CAMIA

24/01/2017

Chinese tech giant Baidu is making use of its artificial intelligence research – through augmented reality.
Last week, the top search engine firm unveiled its AR Lab, a spin-off from its Institute for Deep Learning. Baidu plans to use its new Beijing lab, as well as technology from its AI research – image recognition, object detection, and more – to build smartphone-based AR applications.

23/01/2017

Mobile gaming accounted for more than half of China’s total online gaming market for the first time in 2016 as overall revenue increased 23 per cent to reach CNY176.8 billion ($25.5 billion) according to a report from Beijing-based iResearch.
Revenue from mobile games accounted for 56 per cent of total turnover last year, up from 39 per cent the previous year. By 2018, the research firm forecasts PC’s share of the market to fall to 37 per cent.

22/01/2017

Last year, Alibaba-owned UCWeb launched UC News to curate content in popular categories like news, tech, entertainment, and cricket. It became the top app under the news category in Google Play within five months of its launch.
Encouraged by this, UCWeb introduced We-Media, a program to broaden news aggregation to include user-generated content. It allows people to write and engage with followers on UC News; those who meet criteria for views and engagement also get paid.
Last week, the company announced an investment of US$30 million (RMB 200 million) to build its news aggregator business in India and Indonesia over the next two years.

20/01/2017

The Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. has partnered with E-Link Entertainment, a specialty global mobile games publisher with direct access in China, to pre-install games on some of Huawei’s most popular handsets.

19/01/2017

A large number of mobile games from China have made it into the top listings in 2016.
Last year, Chinese mobile games became truly popular around the globe for the first time. Among the leading 1,000 mobile gaming apps worldwide, publishers from China produced a sizeable 84. The year before, that figure had been 45, showing a striking rise in popularity for those games.
After all, this means there are 80 percent more mobile games from China in the top 1,000.

16/01/2017

Quora, that Q&A site you used a few years back and then forgot about, is not having as much luck as its Chinese clone. Zhihu, launched two years after Quora, is now a startup “unicorn” after it secured US$100 million in series D funding.
The investment and valuation are today confirmed by Kai-Fu Lee, former Google China boss turned startup investor and an early backer of Zhihu, reports Technode.

13/01/2017

The top global Chinese brands are mainly consumer electronics and Internet names, a report done by WPP and Google said yesterday.
Of the top-30 Chinese brands globally, Lenovo, Huawei and Alibaba are the leading three names. The evaluation was based on a list of 167 Chinese brands, representing their brand awareness among overseas consumers, according to the report.
The other top-10 Chinese brands are Elex Tech, Xiaomi, Air China, Haier, Anker, Cheetah Mobile and Hisense.

11/01/2017

10/01/2017

Chinese electronics company TCL Corporation was at CES on last Wednesday with a plan to revive BlackBerry handsets knocked from the mobile phone throne by Apple and Google.
TCL is putting its market clout behind the design, manufacture and marketing of a new portfolio of BlackBerry smartphones, trusting that its solid position in the market will renew faith in the brand.

10/01/2017

CHINA’S Huawei announced last week a global launch of its mid-range Honor 6x smartphone which includes dual-lens camera technology and is aimed at young consumers.
The smartphone, which was launched in China last year, will be available in 13 new markets this month, including the United States, priced from US$249 to US$299, the electronics giant said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Huawei marketing director George Zhao said the device is a successor to the Honor 5x launched a year ago, which sold 11 million units, and that he expects the upgraded model will sell even more.
“Twenty million,” he told an audience.

09/01/2017

SHANGHAI-BASED dining application Meiweibuyongdeng is now worth 3 billion yuan (US$434 million) after a new round of financing from investors including Alibaba and CCTV, it said yesterday.
The new investment totals “several hundred million” yuan from investors including Alibaba and China Television Media, a listed subsidiary of China’s state-owned central television CCTV, said Xie Xinfa, chief executive of Meiweibuyongdeng, which means “No Waiting for Delicious Food.”

04/01/2017

Twitter’s China boss Kathy Chen speaks at a forum in Shanghai in this file photo. Chen, who was brought in to lure more Chinese advertisers to Twitter just over eight months ago, has quit, according to a tweet sent by her over the weekend. Domestically, the Sina Weibo microblogging platform and Tencent’s WeChat messaging app are more widely used. — Reuters

03/01/2017

Huawei Technologies Co, one of the world’s largest telecom equipment makers, said last Friday that it expects 2016 revenue growth to slow slightly to 32 percent and forecast greater uncertainties next year.
The Shenzhen-based company, which competes with Sweden’s Ericsson for the top spot in the global market for telecoms equipment, sees 2016 revenue hitting 520 billion yuan (US$75 billion), said Eric Xu, Huawei’s rotating chief executive.

29/12/2016

A Chinese online bank backed by smartphone and home appliance maker Xiaomi Inc is set to launch services soon, after being officially set up and rebranded recently, said one of the venture’s investors.
New Hope Group Co said in a statement that shareholders and regulators have approved the name Sichuan XW Bank for the lender.
It is the latest in a string of new online banks backed by Chinese tech firms, which are hoping to tap the country’s underserved market of small firms and consumers.

23/12/2016

14/12/2016

08/12/2016

Apple Inc will release a new iPhone operating software with additional battery diagnostic features next week, after just offering free battery replacement for “a small number” of iPhone 6S consumers.
The latest statement, posted on Apple China’s website, is seen as a response to the China Consumers Association asking it to offer free battery replacement for more iPhones besides the faulty iPhone 6S models.

07/12/2016

China's ZTE has agreed to buy 48.04 percent of Turkish systems integration provider Netas for 358 million Turkish lira (US$101.3 million), Netas said on its website yesterday.
This transaction remains subject to the Turkish Competition Authority’s approval.
ZTE, the Chinese telecom equipment giant, will become the largest shareholder of Netas after the transaction is completed.
“The transaction will equip Netas with additional technologies to provide more services and solutions to its customers and to expand its geographic reach,” Netas said in a statement.