China Tech News

Chinese telecom device maker Huawei has launched its first experience store in the Philippines.

Locating at the heart of SM Mall, Manila, this new experience store represents another major step of the overseas market expansion of Huawei and the company continues to develop and grow its brand influence.

With an area of 110 square meters, the Huawei experience store adopts a full-white minimalist design representing the "Huawei and I" idea, which aims to establish a better interaction between Huawei and its end users. In this store, users can experience Huawei's Android watch and Google's Nexus 6P smartphone made by Huawei.

Charles Wu, head of the Philippines region of Huawei, said at the store opening ceremony that they launched new technologies to help users improve their quality of life. Their existing devices are widely used by users every day. Huawei provides end-to-end solutions and they introduce new products to the market with their technologies.

Jojo Vega, Huawei's consumer business manager, said that consumers in the Philippines show great interest in Huawei's products. The company is now more confident and believes its stronger platform can attract more consumers and promote more interactions.

Huawei now has 40 branded retail stores and 32 simple sales outlets in the Philippines. The company plans to increase the number of its branded stores to 60 in the country by the end of 2015.

more...

Germany's Allianz SE recently announced that the group will cooperate with Baidu and Hillhouse Capital to begin a professional Internet insurance company project.

Oliver Bate, chief executive officer of Allianz, revealed that the joint venture will apply for a national license and will focus on property and casualty insurance and architectural property insurance.

The new JV plans to provide safeguard plans to individual clients and small- and medium-sized enterprises across China, covering tourism, health, and Internet financial insurances.

Public files show that Allianz is one of the largest insurance companies and its asset management scale listed the fifth in the world. By the end of 2014, Allianz managed about EUR1.8 trillion assets, which was about USD1.9 trillion. The company's businesses are mainly in the U.S., Germany, France, Italy, U.K., and Asia Pacific.

Prior to this, Allianz already set up life insurance and property insurance companies in China. It 1998, Allianz and Citic Trust Co., Ltd. established a joint venture in Shanghai. With registered capital of CNY2 billion, the JV is 51% owned by Allianz. In addition, Allianz has a wholly-owned property insurance subsidiary in China, with registered capital of CNY715 million.

more...

Chinese Internet and mobile Internet security company Cheetah Mobile announced a strategic deal with Yahoo for mobile search and native advertising platform partnerships.

With the cooperation, Cheetah Mobile will integrate Yahoo's "search in Apps" function into its various products, which will allow its users to enjoy Yahoo's latest Buzz search tool as well as other product functions.

In addition, Cheetah Mobile's anti-virus software CM Security and Yahoo's search and native ads platform Gemini have implemented a partial integration. Over the next few weeks, Cheetah Mobile's other flagship apps will also complete integration with Gemini. As the result of the integration, Cheetah Mobile's native ads will gain more data support.

Fu Sheng, chief executive officer of Cheetah Mobile, said they are honored to establish a strategic partnership with Yahoo, which will make Cheetah Mobile's products more practical. With the help of Yahoo's product, technical and commercial teams, Cheetah Mobile will provide users with better personalized services.

Ian Weingarten, Yahoo's senior vice president leading business development and strategic cooperation, said that together with the Cheetah Mobile team, they will develop innovative search technologies in Cheetah Mobile's products. Meanwhile, they are excited that Yahoo's search services and native ads product are available to global users via the platform of Cheetah Mobile.

more...

Ant Financial Services Group, a small and micro financial services company under Alibaba Group, announced that they will cooperate with many companies, including Korea Telecom, to set up an Internet bank named K Bank in South Korea.
The construction preparation of this bank was approved by the South Korean government. On the completion of the bank, it will provide innovative Internet financial services to people in South Korea.

It has been 23 years since the South Korean government issued its last bank license. This is also the first time for the country to issue a license to an Internet bank.

According to Ant Financial, K Bank is initiated by 20 shareholders, including Korea Telecom and Ant Financial; and Ant Financial is the only Chinese company. Under the approval of the South Korean government, K Bank will operate all banking services, including deposits, loans, credit cards, financial management, and foreign exchange services.

Jing Xiandong, president of Ant Financial, said that as a shareholder, Ant Financial hopes to use its successful experience in the Chinese Internet banking market to support its partners.

more...

PPTV's employees have received an appointment notice stating that Mi Xin will become new president and chief executive officer of PPTV, according to an insider from the company.

Since being acquired by Suning in 2013, PPTV's CEO has changed three times.

The notice included three appointments. Fan Zhijun was appointed chairman of management committee of PPTV, leading the resource sharing, coordination, and major decision management between the group and PPTV. Fan will also be responsible for PPTV's sports channel, human resources, finance, public relations, and plan management. Mi Xin was appointed president and CEO of PPTV, leading the company's daily operation management as well as video business, copyright procurement, OTT, and gaming business. Zhang Xun was appointed vice president of PPTV, and fully commands PPTV's sports channel.

In October 2013, Suning announced that the company would cooperate with Legend Holdings to jointly invest USD420 million in PPTV. With the transaction, Suning became the largest shareholder of PPTV with a 44% stake, while Legend Holdings' Hony Capital became the second largest shareholder with a 29.9% stake.

After the acquisition, many PPTV executives, including founder and CEO Tao Chuang, departed the company in March 2014 and Legend Holdings executive Lv Yan was appointed CEO of PPTV. On November 25, 2014, Suning announced that PPTV's board of directors appointed Fan Zhijun, vice president of Suning Commerce, as acting CEO of PPTV, replacing Lv.

more...

Taiwanese government officials revealed that Facebook plans to build a data center in Changhua, Taichung.
Commenting on the news, Facebook confirmed that they did find a suitable location in Taiwan to build a new data center; however, they have not yet made the final decision.

The government officials from Changhua said that Facebook hired a consulting service company to evaluate six candidate locations and the winner is the one near Changhua high speed rail station. In August 2015, Facebook sent its technical team for further evaluation of this site.

Facebook, which is blocked in mainland China, plans to invest NTD10 billion, which is about USD300 million, to build this new data center. The initial area of this data center will be six hectares and the final scale will reach 20 hectares.

Facebook is one of the most popular social networks in Taiwan. Facebook claimed that they have about 15 million monthly active users in the Taiwanese market. In January 2015, the company announced a decision to establish a small team in Taipei to provide better technical support to enterprises and application developers in Taiwan.

more...

Chinese multinational electronics company TCL announced that Yang Zhe, former China CMO of Huawei's consumer business, has joined TCL as the group's global chief operating officer and China president.

Yang's predecessor Wang Jiyang resigned due to health reasons.

In October 2012, Yang departed Samsung and joined Huawei. After that, Huawei's mobile phone brand style saw significant changes. On September 4, 2014, Huawei launched its flagship smartphone Mate7 in Germany with the idea of a "jazz life". Industry watchers commented that Huawei transformed from a "technical nerd" to a "young artist" with that stylistic change.
On October 21, 2015, Huawei announced that due to personal reasons, Yang would officially depart Huawei at the end of October 2015.
Yang's previous working experience included Samsung mobile phone's China CMO and RIM China CMO.

more...

Foxconn Group's Foxconn Electronics has enhanced investment in the second-hand smartphone market.

Foxconn Group's subsidiary NC-IH recently acquired a 20% stake in British mobile phone dealer Bamboo Distribution, which focuses on the recycling, refurbishment and distribution of used mobile phones. This investment will allow Foxconn to enter the European mobile phone recycling and reuse market to create a new operating revenue source.

Foxconn started tapping the used mobile phone market in September 2014, when the group's subsidiary FIH Mobile acquired 30% of CExchange, an electronics products recycling and reuse company in the U.S. In mainland China, the group also established a subsidiary to operate smartphone trade-in services. This subsidiary provides smartphone recycling, testing, reuse, and resale services via an Internet platform.

more...

The cadres running one of China's top banks are seeking a bigger exit, as they just landed a huge investment.
Postal Savings Bank of China sold shares to ten strategic investors, with a total financing scale of CNY45.1 billion. The ten investors include six international financial organizations: UBS, JPMorgan, DBS, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Temasek and International Finance Corporation; two large state-owned enterprises: China Life and China Telecom; and two Internet enterprises: Ant Financial and Tencent.

Prior to this, Ant Financial already cooperated with Postal Savings Bank of China in various sectors, including quick payment, user service, small and micro enterprise loan, big data analysis, and financial cloud computing.

In September 2015, Ant Financial announced a new project which aims to help over 1,000 financial organizations transform and upgrade to a new financial model in the next five years. The company will work together with those financial organizations to serve the real economy and a large user group by using the Internet, cloud computing, and big data technologies. The investment in Postal Savings Bank of China is reportedly an important step to realize this project.

The Postal Savings Bank of China is a commercial retail bank that was created in 2007 by China's State Post Bureau. This is the government body that regulates China Post, which is the government-run postal organization.

more...

Heyi Group, formerly known as Youku Tudou Group, and The9 announced that the two parties had signed an agreement to build a joint venture.

With the name of "Jiuhe Digital Entertainment Company", the new JV will be engaged in the development, production and distribution of gaming-related cultural entertainment content, including movies, Internet shows, Internet entertainment programs, and game development and distribution.

Both parties believe that it is important to extend quality intellectual property to multiple cultural and entertainment platforms to attract users, enhance user loyalty, and increase usage frequency. After the establishment of the JV, the two parties will make more effort to extend high-quality gaming into other sectors.

Gu Yongqiang, chairman and chief executive officer of Heyi Group, said that establishing a multi-screen cultural entertainment ecosystem has always been the development direction of Youku Tudou and the collaboration with games will become an important part of the ecosystem construction. They are glad to work together with The9 in this important strategic direction. In the future, they will bring more diversified entertainment contents and experience to users.


more...