A Look Inside China’s Netease – Juggling Online Games, Search, and Microblogging

To Chinese web users NetEase is known as a web portal, email provider, and operator of MMORPGs World of Warcraft and the Westward Journey series (pictured).

To investors, Netease is NASDAQ: NTES – and one of the first Chinese web/tech IPOs, way back in 1999.

Though its web portal – at 163.com – has millions of monthly visitors, it’s gaming that makes up the bulk of Netease’s revenue.

Indeed, this detailed look ‘Inside Netease’ (see the slideshow below) made by the folks at iChinaStock reveals that 87.4 percent of revenue comes from online game services, and a mere 11.2 percent from advertising. That shows the dangers of being a web portal that doesn’t have either value-added services (VAS) or a social platform (such as Sina quickly built with its Weibo).

Actually, Netease has both those, with its own microblogging platform as well, at t.163.com. Its standalone search engine, Youdao.com, is also integrated into its web portal.

In addition to all that, Netease’s web mail looks set to get a boost in the coming months when it gets integrated into the Mail app in iPhones and iPads, when iOS 5 rolls out.

Here’s the slideshow:

[Source: iChinaStock]