China Tech News

China Mobile plans to build over 300,000 new 4G base stations in 2016 and aims to increase the number of its 4G users to over 500 million by the end of 2016.

During China Mobile's terminal cooperation meeting 2015, the company's vice president Li Hui revealed that China Mobile has completed the construction of over one million 4G base stations. The company has finished its third-phase construction and realized continuous 4G coverage in towns and villages.

Li also said that 2016 is a very important period for enhancing the leading advantages of 4G. China Mobile will continue to promote the construction and optimization of its 4G network, continue to promote 4G user development, and accelerate the transfer of 2G and 3G users to 4G.

The development of 4G needs the supports of terminals. Li pointed out that in 2016 China Mobile will continue to promote the fusion development of TDD and FDD networks. With commercial trials in various provinces, China Mobile is expected to realize the commercial use of VoLTE in the middle of 2016.

Meanwhile, China Mobile will promote the collaborative development of 4G terminals of all ends. Li said nearly half of China Mobile's existing 2G and 3G users still use non-smartphones. The company plans to explore customer demands and accelerate the moving of those users to 4G.

Financial details of the investment planned for the 300,000 base station roll-out was not made available.

more...

Chinese drone maker DJI has reached a deal with U.S. infrared thermal imager maker FLIR Systems to produce infrared thermal imaging cameras which will be equipped on DJI's drone products in the future.

The new infrared thermal imaging camera is named Zenmuse XT, and it will add thermal imaging functions to DJI's drone products such as Inspire One and Matrice.

Though the company did not disclose the price of the Zenmuse XT, DJI said this product is expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2016. The Zenmuse XT uses the same kind of gimbal as Inspire One and Matrice, which allows easy switches with DJI's traditional cameras.

DJI's products reportedly hold a dominate position in the global consumer drone market and they are popular among cinematographers. Those products feature strong functions and are apparently easy to use. In addition, statistics show that over half of the unmanned aerial vehicles that submitted flying applications to Federal Aviation Administration are made by DJI.

In the next few years, the commercial drone market will be worth approximately several billion US dollars. With its leading position in the consumer drone market, DJI hopes to integrate professional technologies into consumer drones and expand into the booming commercial drone market.

more...

China Electronics Technology Group Corporation and Microsoft announced that the two parties will establish a joint venture to develop local operating systems in China.

With registered capital of USD40 million, the new joint venture is 51% owned by CETC and 49% owned by Microsoft.
After the signing of the JV memorandum of understanding, Microsoft will support the JV's development of customized operating systems and help existing Windows clients, including government and professional users, move to future customized solutions. In the future, the JV will be committed to establishing local operating system development and service capacities and provide Chinese government and state-owned enterprise users with secure and controllable operating system products and services based on Microsoft's OS technologies.

In addition, China also becomes the first country in the world to cooperate with Microsoft in promoting the use of Windows 10 operating system technologies in key sectors of local markets.

more...

Propelled by its enterprise market services, a Huawei executive predicted that the company's global operating revenue for 2015 would reach over USD60 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 29% compared with USD46.5 billion in 2014.
Wu Dong, vice president for sales of global network solutions of Huawei enterprise business group, said that while most enterprises are facing challenges, Huawei's businesses keep growing in markets outside China. Wu said the company hopes to become a leading ITC solutions provider in the enterprise market. With a wide range of products and services, Huawei wants to ensure the high security, scalability and reliability of enterprise ITC infrastructure and networks around the globe.
In 2014, Huawei's enterprise businesses contributed operating revenue of USD3.12 billion and the number for 2015 is expected to be over USD4.2 billion.

According to Wu, in 2015 the overseas markets saw larger increases — especially the Middle East market.
In addition, Huawei launched its latest solution based on Agile Network 3.0 and started to enter the software-defined networking age.

Software-defined networking is a software-based network technology which can realize flexible control of network traffic by separating the network equipment control plane from data plane to make the network a smarter channel. Market research firm IDC predicted that the SDN technology market scale in enterprise and cloud service provider sectors will reach USD3.7 billion in 2016, while the number in 2013 was only USD306 million.

more...

Chinese online tourism service provider Ly.com announced a full acquisition of Shanghai Meichen International Travel Service Co. Ltd.

This is reportedly the second Chinese travel agency acquired by Ly.com over the past two months. The first one was Nantong Huihuang International Travel Service Co. Ltd.

Founded in 2005, Shanghai Meichen International Travel Service is a AAA-class travel agency. It has qualifications for organizing domestic travel and outbound travel. The company has an online platform and it has rich experience in cruise and outbound traveling in the market of Shanghai.

While announcing the acquisition of Shanghai Meichen International Travel Service, Ly.com also announced the establishment of its Shanghai operating center. According to Ly.com, it is the company's important strategic deployment in 2016 to build operating centers across the country. At present, its regional operating centers in North China, South China, Central China, and Northeast China as well as nearly 100 city operations centers have established and started operation.
Ma Heping, founder and president of Ly.com, said that in the future they will use the company's leisure tourism big data and mobile platform to help Meichen realize full upgrade of business model and high fusion of online and offline. They will copy this cooperation model to the entire country.

A few weeks ago, Ctrip.com and Qunar.com agreed to a merger deal too.

more...

TCL Multimedia has reached a subscription agreement with Letv's subsidiary Letv Zhixin, under which Letv will invest HKD2.267 billion, which is about CNY1.875 billion, to subscribe to an approximate 20% stake in TCL Multimedia via Letv Zhixin's newly-established wholly-owned subsidiary in Hong Kong.

With this deal, Letv will gain 348.85 million TCL Multimedia's new shares at the price of HKD6.5 per share.
On the completion of the deal, Letv Zhixin will become the second largest shareholder of TCL Multimedia and will gain two director positions at TCL Multimedia's board in Hong Kong. The largest shareholder of TCL Multimedia is TCL Industries Holdings (HK) Limited, which owns a 50.45% stake in TCL Multimedia.

TCL Multimedia is a Hong Kong-listed company and a major component of TCL Corporation. Its core products are color TVs. TCL Corporation is formed by several companies, including TCL Multimedia and TCL Communication.

Letv Zhixin Electronic Technology (Tianjin) Co., Ltd is a subsidiary of Letv, which is listed on China's growth enterprise market. Its major businesses cover TV and TV box.

more...

Alibaba Group and Shanghai Jahwa United Co., Ltd. signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Hangzhou.

With the deal, the two companies will use big data to explore consumer buying preferences; optimize and upgrade product supply chains; and help Shanghai Jahwa realize its strategic development of full-brand full-channel distribution. Meanwhile, the two parties will jointly establish China's first big data daily chemical products R&D lab.
Financial terms of the deal were not released.

During the cooperating period, over half of the new products of all sub-brands of Shanghai Jahwa will have an exclusive debut of 15 days on Tmall.com, B2C e-commerce platform of Alibaba Group. Shanghai Jawha makes and sells personal cleaning and care products; cosmetics; household cleaning products; and perfumes.

In addition, Alibaba Group will integrate its various resources such as retailing knowledge, e-commerce, logistics, cloud computing, big data, finance, and entire ecosystem to provide business solutions to Shanghai Jahwa.

more...

Foxconn's parent company Hon Hai plans to add investment in the Czech market of CZK2.5 billion, which is about CNY657 million, by 2018. And the company will build its first European big data R&D and design center in the country.
According to reports in Taiwanese local media, Hon Hai will set up a joint venture named SafeDX with Czech's KKCG and each party will hold a 50% stake.
SafeDX will mainly provide data center and information technology solutions as well as a series of information technology services.
Hon Hai has reportedly already been operating in the Czech market for over 15 years and in 2014 Foxconn became the second largest exporter in the country with annual output of about CZK120 billion, which was about CNY31.54 billion.



more...

Chinese Internet enterprise security start-up Qingteng Cloud Security has gained its first round of investment of CNY60 million from CBC Capital and Redpoint Ventures.

The nascent company is setting a new record of first round financing amount for security start-ups in China.
Zhang Fu, founder of Qingteng, said that the current Internet enterprise security is facing a grim situation. The enterprise security operation and maintenance teams only respond when problems occurs, instead of forming a security ecosystem. Security even becomes the bottleneck for business development in some of those companies.
According to Zhang, the most practical way to respond to external security attacks with internal resources is to provide security teams with smart security products which can release security operations and maintenance staff from emergency responses and allow them to focus on the full-cycle security management.
The adaptive security platform developed by Qingteng can adapt to various infrastructures and business scenarios. At the same time, it can automatically process most enterprise security issues in spite of changes, build a safe mode for enterprise business, analyze internal and external abnormal behaviors, and detect and block unknown hacking activities.
Zhang said Qingteng's adaptive security platform already reached commercial cooperation with enterprises in many sectors, covering Internet finance, medical, and enterprise service.
Prior to this, Qingteng gained CNY6.5 million joint angel investments from ZhenFund, Cloud Angel Fund, and Fenghou Capital.

more...

Chinese telecom device maker ZTE announced that its subsidiary Nubia plans to increase its capital and stock by introducing Suning Rundong, a subsidiary of Suning, as an investor.

At the same time, ZTE will give up its priority of subscription rights in the listed business.

According to the report published by ZTE, Suning Rundong will invest CNY1.93 billion in Nubia. On the completion of the investment, Suning Rundong will own a 33.33% stake in Nubia; while ZTE will hold a 60% stake and Yingcai Investment will hold the remaining 6.67% stake.

Of the CNY1.93 billion investment, CNY39.582 million will be included into Nubia's registered capital and CNY1.89 billion will be included into capital accumulation fund.

With the completion of the capital and stock increment, Nubia's board will be formed by seven directors, including four assigned by ZTE, two assigned by Suning Rundong, and one assigned by Yingcai Investment.
ZTE said this capital increment will solve Nubia's capital source issue in a certain development period. It will help Nubia enhance brand investment strength and improve its derivative business ecological chain.


more...