Execs voice sympathy for Nokia, Microsoft, Tencent
The microblogging realm was filled with words of sympathy this past week at the woes for some of China's longest-serving foreign tech firms whose names have become household words over the last 20 years. Leading the list were a flood of comments on Nokia, whose name was once synonymous with cellphones in China but later fell on hard times and last week laid off a big part of its Chinese workforce. Meantime, other tech executives looked on in wonder at the recent plight of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Mercedes-Benz, which have joined a growing list of western firms being investigated by Chinese anti-trust regulators.
Chinese firms haven't been the only ones feel the pain these past few weeks, as the nation's Internet regulator has also cracked down on social media sites with its eye squarely on industry titan Tencent (0700.HK). As that happened, the operator of the popular WeChat and QQ instant messaging platforms got some rare sympathy from rival Weibo (Nasdaq: WB), the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, which itself came under a similar crackdown two years ago.
But the Nokia layoffs were just one of the headaches for Microsoft, as it awaits the outcome of an anti-monopoly investigation that first burst into the headlines two weeks ago. That investigation was just the latest of a growing number of similar probes against foreign firms for anti-competitive behavior over the last year. In the tech realm Microsoft joined global cellphone chip giant Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) in being investigated, while luxury car maker Mercedes Benz also recently saw its offices raided as part of a similar probe.
While many foreign tech firms have been feeling some pain in China these past few weeks, social networking leader Tencent was also feeling some heat from the nation's Internet regulators due to the huge influence of its QQ and WeChat mobile messaging services. The regulator last week rolled out new restrictions on both services, including one rule requiring owners of WeChat public accounts to register with their real names, and another limiting the posting of sensitive political content.
He also disclosed that Weibo has seven managers who do nothing but monitor the site for rumors, and they undoubtedly oversee many more in-house censors in policing Weibo to conform with China's strict censorship rules. Such is the difficult life in China's unpredictable high-tech environment, where both foreign and domestic companies must constantly expect the unexpected from unpredictable regulators in Beijing.