Henry Hou

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Tencent: Growth of a “King Penguin”
Henry Hou
Posted on December 8, 2015 at 7:52 pm
From ICQ to MSN messenger, IM giants had come and gone, even more been forgotten. Why did Tencent survived? And more importantly, why did it prospered?

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On December 14, 2015, Henry Hou commented on BlackBerry: Down But Not Out? :

It is intriguing to see how such a giant to fall so quickly. More importantly, would the fall of this pioneer of closed OS ecosystem be alarming to Apple today?
Thanks for the reasoning on Blackberry’s fall. Among these operating deficiencies, I feel the reluctance to partner external developers had played a key role. Although Apple was also a closed OS system, it welcome and collaborated with external developers. This partnership further improved the user experience and therefore adherence, resulting in an effective ecosystem. Meanwhile on RIM side, the attitude towards developers was more guarded and alienating. This mentality left RIM alone with limited application offering, and eventually expanding gap with Apple in user experience.

On December 14, 2015, Henry Hou commented on GNC – Supplementation Gone Wrong :

Procurement quality control issues should not be hard to fix. What GNC did poorly was more of the crisis PR compared with other retailers. (Bodybuilding.com also carried USPlab products but was not so badly impacted).
I think GNC’s issues more stemmed from its business model, e.g. the reliance on brick and mortar shops. One thing that makes a brick-and-mortar shop more appealing to a online shop is the trialability of its products. You are able to touch and try, and probably learn some tips from shopping assistants about the products, before purchase. Unfortunately, in GNC’s case, there is not much trainability involving supplements, as supplement facts and educating materials can be easily posted online and more professional than many SAs. Meanwhile, this business model also limits its profitability therefore ability to compete with online shops.
It is time for GNC to adapt to e-commerce. This is probably its last chance.

On December 14, 2015, Henry Hou commented on Celgene Corporation – Diversifying Bets in Research & Development to Ensure Success in the Biopharmaceutical Industry :

Thanks Gome for the introduction on Celgene’s business model.
I think one common practice among leading biopharmaceutical companies is specialization, be it Celgene, Biogen or Regeneron. As you mentioned, such specialization will make it easier to maintain the leading position in technology and minimize salesforce investment. Meanwhile, the dominance in certain field can also improve the companies’ pricing power, in this case, Gilead’s Sovaldi has been a good example.
My only concern about this strategy is how they are prepared for potential impacts on revenue from competing new drugs in the future, since the chunk of which are from narrow markets.