China Tech News

Kingdee International Software Group and JD.com announced an agreement in which JD will invest HKD1.3 billion in cash to acquire about a 10% stake in Kingdee.

Meanwhile, the two parties plan to form a strategic partnership to provide small- and medium-sized enterprises with ERP integrated solutions based on cloud computing services.

Xu Shaochun, chairman and chief executive officer of Kingdee, said the two parties will integrate their enterprise customer and user resources to develop e-commerce and warehouse logistics solutions and accelerate Kingdee's cloud service business development.

Liu Qiangdong, chief executive officer of JD, said that they hope to further combine JD's e-commerce and logistics IT solutions with Kingdee's ERP solutions and move the combined solutions to an enterprise cloud platform. With this move, the two parties aim to better meet the growing demands for enterprise solutions in the Chinese market.

JD will purchase Kingdee shares at HKD4.6 per share. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2015.

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Chinese Internet security provider Qihoo 360 announced the establishment of a new enterprise security group.

Qi Xiangdong, president of Qihoo 360, will be chief executive officer of this new enterprise security group. Financial details, including capitalization structure for the technology business, were not made available by the company.

Using the research resources of Qihoo 360's mobile security research institute, network security research institute, network attack and defense lab, and vulnerability Research Lab, the enterprise security group aims to provide security solutions and services to enterprise users throughout China.

Qihoo 360 also released its new product named "SkyEye", which features a big data-based unknown threat sensing system. It can help large enterprise customers in the government, finance, and energy sectors discover and track unknown threats.

According to Tan Xiaosheng, technology vice president of Qihoo 360, while providing security solutions to enterprises, Qihoo 360 also offers a full range of security services, including security consulting, security operation and maintenance, and security training.
Earlier this month, Qihoo was accused of fraudulent activities in relation to its anti-virus services. At least three of the world's top testing laboratories — Virus Bulletin, AV-Comparatives and AV-Test Institute — revoked certifications for Qihoo 360's products because of the alleged cheating. The bodies stated that Qihoo 360 provided one set of results for certification, but then provided consumers a version of the software that had a "considerably lower level of protection".

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China's Hainan Airlines Tourism Group and Lede Technology, a subsidiary of NetEase, have formally signed a cooperation agreement in Hangzhou to establish a new online travel company.

Financial terms of the arrangement were not immediately available.

HNA and NetEase had previously signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement in December 2014. Based on the framework agreement, the two would implement cooperation in Internet tourism and Internet finance services. The establishment of the new joint venture shows that the two parties are optimistic about the rapid development of the Chinese Internet tourism market and it is a realization of their strategic cooperation framework agreement.

The joint venture will focus on Internet tourism product development, including user-oriented traveling tips, travel routes, and exclusive travel services for all product lines. At the same time, the JV will explore big data analysis and online payment sectors.

Lede Technology will use the advantages of its Internet technologies and applications to provide technical and marketing support to the new company; while HNA Tourism Group will use its tourism operating experience to aid the related innovative products of the JV.

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Letv and D.Phone announced a deal for D.Phone to open Letv experience zones in its over 4,000 outlets across China.
Those experience zones will become pre-sales and post-sales service sites of Letv products, which are mainly super phone and super TV products. Financial terms of the arrangement were not released.

Letv's LePar sales vice president Zhang Zhiwei said that D.Phone will not keep any stock of goods. Instead, the related deliveries will be provided by LePar. So, D.Phone will only play the role of having experience stores and the product purchases still need to be completed via the Internet. LePar is a partnership project launched by Letv.

By cooperating with Letv, D.Phone will gain commissions from the sales of Letv smart devices, accessories and derivatives. It can also gain income from post-sales services. In addition, as a partner of Letv, the company will have the opportunity to subscribe to possible equity of Letv.

As a traditional 3C channel, D.Phone is transforming itself to a service provider. The company hopes to use its offline network channels to provide complete O2O services to the technology industry. Meanwhile, Letv wants to establish an experience center ecosystem via the nationwide offline channel of D.Phone that allows users to experience the products before purchasing them online.

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China's X86 server market scale reached USD1.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of 23%, according to a report from market research firm Gartner.

Inspur, Dell, and Lenovo ranked the top three in this market.

Statistics from Gartner show that during the first quarter of 2015, the global server market saw obvious growth with shipments of 2.67 million units, representing a year-on-year increase of 13%. This was reportedly the first time for the global server market to reach double-digit growth since the global economic crisis in 2008.

Global server market growth was mainly contributed by America and Asia Pacific. Though the Middle East and Africa gained 21% growth, the net unit increase was not large.

In the Chinese market, Inspur servers led the marketplace with 21% market share, followed by Dell and Lenovo. The market shares of those top three manufacturers did not have large gaps.

In addition, Gartner reported that market shares of non-branded server providers further shrank, marking a year-on-year sales decrease of 68%.

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Gone will soon be the joys of walking to a curbside stall in a Chinese city to squeeze and select fruits.

Chinese fresh fruit and vegetable e-commerce provider Fruitday.com announced that the company has completed its series C financing of USD70 million. The investment will be used for the company's basic construction, team development, nationwide business expansion, and upstream supply chain construction.

The B2C e-commerce giant JD.com led the investment, and SIG and Clearvue participated.

With the investment, JD will further improve its market reach. In the future, Fruitday.com can be an important supplier to JD's online fruit channel. Meanwhile, JD can provide logistics support to Fruitday.com to help the company expand market share across China.
Shen Haoyu, chief executive officer of JD, said that e-commerce will become a major channel for fruit and fresh food consumption in China in coming years. The investment in Fruitday.com will benefit JD's in-depth development in the vertical sector and enhance their platform position.

Founded in 2009, Fruitday.com is an early starter in the Chinese fruit and fresh food e-commerce market. It has years of experience in cold chain distribution and supply operation and claims to have realized a profit. The company completed its series A financing in 2013 and series B in 2014.

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The Internet of Things is expanding quickly in China, as Chinese Internet security provider Qihoo 360 and real estate developer Huayuan Group have now formed a strategic partnership to promote secure smart home services.

Financial terms and organizational details of the new arrangement have not been released by either company.

The firms will design and provide family security smart products and management systems, covering smart cameras, secure routers, healthkit devices, home appliance safety alarms, and gas and smoke smart alarms. With those products, Qihoo 360 will help Huayuan Group improve existing public area security monitoring system and establish a new family security smart management service.

Meanwhile, the two companies will team to build China's first smart community, which will be located in Changsha. The cooperation will then expand to Beijing, Shanghai, and Huayuan's other real estate projects across China that will integrate the Internet of Things devices.

Zhou Hongyi, chairman of Qihoo 360, said that the strategic IoT cooperation with Huayuan Group aims to create various innovative smart hardware using the omnipresent Internet to establish secure and convenient smart community and smart homes.

In addition, Zhou and Huayuan Group former chairman Ren Zhiqiang jointly initiated China's first venture capital fund for smart homes. This fund will focus on supporting smart hardware start-ups.

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Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holding Limited is investing nearly USD194 million into a Chinese financial news media company.

Alibaba Group signed a strategic agreement with Shanghai Media Group to leverage both companies' Internet technology and media resources to penetrate China's financial information services industry. Alibaba Group intends to invest CNY1.2 billion into China Business News, a Chinese financial media subsidiary of SMG, to create a financial data and information services company.

By utilizing Alibaba Group's big data and cloud computing capabilities, both companies will jointly develop a comprehensive financial data and information platform that will provide users with timely financial news and information in order to enhance their investment and financial decision-making capabilities.

Financial news and information is a high value vertical sector within China. Foreign entrants Euromoney Institutional Investor, Economist, WSJ, Haymarket, Financial Times, and Incisive Media are trying to cope with other local players like China Money Network and China Finance Online who have a much better grasp of the Internet news needs of Chinese investors and decision-makers.

The aim of this combined CBN and Alibaba platform is to raise the bar on enterprise efficiency in China by leveling the information playing field. By giving a greater number of Chinese enterprises access to precious financial data that can be easily mined and analyzed for actionable investment and business decisions, this platform is expected to help these enterprises scale and expand their businesses.

This strategic agreement with SMG is expected to help Alibaba Group develop data-driven financial products and services to enrich the lives of Chinese users.

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Chinese Internet video company Letv.com, which established its Asia Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong in August 2014, now plans to invest HKD6 billion in Hong Kong in the next three years to build the largest Internet movie and TV entertainment platform in Asia.

The company will produce TV series in Hong Kong and plans to shoot five TV shows within two years.

According to Mo Cuitian, Letv's vice president and Asia Pacific executive president, the new Internet movie and TV entertainment platform will replace the traditional live broadcast model with a video-on-demand model, providing flexible entertainment choices to audiences in Hong Kong.

Mo said that Letv will implement active development and hiring in the Hong Kong market. For program content and transmission technologies, the company aims to offer unprecedented experiences to the local Hong Kong audience.

Letv previously expressed its intention to cooperate with Asia Television. Mo said that Letv has no intention to participate in TV license bidding in Hong Kong and its cooperation with Asia Television will be limited to the existing resources of that company. At present, all cooperation plans are undergoing discussion.

So far, Letv boasts 100,000 clicks in Hong Kong in peak time. Mo said the vide-on-demand service will be a paid service and its paid users are expected to increase to one million by the end of 2016. Hong Kong has less than eight million residents, though, which is about the same as a medium-sized mainland Chinese city like Hangzhou.

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Chinese online game and mobile Internet application developer NetDragon announced that Simon Leung, former Microsoft worldwide senior vice president and Greater China CEO, has joined NetDragon as deputy chairman of the board of directors.

Meanwhile, Leung will be chief executive officer of Huayu Education Technology Company Limited, a subsidiary of NetDragon, leading the company's overall strategy development and daily operation. In addition, Leung will be responsible for strategic planning and development of NetDragon's worldwide education business.

According to public files, Leung joined Motorola as Asia Pacific president in March 2005 and he also worked as chairman of Motorola (China) Electronics Limited. On November 13, 2008, Leung was appointed Microsoft worldwide senior vice president and Greater China chairman and CEO. On April 13, 2012, Leung resigned from Microsoft.

Commenting on the joining of Leung, Liu Dejian, chairman of NetDragon and founder of Huayu Education, said that they value Leung's rich experience in team management, government relationship, and education sector. It will help Huayu Education achieve development in cooperation between government and enterprise and drive the company's overseas business expansion.

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