Made For The World. Built And Designed In China.
For years, the iPhone has carried a small etching on the back that says ‘Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China.’ It’s fueled the stereotype that China is the world’s factory, but hasn’t had a flexible enough education system to produce R&D talent that can also design world-class products for a global audience. But that’s a stereotype that isn’t exactly true anymore. A small group of companies — both small, bootstrapped app startups and multi-billion dollar giants like Tencent — are showing that they can design apps or higher-end hardware with international appeal. Tencent, one of the country’s gargantuan Internet powers with a market cap of $72 billion dollars, often likes to point out the international reach of its messaging app Weixin or WeChat. That app has blossomed to more than 190 million monthly active users over the past year and with about 40 million of registered users outside of China. “I’m very glad to see the internationalization of Tencent,” ...
apple
asia
audience
beijing
billion
blux
business
california
camcard
cao
ceo
china
chinese
chinese-language
conference
correlation
education
gmic
interestingly
internationalization
internet
intsig
iphone
japan
kakao
louisa
million
onavo
revolution
service
shanghai-based
tencent
wechat
weixin
west
western
Evernote Launches Yinxiang Biji Business, Taking Its Premium Business Service To China
A year ago, Evernote kicked off its strategy to bring its personal organization app to China, with the launch of Yinxiang Biji on its own dedicated platform. Today, it's taking the next step in monetizing that with the introduction of Yinxiang Biji Business. Phil Libin, CEO and founder of Evernote, announced the news today at the GMIC conference in Beijing, where he also noted that since launching last year, the bigger Evernote Business product has now signed up some 5,000 companies to using it.
beijing
biji
business
ceo
china
conference
evernote
gmic
introduction
launches
libin
organization
phil
service
yinxiang
Alibaba Group's New Stake In Sina Weibo May Help Its Nascent Smartphone OS Gain Traction Against Android & iOS
Pouring $586 million in Sina Weibo gives Alibaba Group several perks, including an inroad into social media and access to the microblogging platform’s data. Not only that, but its new 18 percent stake in Sina Weibo may also give Alibaba Group a leg-up as it seeks to promote its own smartphone operating system Alibaba Mobile OS (AMOS) as a rival to Android. As the Wall Street Journal writes, Alibaba Group’s investment in Sina Weibo means that it now has access to data generated by the platform’s 46.2 million daily users. This is on top of the 500 million registered users on Taobao, one of Alibaba Group’s e-commerce sites. “If you are a big Internet company and you are ambitious enough in the mobile space, you have to do more than apps. Otherwise, you are just a small species in an ecosystem controlled by others,” Alibaba chief strategy officer Zeng Ming told WSJ. Zeng said that Alibaba Group’s target for AMOS is to power 10 percent of all smartphones shipped in China, an ambitious ...
acer
alibaba
alliance
amoi
amos
amos-powered
android
beijing
billion
china
chinese
conference
devices
google
google-led
haier
idc
internet
investment
ios
konka
million
ming
rmb
sina weibo
species
taobao
tianyu
traction
version
wall street journal
wsj
zeng
zopo
WPP CEO Sorrell: Google Will Overtake News Corp As Our Largest Media Investment This Year Or Next
Martin Sorrell, the CEO of WPP, today laid out a stark picture of how significant a role digital is playing for the advertising giant. Speaking at the FT Digital Media Conference in London today, he said that digital now accounts for 34% of WPP’s media investment, amounting to some $72 billion, rising “from zero to over one-third in about ten years, the age of Google,” he said. Google, he said, is the second-largest recipient of that digital spend at the moment, at around $2 billion for the quarter, but that it will soon overtake the single biggest beneficiary at the moment, News Corp. Sorrell described Google as “a media owner masquerading as a tech company.” Sorrell referred to these numbers as a preview of WPP’s quarterly results, which are out tomorrow. He added that at the moment AOL and Yahoo are each getting around $400 million to $500 million in ad spend via WPP. Facebook, despite its size and current popularity, is only around $270 million. Twitter, he added, is “much ...
acquisition
admob
android
aol
bertlesmann
bewkes
billion
ceo
china
conference
consumption
corp
dailymotion
facebook
google
investment
jeff
london
martin
million
penetration
popularity
rabe
reality
sorrell
television
thomas
twitter
warner
wpp
yahoo
youtube
Chinese Gaming Publisher Yodo1 Raises $5M In Round Led By Singapore's SingTel Innov8
Yodo1, a Beijing-based company that works intensively with Western game developers to bring their titles to the Chinese market, raised $5 million from SingTel Innov8, the corporate venture arm of a mobile carrier. An earlier investor, Chinese online game maker Chang You, also participated in the round. Yodo1 has a co-production model where they actually get access to the code base of a Western developers’ game. They modify the graphics, virtual goods and music for local Chinese tastes. An example CEO Henry Fong points to is Ski Safari, a game from Brisbane, Australia’s Defiant Development. In the platformer title, a character races up and down ski slopes (kind of like last year’s indie hit Tiny Wings out of Germany). For the Chinese version, they made the architecture of the houses in the background more Chinese, added a zither to the music and put in terra cotta warrior outfits. “We’re a full blown co-production team,” Fong said in an interview a few weeks ago at San Francisco’s ...
academy
android
apple
asia
australia
beijing-based
brisbane
ceo
chang
china
chinese
cocoachina
conference
development
entertainment
flurry
fong
germany
handygames
henry
innov
ios devices
maturity
million
options
payments
presentation
raises
safari
san francisco
singapore
singtel
southeast
telecom
unicom
version
western
xmg
yodo