Janet is a 27 year-old graduate student interested in job or internship opportunities in China. Prior to pursuing her Masters degree, she worked for several years as a project manager for a small wireless start-up in Silicon Valley. She's therefore very familiar with the industry, although not particular to China. She knows China is the fastest growing market for mobile telecommunications and, thanks in part to favorable Chinese government regulations, is fast becoming the world center for wireless R&D. Janet has some familiarity with China, and has an idea of where the major cities in China are located. She's interested in finding jobs in Shanghai, which she has heard is the most international and cosmopolitan Chinese city.

She has heard about the MappingChina web site from a friend of a friend and types in the URL in her browser. After skimming general information on the wireless industry value chain and the history of wireless technologies in China, Janet looks at the geographic company distribution (overview) for the wireless industry. She's surprised to see that the software industry is actually most active in the Beijing region; she notes that most of the companies and news stories center around that region. But because she's still reticent about life under communist rule, she decides she's still interested only in jobs in Shanghai. She searches for companies around Shanghai.

From the list of companies, Janet chooses Alcatel Shanghai Bell, and pulls up the five forces diagram and business summary for the company. She sees that ASB has several offices in Shanghai, including an R&D center that has made many news headlines recently. She clicks on a few news headlines to read the articles that interest her. Janet clicks through a few more company summaries for both Chinese companies and multinationals, and even continues on to some of the company Web sites, where she applies for a few of the openings on their job pages.

Scenario #2

It has only been a day since he scheduled his interview with 3GWireless, but 30-year-old MBA graduate Young is excitedly optimistic about his prospects. To prepare for his interview with 3GW, Young wants a five forces overview of the company's position in China. He's applying for a position in the US headquarters, but a significant amount of 3GW's business and revenues come from Chinese affiliates. He wants to be able to discuss these issues as an informed and enthusiastic applicant.

He goes to the MappingChina site and types the company's name in the search field. He researches the company's presence throughout China, both in terms of market share and employees per location. He skims over the company's financial and market statistics and reads some of the recent news on 3GW. Young also looks at similar pages for each of 3GW's top three competitors and for a few of 3GW's top partner companies.

Scenario #3

While sitting in his MBA class, James skims CNet’s news website on his laptop. One story grabs his attention: “Google takes ad service to China.” He learns that Google will let advertisers in China bid for keywords in traditional and simplified Chinese characters. He is curious if there are companies in China that specialize in Chinese character search technology. He hopes he can find a local partner with whom he can work together to build a search engine optimized to search in Chinese.

He goes to the MappingChina website where all the information — industry, market, company, and contact data — is arranged in a clear interface. He glances through the industry directory but does not see an obvious match to search engine technology. He chooses to type the keywords “search engine Chinese” in the search box. He selects the “News” option to find all related news articles. The result displays a list of news stories, which James clicks through. He gathers names of Chinese companies building search engine technologies. He then goes back to the MappingChina website to type these company names into the search box and selects “Companies” as the search domain. This returns links to the company profile page, where James sees company statistics, news, and a five forces diagram enabling analysis of the company’s position in the industry.