China web firm profits from mobiles

Sina's Daniel Mao is serious about games

The Chinese internet portal Sina.com has made its first profit thanks to rising advertising revenue and a boom in mobile text messaging.

This means that all three major Chinese internet portals listed on the US-based Nasdaq index of hi-tech stocks are now profitable.

As a result, the Chinese web firms look likely to remain among the survivors of the dot.com crash, something which once seemed far from certain.

Sina.com reported a profit of $1.5m (£915,000) for the three months to end of 2002.

Its sales jumped by 90% from a year earlier to $12.9m.

Click happy

The company has expanded from its origins as a web portal serving up a mix of news, entertainment and sport into fee-paying e-mail and mobile phone services, such as text and photo messaging, and games.

Nike and Motorola are among Sina.com's corporate clients for Chinese language web services. It is also developing Chinese online games in alliance with Korean firm NC Soft.

Income from e-mail and texting services surged by 234% to $5.5m compared with the same period in 2001, making up 43% of total sales.

Advertising sales also rose strongly, up 44% to $7.4 million.

Chief executive Daniel Mao said the company had reshaped itself in less than a year to expand its sources of income.

'Sustainable'

"With our recent strategic initiatives in online game and mobile services, we are in a strong position to continue to deliver profitable, sustainable growth in 2003 and in the upcoming years," said Mr Mao.

Rival Netease.com became the first US-listed Chinese dot.com to make a profit, in August 2002, less than a year after fighting off relegation from Nasdaq.

Another rival, Sohu.com, made a profit in the second half of last year.

Sina.com expanded its photo messaging business in January 2003 by paying $20.8m for another Chinese tech firm, MeMeStar, through which it hopes to develop colour photo messaging.