Who's winter, the Internet or E-commerce?

"Our basic judgment on the global economy is that there will be big problems in the economy and that the economy is likely to enter very difficult times in the coming years." My view is that the whole economic situation is not optimistic, the next winter, will be longer than everyone imagined! More cold! More complicated! We're going to spend the winter! "

Ma Yun's this words, in the internet industry "waves surf the shore, roll up thousand piles of snow". Today, debate and discussion on whether the Internet is facing an industrial winter is increasing. Is this the prophecy of the industry prophet, or is it an alarmist show?

　　Business-to-business E-commerce Experience biting cold

"Let's get ready for the winter!" Mr Ma splashed a scoop of cold water in the bustling season. In fact, this is not the first time he mentioned "Winter". As early as December 2007 in a business forum, Ma Yun called for "Winter"; in February 2008, Mr Ma said in a staff meeting that one of the purposes of Alibaba's listing was to prepare more fodder for the advent of "winter".

At that time, the situation is: the mainland A-share market, the broad market soared over 6,000 points; Chinese red chips in Hong Kong stock market strong let Port incomparable feeling in China's strong, the Olympic concept of stimulation, so that a number of plates all over the red; The real estate market is no sign of malaise, house prices are like the bamboo shoots after spring rain general, flying on the general leap ... At this time, the winter? A lot of people laughed.

But this time, the people who have laughed shut their mouths and look at the fact in a sad gesture: according to incomplete statistics, in the first half of 2008, SMEs in the national scale were closed to 67,000, and more than 20 million workers were unemployed. Processing manufacturing industry gathered in the Pearl River Delta region from the end of 2007 has begun to face a crisis, especially export-oriented enterprises struggling to survive. Not only in Guangdong, the most intensive private enterprises in Zhejiang, in the first half of 2008, the loss of enterprises reached 10,700, the loss of the face reached 19.6%. For the first time in Zhejiang's 10-year history, there has been a situation where more than 1200 companies are now closed.

Under such circumstances, can business-to-business e-business be immune? What's more, Business-to-business relies on the overall environment of the foreign trade industry, its client resources are also from small and medium-sized enterprises, the macroeconomic trend slows down, RMB appreciation, CPI high, etc. factors will have a negative impact on the development of SMEs, and thus endanger the business-to-business industry. In the first half of this year, China's exports rose 21.9% per cent, at a slower rate of 5.7% from a year earlier, with exports growing back to 17.6% in June, raising concerns about the export situation this year, according to the General Administration of Customs statistics.

When there is water shortage upstream, how could it be easy downstream? Thus, Ningbo HC Network case began as a business-to-business industry mirror into the industry's vision: less than a year ago, the official on-line Ningbo Hui-cong network with the Canton Fair to enter the Gaocheng long-term, has become one of China's three major foreign trade E-commerce platform. Now, the news that "HC is going to close down" is flooded with websites of size.

All these, Ma Yun's "Winter Theory" began to have fans. In the early August, "Asia-Pacific SME Summit", Shi Yuzhu, son and other more than 30 speakers to Ma Yun's "Winter Theory" voted in favour of the vote.

When the economic cold wave hit, Alibaba, global resources, ECVV and other well-known e-commerce sites have taken measures to join hands with small and medium-sized enterprises together for the winter. "The future of ECVV is closely related to the fate of small and medium-sized enterprises, which can be said to be dependent." "ECVV's CEO, Chen Dong, said. "ECVV is also taking a variety of positive measures to help SMEs ' winter ' by providing more professional services." "Chen Dong said that, in the future, ECVV will do fine doing deep business on the basis of business-to-business, actively carry out business, into the logistics industry, the formation of a complete e-commerce industry chain, and" big community, big business Circle "services to cover the global network.

　　Internet "Winter say" may be exaggerated

However, the winter of business-to-business E-commerce does not necessarily represent the entire internet industry's winter. Charles Zhang, MA, Ding Lei and other portal leaders, have said that the Internet industry from the "winter" is still very distant.

Sohu's quarterly revenue reached $102 million trillion, up 162% from a year earlier, and a net profit of 40.2 million dollars, up from 604% a year earlier. Tencent's net revenue in the second quarter amounted to 1.5998 billion yuan, up 84.3% from a year earlier and a net profit of 644 million yuan, up 92.5% from a year earlier. Baidu is to achieve a total income of 14 consecutive quarterly doubling of the remarkable performance, the second quarter total revenue reached 802.6 million yuan, net profit of 265 million yuan, the growth of 86.7%; giant network second-quarter revenue 504.8 million yuan, net profit 350.6 million yuan, the increase of more than 30 %。

Behind the beautiful earnings reflects the fact that the Internet industry is widely used, business-to-business is only one of the economic growth point, influenced by macroeconomic trends, but other applications may be the opposite.

For example, the game industry, why can resorted, still maintain a faster growth? The view of Tencent boss Ma is quite interesting. He believes that online games are defined by the market as cheap entertainment, development is counter-cyclical, once the economic environment deteriorated, people may not be able to do luxury consumption, but will be more willing to do cheap entertainment.

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　　Square:

"Winter is coming, who can get through, to see whose clothes are thick." The enterprises that can survive in the future are the first few enterprises in the industry, and other manufacturers either find space for development or survive very hard. ”

——— despite Lenovo's first squeeze into the world's top 500 list this year, Mr Yang, chairman of Lenovo's board of directors, spoke of "Winter theory" and was still deeply impressed.

"Cisco is now starting to implement a number of policies, such as reducing staff travel, reducing meetings, senior leaders traveling in first class, and sitting on their own money and so on." Even with Cisco, will Huawei be immune? "

In an email to Huawei's core management and some of its top line executives, Ren forwarded a short article entitled "Cisco Prepares for the winter" published in the United States "fortune" and solemnly wrote down chapeau on the article.

"This winter is not going to end in a few months," he said. The winter of the economic cycle is calculated in years, and this winter is not too optimistic nor too pessimistic time should be at least two or three years. We will do well to accumulate and prepare for the winter. ”

Li, chairman of TCL, has made such a comment ——— the slowdown in the global economy, the slowing of Chinese market exports, the rise in labor and production costs and the pressure on low-margin Chinese manufacturing companies.

　　Opposition:

"I have never said that the internet has entered the winter, and I believe that Ma, Charles Zhang, Cao Chao, they would not have said so." With the appreciation of the renminbi and the impact of the export slowdown, e-commerce services for foreign trade enterprises may encounter some difficulties, but the development of the Internet has been very good. The internet in China has entered a period of perplexed, the age of 30-40 years, in China's potential has not been excavated. ”

——— NetEase CEO Ding Lei in the presence of NetEase to become the Guangzhou Asian Games Internet sponsor, said that Business-to-business currently facing difficulties can not represent the whole of the Internet.

"There are different sections of the Internet, and some of them will not only be affected by the macro-economy, they may even perform better, such as online gaming and internet value-added services." ”

——— at the Tencent Online Marketing Summit This July, CEO Matt Teng does not think winter is coming, only that it reflects a general concern about the economic environment in the industry.

"It is still a good time to develop the Internet. The internet is just spring. ”

——— Sohu Board Chairman and CEO Charles Zhang is emboldened by beautiful earnings.

Author of the special Report Tao