Wang Leilei, former CEO of Tom Online, will become chairman and CEO of struggling Chinese wireless value-added services firm KongZhong (KONG) from October 13, 2008 and the company's current CEO and chairman Zhou Yunfan will step down from the positions on the same day.
KongZhong is trying to pull itself out of a depresses period. The company's financial results for the second quarter of 2008 show total revenues increased 10% sequentially to USD23.52 million. Yet even though revenues from 2G services, including SMS, IVR, and color ring back tone, increased 7% sequentially to USD15.40 million, the company's mobile advertising revenues, which were mainly generated from KongZhong's wireless Internet sites, was a pitiful USD357,000. In addition, the company has a wholly unhealthy reliance on China's telecommunications operators — aggregate revenues from China Unicom, China Telecom and China Netcom accounted for approximately 26% of the total second quarter WVAS revenues, while revenues from China Mobile accounted for the remaining 74%.
Zhou told Chinabyte.com: "I'm very pleased that we have found someone of Wang Leilei's caliber to be my successor at the company. His deep industry knowledge, strong leadership abilities and acute business insights make him uniquely qualified to guide the company in its strategic positioning and increase its competitiveness."
Wang graduated from the Electronic Engineering Department of Tsinghua University with a bachelor degree. Joining Tom Group, the parent company of Tom Online in 1999, he was appointed as CEO of Tom Online from September 2003 to September 2008.
