Michael Kan
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Alibaba names new CEO as revenue jumps
Though Alibaba Group is succeeding in generating more revenue from mobile, it is nevertheless shuffling executives, elevating its chief operating officer Daniel Zhang to CEO in the face of a stock-based compensation program that has depressed profit.Zhang will take over on May 10, and current CEO Jonathan Lu will step down, remaining on Alibaba’s board of directors as vice chairman.The company made the announcement on Thursday, when it reported its first quarter earnings. Alibaba’s profit fell 49 percent year over year to about 2.9 billion yuan (US$476 million). Profit has been weighed down by continued stock awards given to employees since its IPO last year. Without the share-based compensation, Alibaba said its profit would have risen 14 percent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Another Uber office in China faces government scrutiny
Chinese authorities visited an Uber office in the country on Wednesday, just a week after another company office faced a local police raid over its ride-hailing service.Local authorities came to Uber’s office in the Chinese city of Chengdu, Uber confirmed in en email. But the visit was “routine,” it added.“There are no disruptions to the Uber platform, and it’s business as usual,” the company said.Chengdu authorities have opened an investigation against Uber, but its office has not been closed, according to local media. Uber did not elaborate, and Chengdu’s Transportation Committee could not be immediately reached for comment.The visit follows a police raid of an Uber office in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, reportedly for letting private drivers use the ride-hailing service without proper qualifications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Another Uber office in China faces government scrutiny
Chinese authorities visited an Uber office in the country on Wednesday, just a week after another company office faced a local police raid over its ride-hailing service.Local authorities came to Uber’s office in the Chinese city of Chengdu, Uber confirmed in en email. But the visit was “routine,” it added.“There are no disruptions to the Uber platform, and it’s business as usual,” the company said.Chengdu authorities have opened an investigation against Uber, but its office has not been closed, according to local media. Uber did not elaborate, and Chengdu’s Transportation Committee could not be immediately reached for comment.The visit follows a police raid of an Uber office in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, reportedly for letting private drivers use the ride-hailing service without proper qualifications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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ZTE’s bezel-less phone tosses away black border for more touchscreen function
Will bezel-less phones be the next big thing?China’s ZTE certainly thinks so. On Wednesday, the company’s Nubia brand unveiled the Z9, a product that comes without the black border found on so many smartphone screens.I had a chance to try out the device, and found both pros and cons with the product. On the plus side, the Z9 truly is a bezel-free device. The 5.2-inch screen extends across the glass surface from edge to edge, where it curves down to meet the phone’s protective metal frame.As a result, the phone does feel a bit more compact in terms of its width, which measures 68.3mm (2.7 inches). Some might be concerned that the lack of bezels will make the phone hard to use. Touchscreens, after all, tend to be sensitive, and any over-gripping could be misread as actual inputs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Uber’s China business could face more regulatory trouble, following police raid
Facing little work in his regular construction job, Li Gengming has become a big supporter of Uber Technologies in China.He is just one several private drivers who have signed up with the ride-hailing service in Beijing. Each day, Li picks up around 7 or 8 customers, taking about 200 yuan (US$32) from the rides altogether.“There are not enough taxis in the city, so there’s demand,” he said on Monday. “Uber is also much cheaper than taxis.”In China, however, not everyone is a fan of the service. Last Thursday, police reportedly raided Uber’s office in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, for letting private drivers operate without the needed qualifications, according to local media reports.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Uber’s China business could face more regulatory trouble, following police raid
Facing little work in his regular construction job, Li Gengming has become a big supporter of Uber Technologies in China.He is just one several private drivers who have signed up with the ride-hailing service in Beijing. Each day, Li picks up around 7 or 8 customers, taking about 200 yuan (US$32) from the rides altogether.“There are not enough taxis in the city, so there’s demand,” he said on Monday. “Uber is also much cheaper than taxis.”In China, however, not everyone is a fan of the service. Last Thursday, police reportedly raided Uber’s office in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, for letting private drivers operate without the needed qualifications, according to local media reports.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Xiaomi phones still hot in China, but Apple catching up
Xiaomi led China’s smartphone market as its biggest vendor for the third straight quarter. But Apple is closing in, thanks to demand for its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and may even overtake Xiaomi this year.In this year’s first quarter, Xiaomi claimed a 13 percent share, while Apple captured 12 percent, research firm Strategy Analytics said Wednesday. In the first quarter of last year, Apple’s share was 8 percent compared to Xiaomi’s 11 percent.Xiaomi, a maker of inexpensive Android phones, is riding on the success of its Redmi models, which can start at 599 yuan (US$98) when bought without carrier subsidies.But the company’s smartphone shipments have been declining over the past two quarters, Strategy Analytics said. Apple, on the other hand, witnessed booming sales. In the quarter, Apple shipped 13.5 million smartphones to the country, up from 7.8 million units a year ago.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Pebble seeks to tap the Chinese market
Pebble hopes to replicate in China the success it has had in the U.S., by working to build a fanbase for its smartwatches.Three years ago, Pebble’s first product launched on Kickstarter as a crowdfunded project that initially raised over US$10 million from thousands of backers.“We have always had a tight relationship with the people using the product, and our intention is to continue that in China,” said Eric Migicovsky, Pebble’s CEO in an interview on Wednesday.The Silicon Valley startup is still in the early stages of tapping the country’s market, and only a month ago it upgraded its software to support Chinese language characters. It also began offering its smartwatches as a crowdfunding campaign on local e-commerce site JD.com that managed to rake in almost 300,000 yuan ($49,000) from 1,400 supporters earlier in April.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Expect more Cyanogen phones from Chinese vendors
Cyanogen, the maker of an Android-based operating system, is hoping it can expand with the help of Chinese handset vendors with global ambitions.The U.S. company has over 50 million users of its CyanogenMod, which is a modified version of Android that can be installed on smartphones manually. But it’s hoping to proliferate the OS even more, by partnering with Chinese companies to release phones that come with the software.“It’s a great way for them to build some identity outside of China using a brand that’s already reasonably well known,” said Kirt McMaster, the company’s CEO.McMaster made the comment Tuesday in Beijing at the Global Mobile Internet Conference. Although the company’s executives declined to name specific vendors, they said the phones would target the international market, and not mainland China, where competition is already heated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Xiaomi tries to end waiting period for phone buyers, amid complaints
Targeting sales of 80 million phones this year, Xiaomi is planning to end “flash sales” of small quantities of its best-selling products.The fast-rising company is China’s largest smartphone vendor, but its devices haven’t always been easy to buy. Xiaomi typically sells limited quantities of its smartphones once a week through its website, forcing customers to often scramble to place orders online.Chinese media have dubbed Xiaomi’s distribution model as a form of “hungry marketing”, that leaves consumers starving for more products. It’s also been the harshest complaint leveled against the company, said Xiaomi president Lin Bin on Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Alibaba looks to rural China to popularize its mobile OS
E-commerce giant Alibaba Group hasn’t given up on its mobile OS, and is taking the software to China’s rural markets through a series of low-cost phones.The company has partnered with mobile carrier China Telecom to sell the YunOS handsets. The eight phones will be built by lesser-known Chinese brands, and will range from 299 yuan (US$49) to 699 yuan.Although Alibaba has its own Android apps that connect to its popular e-commerce stores, the Linux-based YunOS comes with a whole suite of company-developed services.The software, however, hasn’t gained much share in the market. In 2012, Google claimed it was a variant of its Android OS, sparking a clash that threatened to derail Alibaba’s effort to popularize the mobile OS.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Huawei eyes US enterprise market despite political challenges
Past political trouble in the U.S. isn’t stopping Huawei Technologies from selling its enterprise services in the country.The Chinese company, which was labeled a U.S. national security threat in 2012, has been effectively blocked from selling telecommunication gear to U.S. carriers. Government officials there are concerned about Huawei’s alleged ties with the Chinese government, even as the company has repeatedly denied the claims.Huawei, however, hopes it can still attract U.S. customers to its enterprise products, which include servers, storage and IT services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Huawei to expand retail presence, as it finds success selling higher-end phones
Huawei Technologies is seeking to double its retail presence around the world, amid a growing a pushing to sell more mid-range and high-end smartphones.The Chinese handset maker aims to establish 70,000 retail spaces by the end of 2017, up from the 30,000 locations it already has, including Huawei stores, product counters and “display zones” where its smartphones were shown for sale last year.More than half of those locations are in China, the company’s home market, said Glory Zhang, chief marketing officer for Huawei’s consumer business group. The balance will start to change by year end, when Huawei brings more high-end products to international markets, she added.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Huawei plans to offer public cloud service in China
Telecommunications equipment maker Huawei Technologies plans to launch a public cloud service in China in July, amid growing competition from local and foreign players.“We hope that once it launches, we can bring some surprises to all our enterprise customers,” said Eric Xu, Huawei’s acting CEO, on Tuesday at a company event for analysts.Xu provided few details, but said Huawei aimed to offer a unique service. In China, other large tech players have already entered the public cloud space, including Microsoft and Amazon.com.Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group is currently the leading player, according to Forrester Research. And in March, it announced it would enter the U.S. cloud computing market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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U.S. business group urges China to loosen data-storage policies
Chinese security policies are threatening to push foreign businesses out of the country’s IT sector by restricting the way data is stored, according to a U.S. lobbying group.On Tuesday, the American Chamber of Commerce in China issued a report urging the country to change the policies. Increasingly, the Chinese government is enacting regulations to address national security concerns at the cost of hampering its own economy, the lobbying group warned.China has been recently reviewing an antiterror law that could require tech companies to give up encryption keys to the authorities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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After U.S. chip block, China’s plan for 100 petaflop supercomputer may get delayed
The U.S.’s recent denial of Intel chips for China’s fastest supercomputer could derail an upgrade to double the machine’s processing power.China’s Tianhe-2 is the world’s fastest supercomputer with a theoretical peak speed of 54.9 petaflops. It was scheduled to be expanded, and reach a new peak speed of 100 petaflops this year.Now those plans may be in jeopardy. The U.S. government claims the Tianhe-2 has been used in “nuclear explosive activities”, and has forbidden Intel from shipping its Xeon chips to four related Chinese supercomputing centers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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US blocks Intel from selling Xeon chips to Chinese supercomputer projects
U.S. government agencies have stopped Intel from selling microprocessors for China’s supercomputers, apparently reflecting concern about their use in nuclear tests.In February, four supercomputing institutions in China were placed on a U.S. government list that effectively bans them from receiving certain U.S. exports.The four institutions, which include China’s National University of Defense Technology, have been involved in building Tianhe-2, the world’s fastest supercomputer, and Tianhe-1A.The two supercomputers have been allegedly used for ”nuclear explosive activities,” according to a notice posted by the U.S. Department of Commerce.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Intel to help Chinese vendors churn out more PCs
Last year, Intel convinced small, little-known Chinese tablet makers to use its chips instead of only ARM’s. Now it wants those companies to churn out PCs, potentially upsetting a market that has been dominated by Taiwanese manufacturers.Many PCs are already manufactured in China, but often times in factories owned by Taiwanese companies, partnering with Intel, that have specialized in the trade for decades.Mainland Chinese companies have been feverishly developing tablets and smartphones, on the other hand, and they are flooding the market with low-cost models.Last year, Intel supplied 46 million tablet chips, and many of those went to these little-known manufacturers and vendors in China. Some of these vendors include Hampoo, Ramos and ChipHD, among many others that tend to build cheap mobile devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Intel courts China’s hardware startups to popularize its mobile, IoT chips
Erwin Liu is the CEO of a fledgling Chinese startup, and he’s been the happy recipient of free chips from Intel.“Whenever I went to Intel’s offices, they would always give us some free samples,” he said.Liu’s company, CEIN Biotechnology, which develops finger vein scanners, is just one among the many Chinese tech startups Intel is courting.In the battle for chip supremacy, the U.S. tech giant has been trying to dig deep into China’s hardware industry, and ensure that not just big vendors use its technology, but small emerging players too.On Wednesday, Intel held its annual developers conference in Shenzhen, China, at a time when rival ARM-based chips from Qualcomm and MediaTek have been all the rage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Intel shrinks RealSense camera, targets smartphones
Intel plans to cut the fat from its RealSense 3D camera so that it can fit the device on a smartphone.The company’s CEO Brian Krzanich showed off Wednesday in Shenzhen, China a 6-inch prototype phone built with the new camera, which is about half the size of the older version. The company plans to start deploying the technology this year.The U.S. chipmaker has been wanting to bring RealSense to PCs and tablets, but with the smaller size it can also deliver it to smartphones, Krzanich said. Devices built with the 3D camera could offer gesture control like Microsoft’s Kinect device.“So you can imagine the efficiencies and the opportunities and the options for innovation we have moving together,” he added.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here