Yahoo teams with Chinese Web portal Sina
The companies agree to set up an online auction service in China, in an effort to ride the wave of the country's growing e-commerce market.
The companies said the co-branded auction service will be aimed at small and midsize businesses in the country. The service will offer both fixed and bid pricing methods for the sale of goods.
"The Yahoo and Sina joint venture creates a full-featured e-commerce service capable of pairing small- and medium-sized businesses with buyers and sellers in China," Dan Rosensweig, Yahoo's chief operating officer, said in a statement Wednesday.
The company's move comes as China's Internet users swell in numbers and the popularity of online auctions grows. Meanwhile, companies aiming at the market are trying to catch up with industry giant eBay.
Yahoo already operates auction services in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. But the company hasn't been completely successful in its efforts to expand overseas.
Yahoo closed its Australian auctions site Sold.com.au in August, relinquishing the market to eBay. And in 2002, Yahoo closed five of its European auction sites and, under an agreement with eBay, began pointing its customers to the online auctions giant.
Nonetheless, Yahoo and Sina executives remain upbeat about the service.
"With the rapid growth of the Chinese Internet market, we see that ll indicators point to a strong surge in Chinese e-commerce," Yan Wang, chief executive of Sina, said in a statement.