China Tech News

Alibaba Group announced plans to further promote its globalization European strategy, stating that they will upgrade their office in London into a European strategic center.

At the same time, the group will open a new office in Milan, Italy.

The news was announced by Michael Evans, Alibaba Group president and head of globalization affairs. He also announced two personnel changes: Amee Chande was appointed Alibaba Britain general manager and Rodrigo Cipriani Foresio was appointed Alibaba Italy general manager. Over the next few months, the group will open more offices in European countries such as France and Germany.

Evans said Chinese consumers have been looking for high-quality international brands and overseas products. Europe is known for its variety of premium brands and high-quality products and that is why Alibaba chooses this marketplace to reinforce its localized operations.

By opening offices in many countries in Europe, Alibaba will start creating a one-stop global infrastructure platform, which will promote the realization of its global purchasing and sales strategy.

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ImbaTV, a gaming video contents provider in China, announced that the company has completed its second round financing of about CNY100 million.

According to ImbaTV, its investors include Zijin Cultural Development Fund owned by Addor Capital, Prometheus Capital, and its first round investors Sequoia Capital and Innovation Works. So far, all investments have reportedly been received.

As a new investor of ImbaTV, Addor Capital chairman Ying Wenlu said they are optimistic about the future development of China's e-sports industry. Ying said there are over 40 million e-sports audience members in China, which can compare favorably with traditional sports events. In the future, the value of e-sports events will continue to increase.

In addition, Ying said China is gradually releasing its policy limits on e-sports, and this will promote the rapid development of this industry. The investment in ImbaTV is an important focus of Zijin Cultural Development Fund in the e-sports industry. Zijin Cultural Development Fund will use its resources to drive the development of ImbaTV.

ImbaTV will invest the newly financed capital in three sectors: creating and making new gaming entertainment programs; exploring business liquidity models in new areas of gaming O2O; and organizing international e-sports events.

ImbaTV is also striving to expand Chinese e-sports culture to other countries. The company has reached strategic cooperation with Ukraine's Starladder, aiming to introduce Chinese e-sports culture to the world.

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Le Sports, the sports business of Letv.com, announced a strategic investment to acquire a 20% stake in World Sport Group.
With this investment, Le Sports will become one of the three major shareholders of WSG, alone with France's Lagardere Groupe and Japan's Dentsu. The total amount spent on the 20% was not made immediately available.

Starting from 1990s, WSG became the exclusive agent of the Asian Football Confederation, operating media copyrights and business development rights of all AFC events. Apart from being a long-term partner of AFC, WSG also manages other top event resources in Asia, including WTA finals from 2014 to 2018, SMBC Singapore Open, and Emirates Australian Open.

Lagardere Groupe has over 20 years of experience in the Asian sports sector. It can provide customers with various services such as stadium consulting, athlete agent, integrated marketing of sponsor brands, media cooperation, and governmental sports institution cooperation.

Commenting on this investment, Le Sports CEO Lei Zhenjian said that it is an important step for Le Sports to realize upstream event resource layout and global strategy. Meanwhile, by cooperating with Le Sports, Lagardere Groupe can rapidly merge into the Chinese market and get close contact with China's new-generation of sports fans, who are deeply influenced by the Internet.
Le Sports also announced that the company has gained the full media copyrights in mainland China for all AFC events from 2017 to 2020.

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Uber China announced that the company will invest CNY63 million to build an operating center in the Wuhan East Lake High-tech Development Zone.

This is Uber's first major operating center outside North America. Meanwhile, it boasts the largest area and highest investment for the company.

According to Uber, this new operating center will be an operation and management hub that serves the company's cooperating car owners and passengers in China. It will provide various technical service support and collect and research user feedback.
Liu Zhen, head of Uber China strategy, said that Uber China will also establish its big data analysis center, customer experience support center, and new product research and development center in this Wuhan site.

Prior to this, Uber had two operating centers in Chicago and Phoenix, respectively. Those two centers serve over 75% of the population of 199 cities across North America.

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China Mobile's Internet subsidiary named China Mobile Internet Business gained its business license on October 30, 2015, and has begun formal operations.

But why is China's largest mobile carrier forming an offshoot company solely focused on Internet services now? China Mobile president Li Yue revealed at the end of 2012 that the behemoth would establish an Internet company to integrate China Mobile's Internet businesses and create independent operations. He said at the time that China Mobile's video and online content would be included into a new media company as well. They expected to complete the company establishment in 2013, but the progress to create the subsidiary was slow.

At the beginning of 2015, China Mobile finally launched its new media company named Migu, which integrates music, videos, reading, gaming, and animation content of China Mobile. So the new China Mobile Internet Business company will complement Migu by focusing on key Internet sectors for consumers and businesses.

Headquartered in Guangzhou, Guangdong, the new company will be led by Hong Xiaoqin, former general manager of China Mobile Inner Mongolia.

Hong was born in 1964 and as a senior engineer, he has extensive experience in engineering equipment maintenance. In 1985, Hong joined Guangdong Provincial Postal Administration as the deputy director; in 1999, he was appointed deputy general manager of China Mobile Guangdong; and in September 2010, he was transferred to China Mobile Inner Mongolia as general manager.

New service rollouts and total expected capitalization levels have not yet been announced for the new Internet venture.

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HP's online-to-offline printing service in China has closed.

Prior to this, the O2O printing service had been terminated in four countries, including India.

According to a report on the official website of Kachayu.com, due to company business adjustments, Kachayu has shut down all businesses in China. However, the uploaded pictures will be maintained and users can visit and download those pictures via the global English website.

Kachayu, which is more widely known as Snapfish, was acquired by HP for USD300 million in 2005. It provides professional photo printing, online photo sharing, and a series of customized gifts with photos. Meanwhile, users can save their pictures online without storage limits. Snapfish claims to keep three billion pictures for 40 million users.

In Europe, Snapfish provided services in 11 countries; while in Asia Pacific, it operated photo-related businesses in Singapore, India, Australia, New Zealand, and China. About two years ago, HP already expressed intention to close Snapfish online photo storage, sharing and printing services in India, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain.

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NetEase has invested USD25 million in a Finnish gaming start-up named Reforged Studios, which has not yet officially published any product.

According to reports in Chinese local media, NetEase said in a report that they implemented the investment via NetEase Capital Venture; however, the company did not reveal its equity stake.

Headquartered in Helsinki, Reforged Studios was just established in 2015. The company plans to launch its first product, an epic combat game, on mobile devices in 2016.

NetEase said that Reforged Studios' founding team members previously worked for well-known gaming companies, including Riot Games, Electronic Arts, and Blizzard Entertainment. The official website of Reforged Studios has information of nine members of the company, including four co-founders holding positions of CEO, COO, CTO, and "Game Tech Lead"; and other five persons taking art director, innovation director, senior designer, senior engineer, and brand manager roles.

Apart from the Helsinki headquarters, Reforged Studios also opened an office in Los Angeles.


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The sale of fake and counterfeit goods in China has finally ended the services of a major online shopping service.

Chinese B2C e-commerce operator JD.com announced that they will stop services at Paipai.com on December 31, 2015, and after a three-month transition period the website will be completely shut down by April 1, 2016.
Paipai.com already stopped accepting new vendors, and JD.com said that according to the platform service agreement between Paipai.com and current vendors, the store services provided by the website will end on December 31, 2015, and will not be renewed. The team at Paipai.com will merge into other units of the e-commerce group to focus on innovative businesses such as mobile social e-commerce.

The major reason for closing Paipai.com is the unsolvable problem of fake goods. The company said the C2C model does not require industrial and commercial registration of individual sellers, which leads to ineffective supervision and illegal sales of counterfeit goods.

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Chinese drone maker DJI is preparing to open its first offline flagship retail store in Shenzhen in December 2015.
This new store in Shenzhen will have an area about 800 square meters, which is reportedly the company's largest retail investment in the world. The flagship store will display all products of the company, from high-end and entry-level drones to Osmo handheld stabilized cameras.

DJI's high-end Inspire 1 is sold at over USD4,000 and the prices are varied basing on camera modes and other functions; while the cheapest one Phantom 2 is only about USD500.

DJI has already cooperated with dealers around the world to sell drones outside of mainland China. However, those are small airport stores and short-term retail stores, and most of the company's products are still sold online.

DJI just purchased a minority stake in Swedish high-end camera maker Hasselblad at the beginning of November 2015.

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Chinese Internet tourism services provider Tuniu.com officially confirmed that Hainan Airlines Tourism Group has made a USD500 million investment in the company.
On the completion of the transaction, Hainan Airlines Tourism Group will become the largest shareholder of Tuniu.com with about 24.1% of the shares.

Tuniu announced in May 2015 that the company received total new investments of USD500 million, including USD350 million from JD.com. With that investment, JD.com became the largest shareholder of Tuniu with a 27.5% stake and the e-commerce company also gained one position on the board of Tuniu. However, only after six months, JD was replaced by Hainan Airlines Tourism Group in this new capital infusion.

By the end of 2014, Hainan Airlines Tourism Group had total assets of CNY115 billion and the group realized revenue of over CNY36.8 billion during 2014.

Tuniu revealed that after Hainan Airlines Tourism's strategic investment in Tuniu, the two parties will implement in-depth cooperation in online tourism, airline, and hotel services.


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