Chinese tech companies are getting ready to take over the web

Aug 22, 2013 13:33 GMT  ·  By

Foreign tech and web companies haven't had much luck in China, but the same can be said about Chinese companies trying to break out of the country. There have been some attempts, notably Alibaba, but no big breakthroughs.

It was only a matter of time though and it seems like that "time" is now. UCWeb is boasting that its browser UC Browser is now the leading browser in India, overtaking Opera.

That may sound very strange to most people in the western world, but in India, like in much of the developing world, the internet is accessed mostly on mobile devices of the "non-smart" variety, aka feature phones.

This explains why Opera, specifically Opera Mini, was king up until now and it also explains how UC Browse became so popular. UC Browser had already conquered its local market by offering some interesting and stand out features.

The company bases its claims on StatCounter numbers so, while the absolute numbers may not be exact, the trend is clear.

It's no surprise that the company made these revelations just as it announced that tech superstar Jack Ma was joining its board. The billionaire founder of Alibaba has his hands full as it is, but he's confident that UC Web has plenty of potential.

It also has lots of ambition, while India was perhaps an obvious first choice and the company is doubling down there with more employees in the local team, as it wants to expand to more countries and markets.

It's no coincidence that this is happening just as the biggest Chinese internet company, Tencent, is finding success internationally with the WeChat messaging service.

While these may seem like the exception now, you expect to see more and more companies from China gaining international success for a few very simple reasons.

For one, the Chinese internet market is already the largest in the world and is maturing. The competition internally is strong and has produced several powerful players but also many smaller ones with interesting new ideas.

It's only natural that these companies will become large and smart enough to venture out of China and it's quite obvious, to anyone but Silicon Valley, that these Chinese companies will understand the emerging internet markets. This is where most of the growth will come from in the future, much better than the pampered developers and entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley.