BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

NQ Mobile Strategizes To Tap Global Markets From China And Diversify

This article is more than 10 years old.

Omar Khan is leading NQ Mobile on a new global journey

Competing in the swift-moving mobile communications market as a Chinese brand is not for the weak or timid.  Ask Omar Khan at NQ Mobile , hired last year as co-CEO to drive international expansion for the mobile security software company which now has dual CEOs and dual headquarters -- Beijing and Dallas.

"The mobile industry is moving extremely fast, irrespective of geography," says Khan. He observes that China with the world's largest smartphone market and tremendous scale is leading the world in innovations in this segment, having effectively skipped over the PC era.

NQ Mobile is at the forefront of Chinese tech companies that are hiring globally minded industry experts to help transition to overseas markets and formulate the right money-making strategy for the future. Since joining the NYSE-listed company early last year, Khan has been busy figuring out how to lead it from mobile security company to a broader mobile Internet platform.

What's working so far is offering more content to users -- chiefly gaming and advertising  -- to round out the mobile security products. Revenues for the gaming side of the business just topped $25 million, through the November 2012 acquisition of mobile gaming and advertising company Feiliu (renamed FL Mobile).  That's a major chunk of NQ Mobile's $92 million in 2012 revenues, which have been more than doubling the past two years and show continued strong growth in 2013.

Khan brings international know-how from major industry players to the startup formed in 2005 by Henry Lin, a technologist and former professor at a Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. The startup was originally backed by leading China venture firms GSR, Ceyuan, Fidelity and Sequoia, which poured in a total $35 million beginning in 2007 to help the startup scale. NQ went public in May 2011, and Hong Kong-based Atlantis Investment Management came in as an anchor investor in July 2013.

Having earned his career stripes as a mobile tech executive at Motorola, Samsung and Citigroup ,  Khan found his way to NQ after he was recruited to be an independent board member. He hit it off with founder Lin.  They had a shared vision about where the mobile industry was going and Khan was named co-CEO. Khan is responsible for the global direction of the company while Lin is focused on the core markets of China and Taiwan and is, as Khan describes him, the company's chief innovation officer as well. NQ Mobile has  more than 30 proprietary core technologies and mobile security patents.

In joining NQ Mobile, Khan says he has  "looked under the hood" and found tremendous potential to move the company in new directions.  To wit, NQ is investing in next-generation search technology for consumers using voice and images in a more intuitive and elegant way rather than text, he notes.

NQ Mobile has managed to do what many Chinese tech companies aspire to -- sell outside China and develop products from dual R&D centers, with a core group of 20 R&D gurus in Dallas and some 300 engineers in an epicenter north of Beijing. "You can't force a global culture. It has to happen naturally," says Khan. Tellingly, international sales more than doubled in 2012 to hit $36 million, more than one-third of total revenues.

Among the more consumer-oriented brand names that NQ Mobile has branched into over the past year are Vault, a safe storage area for private data, and Family Guardian, a mobile service for parents to protect their children on smartphone usage. Both were developed in the U.S. and then taken global. Another element to NQ's consumer-facing brands is offering products to 3500 U.S. retail outlets, including 1500 with Target stores nationwide. In the enterprise markets, NQ also has been busy, acquiring NationSky (renamed NQSky), which provides mobile device management services to business accounts.

With the fast speed of innovation in mobile, Khan says NQ Mobile strives to stay ahead by having a "continuous feedback loop" with customers.  "You can't expect to innovate behind the wall in the mobile business. To perfect a product, you need to become adept at adapting products and seeing how they evolve in consumers' hands."