Apparently Yahoo thinks the China consumer market is too important to ignore. They have plan to introduce the popular Flickr service to Chinese markets, starting a rollout in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Yahoo already has a photo sharing service in China, which is similar to Yahoo Photo in the U.S. While the service, which is free, is pretty good, they have only about 9% of the market share. According to iResearch, Netease.com Inc. took the largest share with 43.4 percent followed by QQ.com with a 33.9 percent share, though other media companies such as Sina Corp. are fast catching up.
How to make money from photosharing in China is still not clear. Being used to free photo sharing services, Chinese consumers may not be thrilled by paying for a Flickr premium account. But if there are enough entertainment values in an offering and it does not cost an average person’s one month salary, you may be able to find a business in online photo sharing after all.
Yahoo to launch Chinese version of photo site in 2007