China Tech News

Express Mobile, an information technology company in the U.S., has sued China's Alibaba for patent infringement.
According to Express Mobile, the company filed the patent infringement lawsuit against the Alibaba Group in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division.

In the statement, Express Mobile accused Alibaba for infringing its patent related to the development of platform independent websites. The involved patent record number is 6,546,397.

Express Mobile is an enterprise mobility solutions provider. In November 2013, the company formed a sales and intellectual property partnership with NYSE-listed enterprise solutions provider Document Security Systems, which became a minor shareholder of Express Mobile in 2014.

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The news in recent days of China's "Great Cannon" and a related research report from Canada has cast a spotlight from outside China on the machinations of China's government-run Internet services.

Dubbed "Great Cannon" in a research report from the University of Toronto's Citizenlab, the researchers say, "The Great Cannon is not simply an extension of the Great Firewall, but a distinct attack tool that hijacks traffic to (or presumably from) individual IP addresses, and can arbitrarily replace unencrypted content as a man-in-the-middle."

In particular, the Great Cannon report shows how a recent coordinated Distributed Denial of Service attack hijacked Baidu.com's web traffic to help shutdown services on foreign-run websites such as Github.com.

Citizenlab adds, "We believe there is compelling evidence that the Chinese government operates the GC. In recent public statements, China has deflected questions regarding whether they are behind the attack, instead emphasizing that China is often itself a victim of cyber attacks."

Baidu has not released any official statement either about their involvement with Great Cannon or how it impacts their financial bottom line, but other media outlets have quoted Baidu representatives as saying the Chinese search engine company has not been involved with any activity related with Great Cannon.

"The incorporation of Baidu in this attack suggests that the Chinese authorities are willing to pursue domestic stability and security aims at the expense of other goals, including fostering economic growth in the tech sector," says Citizenlab.

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Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi announced that the company has terminated its exclusive cooperation with Flipkart, a leading e-commerce provider in India, and signed agreements instead with Amazon and Snapdeal for the sales of smartphones in India.

Xiaomi started an exclusive cooperation with Flipkart for the sale of its smartphones when the company entered the Indian market last year. The news to drop Flipkart was unexpected and the company did not provide concrete details on whether the relationship soured.
Apart from the e-commerce channels in India, Xiaomi teams with Airtel in the development of physical stores for the sales of 4G edition Redmi Note. In addition, the company is working with The Mobile Store to sell Xiaomi smartphones in designated stores.

China's Xiaomi is good at phone device marketing and the company recently started selling phone accessories on its official website Mi.com. By adding Amazon and Snapdeal as its partners, Xiaomi will be able to provide products on all the three top e-commerce platforms in India.


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Ensogo, an e-commerce website which focuses on discounted daily deals, has received a USD5 million strategic investment from Vip.com, an online discount retailer for brands in China formerly known as Vipshop.com.

According to Ensogo, China Renaissance was the exclusive financial consultant for this deal.

Founded in 2010, Ensogo was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in December 2013. Ensogo provides discounted products to over 600 million users in Southeast Asia and its businesses currently cover Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

Kris Marszalek, chief executive officer of Ensogo, said that by cooperating with Vip.com, the company expects to further enhance and develop its businesses in Southeast Asia in the future. They believe a long-term partnership will create positive synergistic effects.

Gu Weiguo, investment management director of Vip.com, said that Ensogo is a well-known discount e-commerce provide in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. The strategic investment in Ensogo is an important measure of the global e-commerce platform development strategy of Vip.com. With the investment, Vip.com will be able to better understand the fast-growing Southeast Asia e-commerce market. At the same time, the company will use its experience in the discount retail sector to help Ensogo achieve better performance.

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Meican.com, a Chinese meal ordering platform, announced that the company has completed its third round financing of CNY140 million, and its investors included Dianping.com, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Nokia Growth Partners, and TBP Capital.
Zhao Xiao, chief executive officer of Meican.com, said that by introducing the strategic investment of Dianping.com, the company will be able to accelerate its coverage expansion and provide a comprehensive service platform to the enterprise consumer market.

Jiang Yueping, chief strategy officer of Dianping.com, said that taking corporate dining as an entrance to the sector, the two parties can offer food and beverage as well as entertainment services to enterprise users in the future to serve more users.
Founded in 2011, Meican.com currently provides services in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Chengdu. Its services cover online meal ordering for employees of enterprise clients, business meals, and team buffets. Meican.com claims that their annual turnover had reached several hundred million yuan; their operating revenue realized year-on-year increase of over 800%; and their commission rate was over 10%.

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Lenovo has appointed new regional presidents for North America and EMEA as part of its business unit restructuring.

Lenovo says Aymar de Lencquesaing, former president of EMEA, is the new president of North America, effective from April 7, 2015. Lencquesaing joined Lenovo at the end of 2013 and was responsible for mobile business in EMEA. In February 2014, he was promoted to president of EMEA and senior vice president of Lenovo Group.

Under Lencquesaing's leadership, Lenovo gained 19.7% PC market share in EMEA in the third financial quarter of 2014, which was a record high; the region's operating revenue reached a year-on-year increase of 40%; and it contributed 29% of global operating revenue of Lenovo. In addition, EMEA became Lenovo's largest tablet market and Lenovo's smartphone business reached nearly 50 countries in this region.

Before joining Lenovo, Lencquesaing already had over 20 years' working experience in the American market. In his new role as president of Lenovo North America, Lencquesaing will be responsible for promoting Lenovo's business growth in this marketplace.
At the same time, Lenovo announced to appoint Eric Cador as new president of EMEA and senior vice president of the company, effective from May 1, 2015. Cador has over 30 years' IT market management experience and previously worked for HP as senior vice president of the PSG unit.

Both Lencquesaing and Cador will report to Lenovo's president and chief operating officer Gianfranco Lanci.

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Consumer complaints during the first quarter of 2015 for Internet shopping increased by 174.4% year-on-year to 24,100 cases, according to statistics published by State Administration for Industry and Commerce of China.

The State Administration revealed that China's nationwide industry and commerce administrative units received a total of 1.701 million consumer complaints, reports and inquiries in the first quarter of 2015, representing a year-on-year increase of 18.7%.
During the reporting period, consumer complaints saw a year-on-year increase and complaints related to service saw a significant growth. The industry and commerce administrative units reportedly received 266,000 consumer complaints, a year-on-year increase of 8.6%. Of those complaints, service consumer complaints increased by 17.8% year-on-year to 111,000 cases; while product-related consumer complaints increased by 3%.

Among service consumer complaints, Internet shopping complaints accounted for the largest part and with the fastest increase. The top three complaint categories were Internet shopping, which reported 24,100 cases and accounted for 21.8% of total service consumer complaints; resident services, which reported 14,000 cases and accounted for 12.6%; and telecom services, which reported 13,000 cases and accounted for 11.6%.

The State Administration said that they will investigate and punish acts that disturb the market order, enhance network market supervision, and handle legal provisions to protect Chinese netizens.

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Chinese lifestyle service platform 58.com announced a merger with its classified information listings competitor Ganji.com.
According to the agreement, 58.com will acquire an approximately 43.2% fully diluted equity stake in Ganji.com for a combination of share consideration and cash, including approximately 34 million newly issued ordinary shares and USD412.2 million in cash. Meanwhile, the two companies will maintain independence of their respective brands, websites, and teams; and they will continue independent development and operations.

The report also revealed that Tencent will purchase USD400 million newly issued shares of 58.com at the price of USD52 per ADS. Following the completion of this additional investment by Tencent, Tencent will hold in aggregate approximately 25.1% of the total issued and outstanding shares of 58.com on a fully-diluted basis.

Yao Jinbo, chairman and CEO of 58.com, said that they are pleased to make this large-scale strategic investment in Ganji.com to jointly realize major cost, revenue, and strategic business synergies in China. This transaction is part of a larger plan to execute their vision of integrating their respective businesses and creating a larger and more effective local services Internet platform to help consumers around China find the services that they need in their local areas. Ganji.com has done a tremendous job building a talented team, Yao said, and 58.com is looking forward to working more closely with them as they continue to expand in this growing and underserved market.

Yang Yonghao, chairman and CEO of Ganji.com, said that after extensive discussions, they are pleased to reach this strategic agreement with 58.com. Both Ganji and 58.com are leading players in the online classified market and have developed unique capabilities in O2O. Personally and on behalf of Ganji, Yang says he looks forward to taking advantage of the great chemistry between Ganji and 58.com, and leveraging their respective resources and advantages.

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Japan-based Rakuten has taken a minority stake in Fanli.com, one of China's online rebate and rebate-based flash sale companies.

The C-series round values the Chinese online shopping company at approximately USD1 billion. As part of this investment, Kevin H. Johnson, CEO of Ebates, a Rakuten Group company, will join Fanli's board of directors. Rakuten's investment gives it less than a 10% stake.

Fanli is one of the largest rebate-based loyalty shopping programs in China and a pioneer in flash promotion service, a combination of cash back and flash sales for brands. Ebates, which operates Chinese cross-border loyalty shopping sites Ebates.cn and Extrabux.com, is one of the largest online shopper loyalty programs in the United States. Rakuten, which acquired Ebates in 2014, is the largest e-commerce site in Japan and is rapidly expanding its global market service and cross-border shopping capabilities.

Fanli is headquartered in Shanghai and claims over 70 million members.

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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. published its performance statistics for March and the first quarter of 2015.
According to TSMC, the company achieved operating revenue of NTD222.03 billion, which was about CNY42.25 billion, during the first quarter of 2015, representing a year-on-year increase of 49.8% and a slight decrease of 0.2% compared with the previous quarter.

Meanwhile, the company stated that its operating revenue in March 2015 was NTD72.269 billion, which was about CNY14.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 44.7% and an increase of 15.4% compared with the previous month.

Mark Liu, co-CEO of TSMC, revealed that the company may realize volume production of 10-nanometer production process at the end of 2016. As the manufacturing base of the 10-nanometer process, TSMC's plant in Central Taiwan Science Park will start construction in May 2015.

In addition, TSMC predicted its 16-nanometer process will realize volume production between the second quarter and the third quarter of 2015.

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