China Smart Devices
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China smart devices EQUITY: TECHNOLOGY The next mega trend for 2014 and beyond? Global Markets Research LTE, Smart Homes, 3D Vision, EV, IT nationalism, 21 May 2014 Smart TVs, 4G smartphones and more… Anchor themes Despite the macro slowdown and Industry view: hardware + service to stimulate industry upgrade saturation in major technology We believe “hardware + service” has become an important business model to product lines, we think innovation drive the development of China’s IT hardware sector. In the past two years, and policy supports are the popularity of WeChat and mobile gaming has accelerated adoption of 3G incubating a new round of smartphones in China. Since 2013, IPTV services such as LeTV have started growth, potentially benefiting to reshape China’s TV industry. Looking ahead, we believe: players well positioned in various Mobile video services will stimulate growth of 4G smartphones TMT sub-sectors. TV game deregulation will become a new driver for Smart TVs in China Nomura vs consensus Air pollution may boost demand for EV and green home appliances We analyse China's TMT industry E-commerce will create new opportunities in O2O logistics from the perspective of a broad scope throughout the vertical & Smart home hardware is ready to incubate service and reshape the industry horizontal axis, and across sub- Concerns on IT security will benefit players in nationally strategic areas like sectors. semiconductor and enterprise equipment Research analysts 3D vision may help machines to better understand the real world and innovate the way people use e-commerce and auto driving. China Technology Regulatory policies still matter Leping Huang, PhD - NIHK As well as the above, government policy will play an important role in guiding [email protected] the development of China technology and telecoms. In 2014, we think: +852 2252 1598 Information consumption is an important driver of 4G development David Hao - NIHK [email protected] ‘Beautiful China’ and a new EV subsidy programme will drive EV adoption +852 2252 2153 Government funding and committee established to address the rising importance of national security for information, network equipment and IC How to invest? We believe that some Chinese IT vendors (eg. Lenovo/Xiaomi in PC/Smartphones, Huawei/ZTE in telecom equipment, BYD in EVs and Haier/Gree in home appliances) are well positioned to transform their existing market share into profit if they can capture the growth opportunities that we explore in this report. Fig. 1: Summary of relevant stocks listed in HK/China market Themes Relevant stocks in HK/China market ZTE (763 HK, top Buy), Huawei (unlisted), CCS (552 HK, Buy), Comba (2342 HK, Buy), 4G Capex Trigiant (1300 HK, NR) Digital China (861 HK, Reduce), Haier (1169 HK, NR), Gree (000651 CH, NR), O2O (online-to-offline) Midea (000651 CH, NR) Skyworth (751 HK, top Buy), TCLM (1070 HK, NR), LeTV (300104 CH, NR), Haier, Gree, Smart TV & Smart Homes Midea Electric Vehicle BYD (1211 HK, top Buy), Tianneng (819 HK, Buy), Chaowei (951 HK, NR) 3D Vision & Smart Drive Sunny Optical (2382 HK, top Buy), Truly (732 HK, NR) Lenovo (992 HK, Neutral), ZTE, SMIC (981 HK), Digital China, Kingdee (268 HK, NR), IT & Network Security ChinaCache (CCIH US), 21Vianet (VNET US) Lenovo, ZTE, Huawei, TCLC (2342 HK, Neutral), Coolpad (2369 HK, Neutral), BYDE (285 HK, Smartphone Value Chain Buy), Sunny Optical, Truly, Xiaomi (unlisted), AAC (2018 HK, Buy), O-Film (002456 CH, NR) Source: Nomura research See Appendix A-1 for analyst certification, important disclosures and the status of non-US analysts. Nomura | China smart devices 21 May 2014 Contents 3 “Hardware + services” stimulate industry upgrades 4 Mobile video stimulates the growth of 4G smartphones 5 TV game deregulation to become second driver for Smart TVs 5 Air pollution drives EV adoption and green home appliances 6 E-commerce drives online-to-offline (O2O) logistics 7 Smart Homes: hardware is ready to incubate services 8 3D vision in e-commerce and driving 9 Regulatory changes in China 9 Which are the largest IT hardware companies in China? 11 How to invest? 12 Our top picks 13 What are the structural trends ahead? 13 How big will 4G and export markets be in 2014? 18 Smart Homes: a bigger market than smartphones? 24 Smart TVs: service market starts to take off 27 Information security and IT nationalism 31 Electric Vehicle: How do you have a beautiful China without some green cars? 36 3D vision and smart drive 41 Links to our recent reports 42 Stocks fall into the themes 43 China Technology industry forecast summary 44 Industry value chain charts 49 Appendix A-1 2 Nomura | China smart devices 21 May 2014 “Hardware + services” stimulate industry upgrades We believe “hardware + service” has become an important business model to drive the development of China’s IT hardware sector. As highlighted in our 2013 report, China smart devices - What will be the next mega trend?, the innovation in consumer electronics has shifted from smartphone to TV in 2013. We expect this shift will continue in 2014 and expect new innovation to come from home appliances (Smart Home), automobiles (new energy vehicles and smart drives) and e- commerce (3D shopping). In addition, we see the rising importance of regulation such as information security and air pollution control, which will accelerate the growth of enterprise equipment and new energy vehicles, in our view. Fig. 2: Service innovation in China drives hardware upgrades 2010~ WeChat += 2013~ LeTV += 2013~ + = Made in China 2014~ + = 2014~ += Source: Nomura research 3 Nomura | China smart devices 21 May 2014 Mobile video stimulates the growth of 4G smartphones In the past two years, the popularity of WeChat and mobile gaming has accelerated the use of 3G smartphones in China. As illustrated in the charts below, WeChat MAU reached 396mn subscribers (32% mobile subscriber penetration rate) at end-1Q14, vs. 461mn 3G subscribers (37% penetration rate) at end-1Q14, showing growth clearly outpacing that of overall 3G services. In our opinion, the growth of WeChat’s subscriber base and the upgrade in WeChat services are important drivers for China’s 3G smartphone growth. For example, new features in the WeChat platform include areas such as acoustics, maps/GPS, cameras as well as touch panels and Near Field Communication (NFC). Looking forward, the key question is what will be the killer applications for 4G services in China. We believe mobile video services such as iQiYi and Youku may become important drivers to stimulate 4G migration. Looking at the mobile market in China, according to iResearch, mobile video daily average users (DAU) reached 6.22mn in Dec 2013, increasing 148% y-y from 2.51mn in Dec 2012. At the same time, the monthly total mobile video viewing time increased to 119mn hours in December 2013, up 298% y-y from same period in 2012 (30mn hours). Thus, we think the explosive growth in demand for traffic-heavy mobile services such as video will ultimately fuel the demand for faster smartphones and a faster network from both consumers and operators for reasons such as better user experience and cost savings. Fig. 3: WeChat subscriber growth has outpaced 3G Fig. 4: Explosive growth in mobile video DAU and viewing subscriber growth in China time in China (mn subs) (mn users) DAU (LHS) (mn hours) 500 WeChat MAU (RHS) 40% 7 Hours/month (RHS) 140 3G Sub.(LHS) 35% 6 120 400 WeChat Penetration (RHS) 30% 5 100 3G Penetration (RHS) 4 80 300 25% 20% 3 60 200 15% 2 40 10% 1 20 100 5% 0 0 0 0% Jul-13 Apr-13 Oct-13 Oct-12 Jun-13 Jan-13 Feb-13 Mar-13 Aug-13 Sep-13 Nov-13 Dec-13 Aug-12 Sep-12 Nov-12 Dec-12 1Q12 3Q12 1Q13 3Q13 1Q14 May-13 Source: Company disclosure, Nomura research Source: iResearch, Nomura research At the same time, even IM services such as WeChat are evolving, introducing more services (eg. location sharing, GPS, video calls, etc) that will not only increase data consumption, but also require the network speed and latency to be faster. Fig. 5: Illustration of WeChat’s roadmap Ver. 3.0 Ver. 4.0 Ver. 5.0 Ver. 1.0 Ver. 2.0 Location Video call, Game, Test Voice based photo payment, message message social sharing O2O network Touch Screen Smartphone Acoustics Map & GPS Camera Quad-core NFC Acoustics Camera Source: Nomura research 4 Nomura | China smart devices 21 May 2014 TV game deregulation to become second driver for Smart TVs We have noticed a boom in the launch of TV game consoles since the beginning of 2014. Products include Huawei’s game console launched during MWC with Perfect World, ZTE’s FunBox launched with The9 cities in March 2014, Microsoft’s Chinese version of XBox jointly developed with BesTV (600637 CH, NR), and TCL’s T2 launched together with Gameloft in April 2014. We believe this boom is triggered by two things. First, the Chinese government reversed its 14-year ban on dedicated-purpose game consoles (eg, Xbox, Nintendo Wii, PS4), which was in place since 2000. Second, it is driven by the availability of Android-based games and software platforms which greatly lower the incremental cost to develop games for multiple platforms (eg, smartphones, TVs and PCs). Although there are still some regulatory restrictions such as the pre-approval requirement for game titles, we think this will become a new driver of Smart TV sales, and benefit TV vendors like TCL Multimedia and Skyworth in terms of recurring contents revenue. Fig. 6: XBox in China Fig. 7: TCL T2 Source: Nomura research Source: Nomura research Air pollution drives EV adoption and green home appliances Pollution has become a serious problem in China along with industrialisation in major cities.