Global Sources released their Q1-08 earnings on May 22nd and the numbers look good.
- Revenue was $40.6 million, up 16% from $34.9 million.
- Online revenue was $21.9 million, up 27% from $17.3 million.
- Exhibitions revenue was $6.0 million, up 24% from $4.8 million.
- Print revenue was $11.6 million, down 1% from $11.8 million.
- Revenue from [...]

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While the trade media industry is filled with hundreds (if not thousands) of companies copying the original B2B online trade marketplace business model established by Global Sources in 1995, it is refreshing to see a unique player building marketshare in this space.
MFG.com is a B2B online trade marketplace focused on manufacturing. The site supports over [...]

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Microsoft is back and offering a new deal to Yahoo!.
Microsoft Corp has proposed to buy Yahoo Inc’s search business and take a minority stake in the Web pioneer, stopping short of a full-out merger, a person familiar with the discussions said on Monday.
As part of the deal, Yahoo would sell its Asian assets including significant [...]

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It has been a busy week for Alibaba.com with a flurry of news releases. TradeMediaBlog is happy to bring them to you below with comments.
Alibaba.com formerly announced the often referred to Joint Venture with Softbank. This US$20 million deal (Softbank 65%; Alibaba.com 35%) will hopefully put some marketing/sales muscle behind a site that has been [...]

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China’s National Statistics Bureau released data this week showing that inflation grew by 8.5% in April which is its highest level in nearly 10 years.
As a reminder, February’s inflation rate was 8.7%, the highest in 12 years, and March was 8.3%.
The government is doing its best to cool this trend by:
1. Requiring banks to set [...]

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Lots of online media news in the last week that I will try to capture below along with a some comments. Forgive me for this long posting but worth a read!
On May 6th, Alibaba.com reported great Q1-08 numbers that beat all analysts’ expectations. The company saw net income double Y-O-Y (US$43 million) and sales increased [...]

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Walmart has announced that any supplier failing to tag their shipments with RFID tags will be fined 2$ a pallet. Walmart has been experimenting with the use of RFID in stores and warehouses since 2004. The original announcement led to a huge amount of buzz in both the technology and supply chain industries.
However, it seems [...]

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According to the latest trade statistics from the WTO (released on April 17) global trade is expeccted to slow from 8.5% in 2007 to only 4.5% in 2008. Meanwhile, according to the IMF, last year, global GDP rose by 4.9% and the projection for 2008 is 3.7% growth, followed by 3.8% in 2009. They further [...]

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