China

Tencent again performed well in a highly competitive market. An improving economy and rapid growth of the internet industry in China enabled Tencent, with its diversified business model, to produce solid operating and financial results in 2009.

As the Chinese internet sector develops further, users are demanding better services. More intensified competition from experienced rivals continues to emerge. Tencent is increasing its investment in research and development, technical infrastructure and personnel development.

The operating platforms grew during the year. QQ’s instant-messaging platform recorded peak concurrent users of over 105 million in March 2010, a new milestone. The online gaming platforms also performed strongly. Tencent continued to invest to improve its content offering and operating and service platforms, and to provide a better overall user experience.

Tencent’s excellent performance is a tribute to its management team and employees, led by Ma Huateng. Being listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, extensive data on Tencent’s operating and financial performance is available on its website (www.tencent.com).

Africa

Kalahari.net is the market leader in South African e-commerce. The company provides the broadest range of products at competitive prices and has grown by 32% over the past year. Several new product categories are showing growth. Kalahari.net Kenya and Kalahari.net Nigeria were launched, leveraging the product catalogue from South Africa. In addition, Kalahari.net’s Market Place was introduced in South Africa to offer consumer-to-consumer (C2C) trading for new and used products.

In October 2009 MIH acquired an interest in Korbitec (Proprietary) Limited, South Africa’s leading property portal. Property24.com was merged with Korbitec as part of the transaction.

Korbitec/Property24 operates an end-to-end e-commerce platform preferred by property professionals and buyers and sellers of property in South Africa.

24.com is a leading internet publisher in South Africa, growing by 34% to some 2,7 million users across its network of websites. News24 remains the top local destination with approximately 1,6 million users per month. A variety of subbrands including Fin24, Sport24 and Health24 are category leaders. During the year News24 extended its brand into mobile applications for the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Nokia platforms, and increased its wireless application protocol (WAP) mobile audience.

MXit South Africa, in which MIH has a 30% shareholding, continued robust growth in the mobile market, expanding its registered user base by 41% to 17 million. The stability of the MXit platform increased, leading to an increase in peak concurrent online users.

Latin America

In September 2009 MIH acquired 94,8% of BuscaPé, an e-commerce player in Latin America. The BuscaPé group operates various businesses: comparison shopping (BuscaPé and BondFaro), a platform for classified advertisements (QueBarato), a payment platform (Pagamento Digital), affiliate networking (Lomadee), market intelligence (ebit), fraud analysis (FControl) and financial-lead generation (Cortacontas). Recently BuscaPé acquired an interest in Pagos Online, the payment platform in Colombia.

During the year Compera nTime, our mobile value-added services operation in Brazil, acquired a competitor, Yavox. The enlarged group has been renamed Movile. Operations were integrated and the business turned profitable. The portfolio includes SMSs, ringtones, music, videos, games, mobile blogging and user-generated content platforms.