in Eastern Europe is less mature than in Western Europe, with Romania, Croatia and Slovakia all recently being ranked in the bottom 5 countries in Europe for online spending in a study by Expert Market.
Internet penetration in Myanmar rising fast
Internet penetration in Myanmar is rising at an eye-watering pace.
Just last year, internet penetration was estimated to be around 1%. Now it is more like 10%.
And with 80% of the population having a smartphone, this explosive rate of growth is set to continue as more and more people decide to buy data packages.
A spokesperson from the Myanmar ecommerce company Kaymu commented on the country’s rapidly rising internet population, saying: “The country is developing very quickly because Burmese people are particularly supportive of innovation. They want to use state-of-the-art technology and catch up with the rest of the world after years of isolation.”
Education on how to use the internet is still needed for many people in Myanmar, however. Many internet users in the country believe that Facebook is the internet and are unaware that the wider internet exists.
Taiwanese internet landscape revealed
Research from the Taiwan Network Information Centre has revealed the internet landscape in the country.
The study found that the majority of internet users in Taiwan went online using a mobile phone, with 69% of respondents saying they used their mobiles to access the internet.
Desktops came in second place at 56% and laptops and tablets came third and fourth place with 22% and 17% respectively.
The most common place for people to go online was at home, with 90% of internet users going online at home, compared to 29% who went online at work.
Internet penetration is quite high in the country, with almost 80% of the population estimated to go online at least once a month.
Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year causes controversy
And finally, this year’s Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year has caused consternation amongst some word-lovers.
The “tears of joy” emoji was announced as the Word of the Year by Oxford Dictionaries on Twitter earlier this week, with some users expressing their dismay with replies such as “RIP language”.
The emoji, which many people have pointed out is not even a word, is used online and in text to express happiness.
Oxford Dictionaries countered the critics by attempting to justify their decision, saying: “Pictographic script like emoji [are] flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully. Emoji are becoming an increasingly rich form of communication, one that transcends linguistic borders.”
The tech company SwiftKey conducted research earlier this year to discover that the “tears of joy” emoji was the most regularly used globally last year.
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