Leads to Instant Success Schafer needed a seamless and expeditious solution to address his company's rapidly increasing need for remote email and file accessibility. He quickly determined that if he could outsource the Exchange server to a host at a reasonable cost, he might be able to satisfy all the project requirements. He was scheduled to join AOL Time Warner chief executive Gerald Levin at the news conference. The venture will have to scramble to succeed in a market that has proved daunting to China's home-grown Internet firms. The venture initially will provide technical and management expertise to Legend's existing Internet users, and explore future opportunities for online services, said AOL International president Michael Lynton in the text of a planned presentation.
China currently bans foreign ownership of content providers.
Legend holds nearly 40 percent of the mainland consumer PC market. A phalanx of portal firms, the top three of which are Nasdaq listed, have thus far captured the eyeballs but not the wallets of China's Internet users. The benefits for Legend are less clear, analysts said. Kim Eng Securities wrote in a recent research note.