One of the categories targeted is companies that will benefit from space-focused enterprises. This includes space companies that improve Internet infrastructure.
E.g. if SpaceX is successful with Starlink, it will increase the total available market for Netflix and Netflix revenue increases. JD and Meituan can access more customers, though it is as likely to be via a China-raised LEO fleet. John Deere from Internet-connected autonomous combines and more precise weather and crop health analysis from space informing them where and how to service the crops.
Seems a little weak-linked to me, and the best I could do to defend this portfolio is that it's taking a super long view. But that is their rationale.
A strikingly small % of China's land area has 4G service. It's focused on the high-population areas, but at best, it appears to be 10% of the land area[0]
900 Million of China's 1.4 Billion citizens have Internet access. That leaves 36%, or, 500,000,000 people, more than the population of North America, as an untapped Internet market.
The first link you provided is from China Unicom, the 3rd player in China, behind China mobile and China telecom, whose revenue in 2019 is 7B+, 9B+, 18B+, strikingly %, of course...
No, not a China expert. Just wondering, like other HNers, why ARKX includes these Chinese e-commerce firms and trying to find an explanation. If you know of one that can pass for logical, I'd be glad to hear it.
As far as my own efforts, from the source cited, (which is 'nperf.com' and as far as I can see, not associated with any of the 3 services), You can see the coverage area of each service by selecting their drop downs. I looked at all 3, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom. The maps of the three services show very limited coverage areas for all 3 services, relative to the land area of China. If those maps are inaccurate, perhaps you can point me to one that is accurate.
Thanks for your link. It states that the service is available in most villages, but that does not mean in and of itself that the villagers are using it. The additional information of 900 million Internet users vs. 1.4 billion citizens suggests they are not all using it. To that point, your link indicates you're on target, since the satellites don't deliver directly to the brain and they'll need a device that would put them on 4G anyway.
Someone on Twitter was suggesting that they picked Meituan only because it has a delivery robot called Space-Pod. Lol.
Or in other words, they did a Ctrl+F: "space", in the filings of publicly traded companies and they built the index with the ones that had a match for the word.
As far as John Deere goes I think it has to do with the presumed equipment that they could design and send to mars for colonization.
There was a conference SpaceX put on a year or two ago with a bunch of companies traditionally un-releated to space but would be in a good positions to start producing needed goods that SpaceX would want to send on the first 100s of Starships.
I am reading Peter Thiel's book about startups, and he discusses the nature of technological monopolies. It says how most tech monopolies have common attributes: proprietary software, network effects, economies of scale, and a solid brand. It looks to me like those companies have all of that.
E.g. if SpaceX is successful with Starlink, it will increase the total available market for Netflix and Netflix revenue increases. JD and Meituan can access more customers, though it is as likely to be via a China-raised LEO fleet. John Deere from Internet-connected autonomous combines and more precise weather and crop health analysis from space informing them where and how to service the crops.
Seems a little weak-linked to me, and the best I could do to defend this portfolio is that it's taking a super long view. But that is their rationale.