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,” ...
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China's state media praises online exposes
Internet activism credited with revealing senior government official's alleged corruption but controls remain in place.
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Baidu Confirms $370M Purchase Of PPS, Underscoring Online Video's Importance For Internet Companies Around The World
After weeks of rumors, Baidu finally confirmed today that it has acquired the online video business of Shanghai-based PPS for $370 million. PPS will be merged into iQiyi, Baidu’s video platform Baidu, to form China’s largest online video platform by the number of mobile users and video viewing time. The sale is expected to close in the second quarter of 2013. PPS will continue to operate as a brand of iQiyi. The deal allows Baidu to step up its competition with video platform Youku-Tudou. At the end of last month, before Baidu had officially announced the deal, Youku-Tudou president Dele Liu made a statement about his company’s competitors: “After the success and synergy created by the Youku Tudou merger, increasing consolidation was inevitable throughout the video industry. We are happy to see this purchase go forward, we expect this acquisition will further rationalize the industry and help reduce piracy in the sector.” Despite the somewhat cheeky tone of Liu’s comment, the ...
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A Thought Experiment On How Google's New Palestine Page Could Undermine Peace Talks
The Israeli Foreign Minister has sent a strongly worded letter to Google CEO, Larry Page, warning him that their new Palestine search page could undermine Middle-East peace negotiations. “Such a decision is in my opinion not only mistaken but could also negatively impinge on the efforts of my government to bring about direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority,” wrote minister Ze’ev Elkin, about Google’s decision to change “Palestinian Territories” to “Palestine” on Google.ps (picture above). Careful followers of foreign policy news might question how exactly a tiny word change on a website could upset arguably the most resource-intensive diplomatic effort in human history, but we think such skepticism underestimates Google’s vast geo-political power. Here’s a thought experiment of 5 different ways Google could have a meaningful impact: 1. Well, maybe Google could…no, that wouldn’t do anything 2. … 3. … 4. … 5. … Ok, we can’t think ...
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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 ...
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