MSN expects China to be top five market by 2010

From Reuters:

"Chris Dobson, general manager of digital marketing sales at MSN International, told Reuters the software giant intended to ride that growth while taking a larger share of the country's nascent but booming $500 million online advertising market."

"In May, the software giant launched MSN China, a Chinese-language portal with content provided by local partners.
The portal is run by Shanghai MSN Network Communications Ltd., a joint venture Microsoft established with Shanghai Alliance Investment Ltd.
Microsoft has said the portal will offer far more communication, information and content than available through the MSN services, such as Hotmail and Messenger, it already runs in China."

"Dobson said Messenger, an instant messaging platform, was especially popular. The service now had 10 million users versus about 7 million when it was launched six months ago."

""Display advertisements, for example, have been growing 50 percent annually and we expect this trend to continue," said Chuan Luo, general manager of MSN's Chinese venture.
But competition on search engines, fought over by Yahoo, Google and local rivals such as Baidu.com Inc, Sohu.com and Sina Corp., remains a big challenge."

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