Week 2 Discussion - News App Market

1. Concentration of buyers and sellers: According to the iiMedia research, market share (in terms of active users) of 腾讯新闻 and 今日头条 rank the first and second in the market (42.8% and 32.6% respectively). 

2. Product differentiation: There is little difference between these news apps, the content they produced are relatively homogeneous.

3. Barriers for entry:

-          To establish a new news app, the requirement of capital investment is low.

-          The government poses strict regulations on news media (for example only a few news apps are entitled with the editorial licenses 采编权)

4. Cost structure:

-          Fixed cost: office, equipment, personnel salaries etc.

-          Variable costs: cost of operations, remuneration for writers and marketing etc. 

5. Vertical integration: Some companies are responsible for both the news production (content creation) and news distribution, such as 腾讯新闻。

Based on these 5 characteristics discussed above, we think that the market structure of news app in China is more like the oligopoly structure. 


JIANG Shiran 1155084678
WANG Xin 1155080983
LUO Nan 1155081715
SUN Jian 1155081100
XIN Jun 1155082004
JIANG Chunyu 1155080917