Asiaone 1-42

HISTORY
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GENERAL INFORMATION ON OUR GROUP
We started our operations in 1995 as the Multimedia division of SPH. AsiaOne.com was SPH’s
inaugural website on the Internet. Our website was launched in June 1995 as the Internet version of
SPH’s publications. The Business Times was the first to go online, followed by The Shipping Times,
Lianhe Zaobao and The Straits Times. By late 1995, our website registered approximately 60,000
pageviews each week, of which approximately 60% was from outside Asia.
In 1996, we included other publications, namely, The New Paper and Berita Harian as well as other
regional newspapers and magazines on our website. The range of services was expanded to include
Business Centre and Entertainment. AsiaOne.com received a good reception from the public and the
number of times our website was accessed increased to approximately 4 million pageviews a month.
Keeping abreast of the virtual shopping trend, our e-commerce infrastructure was launched in October
1997. We also launched other new services such as SingaporeConnect and REALink in 1997.
By late 1998, our virtual shopping mall had 60 shops. Pageviews continued to grow, increasing to
approximately 25 million pageviews a month by end 1998.
To provide us with greater flexibility in re-modelling our website as a major portal in Singapore and
beyond, we were incorporated on 23 July 1999 under the Companies Act as a separate private
limited company in Singapore, under the name of “SPH.com Pte Ltd”. We changed our name on 25
August 1999 to “AsiaOne Internet Pte Ltd” and on 16 December 1999 to “SPH AsiaOne Pte Ltd”. We
became a public limited company on 8 February 2000 and changed our name to “SPH AsiaOne
Ltd”.
Although we were incorporated in July 1999, we only started conducting business on 1 September
1999. On 30 November 1999, we purchased the business of SPH’s Multimedia division pursuant to
a Business Transfer Agreement entered into between SPH and ourselves on 25 November 1999.
Under this agreement, we purchased SPH’s Multimedia division’s business, which was previously
engaged in promoting, maintaining and operating our website. We also acquired and assumed all
relevant assets, liabilities and other businesses.
At the start of the new millennium, we re-positioned ourselves to be the premier Internet player in
Asia, targeting the English speaking audience with our English language portal, AsiaOne.com, and
the Chinese language market with our Chinese language portal, Zaobao.com. On 25 January 2000,
we relaunched our websites to include new features and services such as classified advertisements
and free e-mail service in English and Chinese with a 10-megabyte mailbox. After the relaunch of
our websites, our pageviews increased to 1.2 million a day. By April 2000, our pageviews further
increased to approximately 58 million per month.
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60
40
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Average Monthly Total Pageviews
Note: Year 2000 pageviews is based on April 2000 pageviews.
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
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