Doug Young

Corporate China | Weibo: Xiaomi's apartment play; China Mobile's nakedness

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China's telcos slowly surrender their various traditional services like voice and text messaging to private companies like Tencent. Photo: Reuters

Doug Young

Published: 9:03am, 3 Dec 2014Updated: 9:12am, 3 Dec 2014

Tech executives have been uncharacteristically quiet on their microblogs this past week, possibly due to the US Thanksgiving holiday that saw light activity in New York where most of their stocks are traded. But all the holidays in the world could never quiet the talkative Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi, who was busy talking up one of his company's latest investments. That particular investment came in the unlikely property management space, involving a developer of YMCA-style buildings that rent out apartments to young people.

A separate series of posts from two executives at leading mobile carrier China Mobile (0941.HK; NYSE: CHL) also provided some interesting food for thought, reflecting the steady stream of new assaults that this slow-moving behemoth regularly faces from smaller, more innovative firms.

In one instance, a regional China Mobile executive commented on Tencent's (0700.HK) new product that lets users make voice calls over the popular WeChat platform, in a direct challenge to traditional telcos. The other saw a China Mobile executive direct a pile of criticism at a newly rolled out "Data Bank" program that gives customers of China Unicom (0762.HK; NYSE: CHU) more flexibility in managing their mobile data allowances.

Perhaps the recent shortage of buzz from Chinese tech executives also owes to the fact that many of their stocks have taken a bath over these last few weeks, after many surged during a wave of IPOs earlier this year. Shares of e-commerce leader Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) have dropped 6 per cent from an all-time high over the last three weeks, and even Hong Kong-listed Tencent is down 9 per cent from a mid November peak.

That kind of pull-back may be dampening executives' enthusiasm, and many may also be worried that microblog hype might be seen as a desperate attempt to pump up their flagging share prices.