The Internet business of Hong Kong-listed multimedia company Tom.com Group will overtake one of the Big Three Internet companies--Sina Corp, Sohu.com and Netease.com, in profits this year, a company official said yesterday.

Wang Leilei, chief executive officer of Tom's Internet business, made the announcement in Beijing yesterday.

Wang's business achieved a pre-tax profit of US$7.75 million in the third quarter, while the profits of Sina, Netease and Sohu stood at US$11.66 million, US$10.16 million and US$9.17 million, respectively.

Wang Leilei also announced yesterday that his company would enter the huge online gaming market with the launch of a South Korea-imported game, Karma Online.

"It will become the fourth product line for Tom's Internet business, which is suitable for us, since we are very strong in online entertainment and most of our users are young people,'' Wang said.

The three other product lines are online advertising, wireless value-added services and corporate network services.

The game, different from most of the popular role-playing online games in China, is a first person shooting game. It has 90,000 people playing it simultaneously in South Korea.

"The primary goal for us is not to nibble market share from other people, but to create market demand because we are operating a different game,'' Wang said.

The game will first be open for public testing and may begin to charge players in April or May.

Tom's online arm also opened a subsidiary in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province, one of the three biggest online game markets in China with Beijing and Shanghai.

It is under talks with China Cyber Games and World Cyber Games, two major online game contests in China, to attract more players.

At the same time, Tom organized its own development team to work some in-house games.

The Internet firm believes the revenues from online games are likely to contribute several million US dollars to the company's total in 2004.

Michael Yin, a senior analyst with Shanghai iResearch Co Ltd, believes Tom's move will further intensify competition in the market.

"There are millions of shooting game fans, but Karma Online is the first such official website in China, since many people have to play on overseas websites or local area networks.''

According to iResearch, China's online game market will double this year over 2002 to 2.55 billion yuan (US$307 million).

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