Recap 2008

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Thursday, January 8. 2009

One year ago I made the predictions for 2008, now it is time to recap:
Again there is no momentum for startups to get to fast track: lack of seasoned management, hard to monetize with high traffic sites. Most chased consumer entertainment services and few startups target enterprise apps SaaS and click and mortar hybrid that have more sustainable revenue model.

My predictions for 2008:

Social Media:

    * Many new startups will be launched until mid year then some quit of exhausting. [Right: 2nd half 2008 saw few new startups, VC Corp quit Facebook clone game (Zoomban)]
    * Some large tech companies such as FPT, CMC will opt for acquisition instead of in-house development. [Wrong: FPT launch its own incubator (Visky) and the FPT chairman takes care of these projects. I think it was not a good choice.]
    * Self hosted Wordpress based blogs are increasing popular. [Quite true.]
    * Active Yahoo360 accounts will drop 50% [Right: rumor of Yahoo SE Asia shutting down Yahoo360 service.]

Search Service:

    * No local player can challenge the Google' dominant position. [Official launch of local search service xalo.vn, no bright future for this search engine.]

Online Gaming:

    * WOW will be exploring the market through Asian affiliate. [The local market was ready for WOW, I did not know why Blizzard Entertainment still did not enter this promising game land.]
    * Audition Online is still the top casual MMO. [Audition rocked again.]

Mobile:

    * iPhone would be the top choice of wish list among local professionals and Vietnam would be the largest market of iPhone in Southeast Asia with sales of 200K to 250K of units end of the year 2008. [iPhone was truly a hit in Vietnam mobile market, without software based unlock solution iPhone 3G was a bit slow demand, but the number was still about 200k.]
    * No one remembers DVB-H ever in existence. [What did DVB-H mean?]
    * Wimax is still in testing and not a commodity until yearend. [Did Intel still bullish on Wimax this year?]

Investment:

    * Some international VC firms will enter Vietnam market in addition to incumbent IDGVV, DFJ Vina. [Softbank China and India Holdings is an important player now.]
    * Local VC and angels network will be formed to get a piece of the pie. [Not a clear trend in Vietnam, but some practice in existence.]

I will make the predictions for 2009 in next couple of days.

Posted by Jason at 16:41 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: dvb-h, entrepreneur, FPT, IDG, Softbank, venture capital, web 2.0

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Thanks Jason for the insights. When you say Softbank is an important player now are you refering to their role as co-investor with IDG or any other activities that you could reveal to us? As far as I know, a couple of Japanese VCs are pretty active last year and they are expected to be more active in 2009.

#1 stravic on 2009-01-11 04:16 (Reply)

Some Japanese VC firms are exploring the market such as NGI ...

#1.1 Jason (Homepage) on 2009-01-12 10:16 (Reply)

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