China Tech News

Facebook will reportedly set up a new office in Taiwan which will be engaged in platform advertising sales.

Facebook said in a statement that the company will establish a small team in Taipei. This team will mainly be responsible for contacting local Taiwanese enterprises and application software developers and providing technical support to them.
Facebook is reportedly one of the most popular social networking sites in Taiwan. The company said they have about 15 million monthly active users in the market and many of them login Facebook via mobile devices. Taiwan has a total population of 23 million.

Facebook did not reveal the scale of its team in Taiwan.

But a Taiwan entry does not mean Mainland China access. Advertising sales in China must only be run by Chinese companies, so Facebook would first need to find local, trustworthy partners in China for advertising sales.

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Chen Liming is the new IBM chairman of the Greater China region.

Before joining IBM, Chen was China president of British Petroleum and has extensive operating experience in the Chinese market.
Chen gained his Master's degree from Cornell University in 1989 and completed an advanced management program at Harvard Business School in 2003. He joined British Petroleum in November 2008 and was appointed president of British Petroleum China in 2009.

After joining IBM, Chen will work closely with D.C. Chien, chief executive president of IBM Greater China, to jointly lead the Greater China business. His major duties are cultivating, enhancing, and expanding IBM's extensive cooperation in the Chinese business ecosystem. As chairman of Greater China, Chen will provide suggestions, guidance and counseling to IBM's leadership team and cooperating partners.

IBM said that as an important position in IBM, the post of Greater China chairman will help create IBM China's growth strategy and promote the business development of IBM in Greater China.


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Following the establishment of offices in Ottawa and Markham, the Chinese telecom device maker Huawei recently expressed intention to set up a new research and development office in Waterloo, Canada.

The new office will be committed to solving mobile phone security issues. However, the establishment of the new R&D office is still subject to Huawei's hiring of enough engineers in Waterloo.

In regards to the recruitment, Huawei has invited Scott Totzke, former senior vice president of security unit of BlackBerry, to be in charge of device and enterprise security. Totzke joined Huawei in September 2014 and his current position is senior vice president of Huawei's device and enterprise security department in Kitchener and Waterloo. In addition, Huawei will hire a research expert in Kitchener to lead and train an elite team for mobile phone security.

Huawei currently has 250 employees in the Ottawa headquarters, which was established by three specialists in 2008. At the same time, the Chinese company has 325 employees in Markham office, which is mainly responsible for finance, sales, and management. In autumn of 2014, Huawei announced that they would invest USD210 million in Ontario, Canada in the next five years and add 325 employees, including 250 engineers.

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Robin Li, founder of Baidu.com, announced via an internal email that the company will integrate its existing business groups and business units into three major business groups.

Baidu has confirmed the news and said that the three major business groups will be a mobile service business group, emerging business group, and search business group.

The internal email revealed that Baidu's existing mobile cloud business unit and LBS business unit will be integrated and form the new mobile service business group. Baidu's vice president Li Mingyuan and vice president Liu Jun will be responsible for this business group, and Liu will report to Li.

The existing new business group, user consumer business group, and international business unit will be integrated and form the new emerging business group. Baidu's president Zhang Yaqin and vice president Wang Zhan will be responsible for this business group, and Wang will report to Zhang.

The existing search underlying technology sector of the mobile cloud business unit and mobile search alliance business will be integrated into the search business group. This search business group, along with group buying business, will continue to be commanded by Baidu's senior vice president Xiang Hailong and vice president Wang Haifeng, and Wang will report to Xiang.

Baidu said that with the restructuring, Baidu's businesses will be further concentrated, which will help improve company efficiency and provide better services to Chinese netizens in the mobile Internet era.

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How much is a good website domain name worth these days? An insider from Qihoo 360 confirmed that the company has invested USD17 million, which is about CNY110 million, to acquire the top-level domain 360.com.
This top-level domain was previously owned by telecom carrier Vodafone.

At present, the domain has directed to Qihoo 360's search engine site Haosou.com. At the same time, the owner information of domain record has been updated to Beijing Qihoo Technology Company Limited.

Qihoo 360's domain acquisition price reportedly sets a new record for domain transactions, making 360.com the most expensive publicly-priced domain in the world. Prior to this, Sex.com held the first position. This domain was acquired by Clover Holdings Ltd from an adult entertainment company named Escom LLC for USD13 million in 2008.

The insider from Qihoo 360 said that the lack of an international top-level domain was a major brand risk for the company. The domain acquisition will help Qihoo 360 improve its international brand image and eliminate the brand risk. In 2015, Qihoo 360 will enhance expansion in overseas markets and this new top-level domain will become a big advantage.

The security software and mobile services company previously relied on the domain 360.cn, but now it will focus on solely using the new 360.com domain name.

Dropping the .cn domain name is important for international expansion because many email providers will block email coming from .cn domains; search engines pigeonhole .cn domains as only focusing on Chinese users; and many international users are unaware of the .cn extension and will attempt instead to always visit the .com address.

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Lenovo Group has reached a deal with Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited to jointly build a cloud service and product research and development center.

According to the agreement signed by the two parties, Lenovo and Cyberport will cooperate in various sectors, including science and technology development and innovation; talent training and employment; local cloud computing; big data; and Internet industry development.

Lenovo cloud service and product research and development center will focus on two areas in this deal. The company will implement research in big data and enterprise cloud service infrastructure platforms. Meanwhile, Lenovo will establish its Asia Pacific data center in Cyberport.

Hong Kong Cyberport is an innovation digital community, which integrates over 300 technology and digital business tenants. Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited is fully owned by Hong Kong SAR government.

Cyberport has been maligned in recent years. The Hong Kong MTR subway system was aiming at opening a station at Cyberport this year, but local community organizations who have been upset for years that Cyberport took valuable real estate, killed the MTR plans. Therefore, transportation to and from Cyberport is still troublesome for employees of companies located there in the southeast corner of Hong Kong island.


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Chinese telecom device maker Huawei announced in Xi'an that the company has completed the construction of a network functions virtualization open lab with an initial investment of over USD5 million.

Liang Hua, president of Huawei global technical service unit, said that the NFV open lab is an innovation center for ICT convergence. It is committed to open cooperation and joint innovation with global partners to establish an NFV industrial eco-chain, integrate value, and help the business success of clients.

Huawei believes that with the fast development of cloud technologies, the traditional business structure of telecom carriers will not be able to meet the customer experience demands of users and they need to transform to ICT-integrated cloud structure. NFV will change the closeness feature of traditional telecom networks, shorten business innovation cycle, lower operating costs, and establish an open industrial chain.

Huawei said that the company has implemented NFV joint innovation and project verification with over 20 carriers around the world. In 2015, they plan to continue in-depth NFV cooperation with over 50 industrial partners.



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China Mobile and Chinese search engine Baidu reached a deal to jointly build a new-generation mobile Internet cloud computing center.
The center is named Baidu Yizhuang New-generation Search Data Center (first phase) and financial terms of the deal were not released..
According to China Mobile, this will become the industry's first large-scale cloud computing center which targets mobile Internet businesses.

Baidu Yizhuang New-generation Search Data Center (first phase) is jointly invested and constructed by China Mobile and Baidu. With a total construction area of about 38,000 square meters, it plans to deploy over 40,000 servers. The new cloud computing center will adopt green energy-saving design ideas and apply Baidu's patent technologies. Its technical parameters will reportedly be the highest density, lowest power consumption, and most balanced in China.

The data center will reportedly begin operation at the beginning of 2016. By then, China Mobile will provide 1,388 high-power high-density cabinets to Baidu.

At present, China Mobile's cloud computing bases in Beijing and Guangzhou have already put into operation, and its projects in Harbin, Guizhou and Suzhou are undergoing construction.

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Chinese Internet video company Letv.com announced that they have established a new smart hardware development company named Leie.

Leie will focus on the development of smart hardware to connect smartphones and smart TVs and establish a smart product ecosphere with content and applications focusing on health, entertainment, sports, and families.

The company appointed Peng Gang, former chief marketing officer of smart device business cluster, as new senior vice president of Letv Holdings and president of Leie. Peng will directly report to Jia Yueting, chairman and chief executive officer of Letv. In the future, Peng will be responsible for the construction of Letv's smart product ecosphere.

Peng said the future smart hardware should have service-oriented content and its ultimate goal is to learn user habits and recommend suitable content for users. Meanwhile, smart hardware should be personalized and can be customized in accordance to different user carriers and demands.

The Leie brand originates from Letv's "Made for Lemi" project, which means made for Letv fans. At present, Leie has two products: a smart storytelling machine and a Bluetooth headset.
Financial terms, including capitalization levels, of the new company setup were not released.


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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited announced on its website that the company will invest over NTD500 billion, which is about USD15.9 billion, to build a new plant to meet the ever-growing demands for chips.

The new plant will be located in Central Taiwan Science Park and it is currently undergoing an environmental impact assessment. On its completion, the new plant will create 5,000 new jobs, including 3,500 manager and engineer positions and 1,500 technical positions. At the same time, those new jobs are expected to create extra taxes of over NTD1 billion, which is about USD32 million.

In 2015, TSMC plans to increase investment to improve chip output to win more orders. TSMC is currently producing processors for Apple; however, it faces serious challenges from Samsung.

TSMC previously predicted that the company will achieve operating revenue between NTD221 billion and NTD224 billion in the first quarter of 2015. In the fourth quarter of 2014, the company's net profit was NTD80 billion, a year-on-year increase of 79%. In addition, the company's capital expense was USD9.5 billion in 2014 and the number is expected to reach between USD11.5 billion and USD12 billion.

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