China Tech News

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Alibaba Health Information Technology Limited, formerly known as CITIC 21CN Company Limited, has settled a legal dispute with Oracle.

Alibaba Health will pay about CNY37.2 million to Oracle for a licensing agreement for database management software signed in 2006. Meanwhile, the company will be refunded a deposit of USD11 million plus USD1.2 million in interest as part of the settlement.

In addition, Alibaba Health has moved its medicine regulatory network infrastructure from Oracle's database to its own cloud platform. In the future, Alibaba Health and Oracle will no long have a business relationship.

On May 30, 2006, the two parties signed an agreement, under which Oracle provided database management software, intermediate software, and related services to CITIC 21CN; in return, CITIC 21CN paid a deposit of USD11 million to Oracle. However, according to reports in Hong Kong media, CITIC 21CN already moved its database to Aliyun, Alibaba's cloud platform, in 2013. Alibaba acquired CITIC 21CN in March 2014.

In regards to financial impact of the incident, the report stated that Alibaba Health expects before-tax losses of about HKD34.1 million due to the disposal of the agreement.


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Following its recent partnership with Coolpad for smartphone development, Chinese Internet security software provider Qihoo 360 has now announced a new smart hardware joint venture project.

Qihoo 360 officially confirmed that the company will invest CNY200 million to establish a joint venture with Netcore that aims to explore the Internet smart router market.

Zhou Hongyi, founder of Qihoo 360, will be chairman of the new joint venture; while Lu Dong, senior vice president of Netcore, will be chief executive officer.

Commenting on the cooperation, Qihoo 360 said that Internet companies need to implement close cooperation with the manufacturing industry to create a full hardware and software ecosystem. Meanwhile, traditional companies can depend on the Internet companies to introduce smart, Internet, and cloud technologies into their products, so as to increase their profit.
In addition, Qihoo 360 announced that after 49 times of version optimizations, its new-generation router P1 will soon be launched.


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Japanese electronics company Panasonic reportedly plans to move its digital camera manufacturing from Japan to China in spring of 2015.

The company's production lines in Fukushima, Japan, will stop operation.

The Fukushima plant has an annual output of 1.5 million digital cameras, which is about half of the global sales of Panasonic. Due to the devaluation of the Japanese yen, Panasonic is considering moving parts of its large home appliances manufacturing back from China to Japan. However, in the digital camera sector, Panasonic continued to see losses attributing to the shrinking of the global market. Therefore, the company hopes to improve the situation via Chinese centralized production.

Prior to this, Panasonic said that the company would complete enterprise structure reforms within the 2014 financial year ended March 2015, and it is important for the company to revive the digital camera business.

In the 2013 financial year, Panasonic sold 3.24 million digital cameras, ranking sixth among manufacturers worldwide. However, the company saw operating losses over two consecutive years. By moving the digital camera production from Fukushima to the Xiamen plant, the company aims to improve cost competitiveness with centralized production.


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According to Angela Ahrendts, Apple's senior vice president of retail and online stores, the company plans to open five new retail stores in China before the Chinese Lunar New Year.

Its new store in Zhengzhou, Henan, has opened to customers and another new store in Hangzhou will be opened on January 24, 2015. Chinese Lunar New Year, otherwise known as Chun'jie, is a week-long holiday beginning on February 19, 2015.

With the opening of the five new stores, Apple will have 20 retail stores in mainland China. Statistics show that Apple currently has 448 retail stores around the world and over one million customers visit those stores each day. Of its owned stores, the Nanjing East store in Shanghai has the largest traffic with daily visits of over 25,000 visitors.

In 2014, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that they planned to increase the number of stores in China to 40 in two years.
Ahrendts said that the company's biggest challenge in China is to keep pace with the development. It is important to meet the increasing demands of consumers while ensuring the global unified service standards.


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Letv will soon launch its next-generation super TV product in China.

With the name of X55 Air, the new product will reportedly have a 55-inch display, full metal frame, and it will support 4K resolution. The product will be sold at about CNY5,000.

The X55 Air will adopt the similar production process with X60S; however, the new-generation product will feature a full metal frame, cloud-based software, a hardware configuration that can support more complex system operations, and optimized user interface.
For pricing, X55 Air may be sold at about CNY5,000, and it will still follow a charging policy of hardware prices plus content service fees.
Several upstream panel manufacturers, including Samsung, LGD, BOE, and CSOT, have started making 8.5 generation production lines in China. In 2015, China will reportedly become the country with the largest 8.5 generation production line LCD display production capacity, which also means that 55-inch TVs will become the mainstream in 2015.

Apart from Letv, other companies like Xiaomi and Skyworth will also release their 55-inch TV products soon.

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Alibaba will prevent Chinese vendors from selling children's products that are considered dangerous or illegal to American consumers.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has provided a list of up to 15 products which are considered illegal or have been recalled by manufacturers. Those products include baby seats and powerful magnets, and they are currently being sold on Alibaba to global buyers.

The CPSC has reached an agreement with Alibaba, whose e-commerce platforms will prevent the sales of prohibited children's toys to American users. However, these dangerous goods will still gladly be sold to Chinese and other buyers willing to take the risk.
Statistics from CPSC show that by value, about 90% toys in America were from China and every four out of five recalled products in the country were from abroad.

In 2014, Alibaba's e-commerce platforms boasted over 300 million active buyers. Though most buyers were from China, its consumer groups in America and other regions were also expanding.


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Chinese telecom device maker ZTE recently revealed that the company achieved operating revenue of CNY81.242 billion in 2014 — a year-on-year increase of 7.99% — and its net profit attributable to shareholders reached a year-on-year increase of 94.17%.
Meanwhile, the company reported that its operating profit was CNY104 million during the reporting period and its total profit was CNY3.629 billion, a year-one-year increase of 98.54%.

ZTE's operating revenue was CNY75.223 billion in 2013 and its net profit was CNY1.357 billion.

ZTE said that Chinese telecoms launched 4G services in 2014 and ZTE gained leading shares from the three major Chinese telecom operators. At the same time, the company's mobile phone terminal revenue realized over 40% growth in the third quarter of 2014, ranking fourth in the American market by market share.

ZTE previously predicted that the company's earnings for the entire year of 2014 would be between CNY2.5 billion and CNY2.8 billion, representing an increase of between 84.14% and 106.24%.

ZTE is expected to release a more detailed performance report on March 25, 2015.

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Chinese meal ordering platform Ele.me announced that the company has gained new investments of a whopping USD350 million and its investors including Tencent, JD.com, Dianping.com, Sequoia Capital, and CITIC Private Equity Funds.

According to Ele.me, after the financing the company will still maintain its independent operation and will implement strategic cooperation with its investors.

Zhang Xuhao, chief executive officer of Ele.me, said that in 2014 their platform completed 110 million orders and it accepted two million orders in a single day at peak time. Meanwhile, the company boasted 60% market share in China.

So far, the business of Ele.me has covered 250 cities across China, reaching 200,000 restaurants and 20 million users. Of its total transactions, over 75% were completed on mobile devices.

Zhang revealed that with the completion of the latest financing, Ele.me will aim at three major tasks. The company plans to optimize delivery services in colleges to enhance its position in the campus market; they will expand into the residential areas of white-collar workers; and they will focus on the establishment of an owned logistics system.


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Alibaba Health Information Technology Limited has signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Shanghai Kingstar Winning Software to launch a range of e-medical services.

According to the agreement, the two parties will share resources and collaborate in medical services, health services, pharmaceutical distribution, regulation, and medical insurance risk control. Financial terms of the deal were not released.

For health services, the two parties will promote the unified management and services targeting chronic and common diseases both inside and outside hospitals. For medical services, they will jointly participate in the construction of cloud-based information systems for hospitals. This latter service would help to digitize patient data for storing on Alibaba's cloud computing platform
According to the companies, the entire payment platform and Winning's risk control engine will effectively improve and expand the value and position of their system in the health care payment system.

In addition, Alibaba Health and Winning Software will consider each other as strategic partners and the two parties will maintain the rights to pursue deeper cooperation in the future. Most importantly, they will inform each other in advance if seeking cooperation with third parties.

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Alibaba and its executives may feel the sting of American jurisprudence as law firms line up for possible class action lawsuits in the United States against the Chinese e-commerce company.

At least five law firms so far have expressed intentions to commence class actions against Alibaba.

For example, a complain from Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP charges Alibaba and certain of its officers and directors with violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The complaint alleges that during the class period, Defendants issued materially false and misleading statements regarding the soundness of company's business operations, the strength of its financial prospects and concealing substantial ongoing regulatory scrutiny.

Specifically, the complaint alleges that Alibaba failed to disclose that company executives had met with China's State Administration of Industry and Commerce in July 2014, just two months before Alibaba's initial public offering in the United States, and that regulators had then brought to Alibaba's attention a variety of highly dubious — and possibly illegal — business practices such as the selling of counterfeit goods.

In the IPO, Alibaba and certain "selling shareholders" sold more than 368 million ADSs at USD68 each. The complaint alleges that selling shareholders included two of Alibaba's co-founders, Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai, each of whom sold millions of shares. The complaint also alleges that Alibaba's ADSs continued trading at ever-increasing, artificially inflated prices.

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Facebook will reportedly set up a new office in Taiwan which will be engaged in platform advertising sales.

Facebook said in a statement that the company will establish a small team in Taipei. This team will mainly be responsible for contacting local Taiwanese enterprises and application software developers and providing technical support to them.
Facebook is reportedly one of the most popular social networking sites in Taiwan. The company said they have about 15 million monthly active users in the market and many of them login Facebook via mobile devices. Taiwan has a total population of 23 million.

Facebook did not reveal the scale of its team in Taiwan.

But a Taiwan entry does not mean Mainland China access. Advertising sales in China must only be run by Chinese companies, so Facebook would first need to find local, trustworthy partners in China for advertising sales.

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Chen Liming is the new IBM chairman of the Greater China region.

Before joining IBM, Chen was China president of British Petroleum and has extensive operating experience in the Chinese market.
Chen gained his Master's degree from Cornell University in 1989 and completed an advanced management program at Harvard Business School in 2003. He joined British Petroleum in November 2008 and was appointed president of British Petroleum China in 2009.

After joining IBM, Chen will work closely with D.C. Chien, chief executive president of IBM Greater China, to jointly lead the Greater China business. His major duties are cultivating, enhancing, and expanding IBM's extensive cooperation in the Chinese business ecosystem. As chairman of Greater China, Chen will provide suggestions, guidance and counseling to IBM's leadership team and cooperating partners.

IBM said that as an important position in IBM, the post of Greater China chairman will help create IBM China's growth strategy and promote the business development of IBM in Greater China.


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Following the establishment of offices in Ottawa and Markham, the Chinese telecom device maker Huawei recently expressed intention to set up a new research and development office in Waterloo, Canada.

The new office will be committed to solving mobile phone security issues. However, the establishment of the new R&D office is still subject to Huawei's hiring of enough engineers in Waterloo.

In regards to the recruitment, Huawei has invited Scott Totzke, former senior vice president of security unit of BlackBerry, to be in charge of device and enterprise security. Totzke joined Huawei in September 2014 and his current position is senior vice president of Huawei's device and enterprise security department in Kitchener and Waterloo. In addition, Huawei will hire a research expert in Kitchener to lead and train an elite team for mobile phone security.

Huawei currently has 250 employees in the Ottawa headquarters, which was established by three specialists in 2008. At the same time, the Chinese company has 325 employees in Markham office, which is mainly responsible for finance, sales, and management. In autumn of 2014, Huawei announced that they would invest USD210 million in Ontario, Canada in the next five years and add 325 employees, including 250 engineers.

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How much is a good website domain name worth these days? An insider from Qihoo 360 confirmed that the company has invested USD17 million, which is about CNY110 million, to acquire the top-level domain 360.com.
This top-level domain was previously owned by telecom carrier Vodafone.

At present, the domain has directed to Qihoo 360's search engine site Haosou.com. At the same time, the owner information of domain record has been updated to Beijing Qihoo Technology Company Limited.

Qihoo 360's domain acquisition price reportedly sets a new record for domain transactions, making 360.com the most expensive publicly-priced domain in the world. Prior to this, Sex.com held the first position. This domain was acquired by Clover Holdings Ltd from an adult entertainment company named Escom LLC for USD13 million in 2008.

The insider from Qihoo 360 said that the lack of an international top-level domain was a major brand risk for the company. The domain acquisition will help Qihoo 360 improve its international brand image and eliminate the brand risk. In 2015, Qihoo 360 will enhance expansion in overseas markets and this new top-level domain will become a big advantage.

The security software and mobile services company previously relied on the domain 360.cn, but now it will focus on solely using the new 360.com domain name.

Dropping the .cn domain name is important for international expansion because many email providers will block email coming from .cn domains; search engines pigeonhole .cn domains as only focusing on Chinese users; and many international users are unaware of the .cn extension and will attempt instead to always visit the .com address.

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Robin Li, founder of Baidu.com, announced via an internal email that the company will integrate its existing business groups and business units into three major business groups.

Baidu has confirmed the news and said that the three major business groups will be a mobile service business group, emerging business group, and search business group.

The internal email revealed that Baidu's existing mobile cloud business unit and LBS business unit will be integrated and form the new mobile service business group. Baidu's vice president Li Mingyuan and vice president Liu Jun will be responsible for this business group, and Liu will report to Li.

The existing new business group, user consumer business group, and international business unit will be integrated and form the new emerging business group. Baidu's president Zhang Yaqin and vice president Wang Zhan will be responsible for this business group, and Wang will report to Zhang.

The existing search underlying technology sector of the mobile cloud business unit and mobile search alliance business will be integrated into the search business group. This search business group, along with group buying business, will continue to be commanded by Baidu's senior vice president Xiang Hailong and vice president Wang Haifeng, and Wang will report to Xiang.

Baidu said that with the restructuring, Baidu's businesses will be further concentrated, which will help improve company efficiency and provide better services to Chinese netizens in the mobile Internet era.

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Lenovo Group has reached a deal with Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited to jointly build a cloud service and product research and development center.

According to the agreement signed by the two parties, Lenovo and Cyberport will cooperate in various sectors, including science and technology development and innovation; talent training and employment; local cloud computing; big data; and Internet industry development.

Lenovo cloud service and product research and development center will focus on two areas in this deal. The company will implement research in big data and enterprise cloud service infrastructure platforms. Meanwhile, Lenovo will establish its Asia Pacific data center in Cyberport.

Hong Kong Cyberport is an innovation digital community, which integrates over 300 technology and digital business tenants. Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited is fully owned by Hong Kong SAR government.

Cyberport has been maligned in recent years. The Hong Kong MTR subway system was aiming at opening a station at Cyberport this year, but local community organizations who have been upset for years that Cyberport took valuable real estate, killed the MTR plans. Therefore, transportation to and from Cyberport is still troublesome for employees of companies located there in the southeast corner of Hong Kong island.


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Chinese telecom device maker Huawei announced in Xi'an that the company has completed the construction of a network functions virtualization open lab with an initial investment of over USD5 million.

Liang Hua, president of Huawei global technical service unit, said that the NFV open lab is an innovation center for ICT convergence. It is committed to open cooperation and joint innovation with global partners to establish an NFV industrial eco-chain, integrate value, and help the business success of clients.

Huawei believes that with the fast development of cloud technologies, the traditional business structure of telecom carriers will not be able to meet the customer experience demands of users and they need to transform to ICT-integrated cloud structure. NFV will change the closeness feature of traditional telecom networks, shorten business innovation cycle, lower operating costs, and establish an open industrial chain.

Huawei said that the company has implemented NFV joint innovation and project verification with over 20 carriers around the world. In 2015, they plan to continue in-depth NFV cooperation with over 50 industrial partners.



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China Mobile and Chinese search engine Baidu reached a deal to jointly build a new-generation mobile Internet cloud computing center.
The center is named Baidu Yizhuang New-generation Search Data Center (first phase) and financial terms of the deal were not released..
According to China Mobile, this will become the industry's first large-scale cloud computing center which targets mobile Internet businesses.

Baidu Yizhuang New-generation Search Data Center (first phase) is jointly invested and constructed by China Mobile and Baidu. With a total construction area of about 38,000 square meters, it plans to deploy over 40,000 servers. The new cloud computing center will adopt green energy-saving design ideas and apply Baidu's patent technologies. Its technical parameters will reportedly be the highest density, lowest power consumption, and most balanced in China.

The data center will reportedly begin operation at the beginning of 2016. By then, China Mobile will provide 1,388 high-power high-density cabinets to Baidu.

At present, China Mobile's cloud computing bases in Beijing and Guangzhou have already put into operation, and its projects in Harbin, Guizhou and Suzhou are undergoing construction.

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Chinese Internet video company Letv.com announced that they have established a new smart hardware development company named Leie.

Leie will focus on the development of smart hardware to connect smartphones and smart TVs and establish a smart product ecosphere with content and applications focusing on health, entertainment, sports, and families.

The company appointed Peng Gang, former chief marketing officer of smart device business cluster, as new senior vice president of Letv Holdings and president of Leie. Peng will directly report to Jia Yueting, chairman and chief executive officer of Letv. In the future, Peng will be responsible for the construction of Letv's smart product ecosphere.

Peng said the future smart hardware should have service-oriented content and its ultimate goal is to learn user habits and recommend suitable content for users. Meanwhile, smart hardware should be personalized and can be customized in accordance to different user carriers and demands.

The Leie brand originates from Letv's "Made for Lemi" project, which means made for Letv fans. At present, Leie has two products: a smart storytelling machine and a Bluetooth headset.
Financial terms, including capitalization levels, of the new company setup were not released.


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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited announced on its website that the company will invest over NTD500 billion, which is about USD15.9 billion, to build a new plant to meet the ever-growing demands for chips.

The new plant will be located in Central Taiwan Science Park and it is currently undergoing an environmental impact assessment. On its completion, the new plant will create 5,000 new jobs, including 3,500 manager and engineer positions and 1,500 technical positions. At the same time, those new jobs are expected to create extra taxes of over NTD1 billion, which is about USD32 million.

In 2015, TSMC plans to increase investment to improve chip output to win more orders. TSMC is currently producing processors for Apple; however, it faces serious challenges from Samsung.

TSMC previously predicted that the company will achieve operating revenue between NTD221 billion and NTD224 billion in the first quarter of 2015. In the fourth quarter of 2014, the company's net profit was NTD80 billion, a year-on-year increase of 79%. In addition, the company's capital expense was USD9.5 billion in 2014 and the number is expected to reach between USD11.5 billion and USD12 billion.

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June Jin, Tesla's global vice president and chief marketing officer for Greater China, has reportedly departed the company.

According to reports in Chinese local media, Tesla China has not yet announced her replacement and the related marketing work is temporarily taken over by Tesla China public relations director Tao Rong.

Jin joined Tesla in September 2014 and she was responsible for marketing, public relations, and branding.
Jin is reportedly the third executive who left Tesla China over the past 12 months. In April 2014, Kingston Chang, former general manager of Tesla China, departed the company. In December 2014, Veronica Wu, who replaced Chang, also left. Tesla China's frequent change of executives is probably because of the poor sales performance. Elon Musk, founder and chief executive officer of Tesla, revealed to media that the company saw unsatisfactory sales in China in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Musk warned overseas executives via an internal email that if they cannot achieve positive long-term cash flow, they will be fired or transferred. He said that they already took actions in the Chinese market and they may continue in other countries in the future.


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Sony (China) Ltd., which sells TVs and digital products, will implement a large-scale layoff across China that mainly targets regular employees in local offices.

According to reports in Chinese local media, Sony has over 40 subsidiaries and offices in 13 regions in China, including Beijing, Chengdu, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Jinan, Nanjing, Shanghai, Shenyang, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Wuhan, and Xi'an.

The first batch of offices to be shut down are reportedly located in Anshan, Zhuzhou, Yichang, Luoyang, Quanzhou, Neijiang, Zibo, Yantai, Huai'an, Xuzhou, and Nantong. Employees and managers in those offices have already received a layoff notice along with a compensation agreement.

In addition, an insider revealed that the Japanese company may implement the second batch layoffs around May 1, 2015.
Sony previously published its performance for the third financial quarter of 2014, stating that their profit reached JPY89 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 237.5%. The company also announced that they still made losses for the entire financial year of 2014; however, the losses were JPY170 billion, instead of the expected JPY230 billion.

On October 31, 2014, Sony announced reform measures for mobile phone businesses. Sony Mobile would significantly decrease its mobile business scale in China and of its worldwide layoff of 1,000 employees, about 700 to 800 would be from China.

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Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company MediaTek published its financial report for the fourth quarter and the entire year of 2014.

According to the report, the company achieved operating revenue of NTD213.063 billion, which was about CNY42.3 billion, in 2014, a year-on-year increase of 56.6%; and it achieved net profit of NTD46.399 billion, which was about CNY9.2 billion, a year-on-year increase of 68.8%. Both operating revenue and net profit represented a record-high performance in the history of the company. At the same time, the company's earnings per share were NTD30.04 in 2014.

During the fourth quarter of 2014, MediaTek's operating revenue was NTD55.453 billion, a decrease of 3.51% compared with the third quarter of 2014. Its gross margin and profit rate were 47.9% and 17.8%, respectively. Meanwhile, its net profit was NTD10.41 billion and its earnings per share were NTD6.65.

Hsieh Ching-chiang, general manager of MediaTek, predicted that the company's shipment will be impacted in the first quarter of 2015, attributing to fewer working days. In addition, due to the rapid appreciation of US dollar, its clients will reduce inventory and control costs, which will also affect the shipment of the company.

The company aims at smartphone chip shipment of more than 450 million units in 2015, including over 150 million 4G chips. Meanwhile, its tablet chip shipment will be 5,000 units.


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There have always been worries that the Chinese government could use its power to force homegrown technology companies like ZTE, Huawei, Qihoo 360 and Lenovo to spy on user communications, but now a bombshell has landed that shows Lenovo is forcing adware onto users' computers on the company's own volition.

According to Errata Security, an ad-supported software on Lenovo computers called SuperFish is "designed to intercept all encrypted connections… It does this in a poor way that it leaves the system open to hackers or NSA-style spies."

SuperFish apparently resides on all Lenovo laptops registered after "mid-2013". Errata reports that SuperFish's advertising injects JavaScript code into webpages and installs a transparent-proxy service on the laptop that intercepts browser connections.
Yet Mark Hopkins, the program manager for Lenovo social media, responded about a month ago that "Superfish technology is purely based on contextual/image and not behavioral. It does not profile nor monitor user behavior. It does not record user information. It does not know who the user is. Users are not tracked nor re-targeted. Every session is independent. When using Superfish for the first time, the user is presented the Terms of User and Privacy Policy, and has option not to accept these terms, i.e., Superfish is then disabled."

The good news is FireFox or Chrome users are not affected, even if they do use infected Lenovo laptops. So only users who use Internet Explorer are vulnerable.

But removing the adware software reportedly does not solve the problem because the root certificates are still embedded into Lenovo laptops. So a savvy user must manually go into the computer's settings to remove that errant certificate.

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Chinese telecom operator China Mobile announced that by the end of January 2015, it had reached over 100 million 4G users.
The company also announced that they plan to build one million 4G base stations, develop 250 million users, and sell 200 million devices in 2015.

According to China Mobile, their 4G network has realized continuous coverage in most cities and towns and partial coverage in developed villages, reaching over one billion people. Meanwhile, they provide 4G roaming services in 71 countries and regions.
For subscriptions, the company will offer a new data package in addition to new 4G basic packages in 2015.

For devices, China Mobile had cooperated with device manufacturers in providing 1,031 4G devices for customers by the end of January 2015, including 917 4G smartphones and 114 data products. In addition, about 65% of those 4G smartphones are cheaper than CNY1,300.

Statistics provided by China Mobile showed that by the end of January 2015, its Global TD-LTE Initiative had attracted 116 global carrier members and 97 industrial partner members. Meanwhile, there were 52 TD-LTE commercial networks deployed in 30 countries and 83 additional networks were undergoing deployment in 55 countries.


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American game developer Zynga announced that the company will close its office in Beijing.

Zynga announced the decision while publishing its performance report for the fourth quarter of 2014. The company said that they will cut the 71 jobs in Beijing office and the related expense of USD7 million will be included in the first quarter of 2015.
According to Zynga's financial report, the company reached operating revenue of USD183 million in the fourth quarter of 2014, a year-on-year increase of 9% and an increase of 9% compared with the previous quarter. However, the company made net losses of USD45 million during the reporting period and it net losses in the same period in 2013 were USD25 million.

Zynga specializes in web game development and its products are mainly published on social networking sites such as Facebook.
Other American technology companies have recently downsized their operations in China. Cloud-based American software firm Vocus is currently liquidating its previously-profitable China operations after privatizing and merging with rival Cision. And American electronics retailer Best Buy bid farewell to its failed China experiment as it sold some of its assets to a Chinese firm at the end of last year.


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The European Patent Office announced that Chinese enterprises submitted 26,500 patent applications to them in 2014.

According to the report, the office received a total of 274,000 patent applications last year, representing a year-on-year increase of 3.1%. Of which, Samsung submitted 2,541 patents, ranking first; while China's Huawei ranked fifth with 1,600 applications. Following Samsung, Philips submitted 1,040 applications; Siemens submitted 2, 133 applications; and LG submitted 1,638 applications. In addition, Qualcomm submitted 1,459 patent applications in Europe; Intel submitted 1,054 applications; Nokia submitted 1,040 applications; Microsoft submitted 734 applications; Google submitted 518 applications; and Apple submitted 294 applications.

By country, American enterprises submitted the most patent applications in Europe in 2014, reaching 71,700 and accounting for 26% of the total. Japan ranked second with 48,400 applications; Germany ranked third with 31,647 applications; and China ranked fourth with 26,500 applications. Meanwhile, China saw the fastest increase in applications with a 18.2% growth rate year-over-year.

Among Chinese enterprises, Huawei, ZTE and Tencent submitted the most applications, which were 1,600, 476 and 97, respectively. By industry, medical technology was the largest sector and the related applications were 11,000, followed by communications technology with 10,944 applications, and computing technology with 10,018 applications.

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Chinese classified information website 58.com officially announced that the company has acquired the real estate information website Anjuke.com for USD267.01 million in cash and stock.

After the acquisition, 58.com will establish a real estate business cluster to integrate the real estate businesses of 58.com and Anjuke.com and the company will develop a full-sector business covering new homes, second-hand homes, and the rental business. The new structure will not affect the existing team of Anjuke.com. The website will be able to maintain its website and app as well as its brand independence. Meanwhile, 58.com will allocate USD10 million to launch a limited stock incentive program for Anjuke.com employees.

58.com will reportedly appoint its senior vice president Zhuang Jiandong as president of the new real estate business cluster. Liang Weiping, founder and former CEO of Anjuke.com, will continue to be chief consultant of the group to realize a stable transition between the two parties. At the same time, Liang will start a new business.

According to Yao Jinbo, CEO of 58.com, Anjuke.com has market advantages in first- and second-tier cities, especially in coastal cities. With the acquisition, 58.com will provide more home choices to users and better online promotion services to realtors and developers.

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The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China tracked over 5.4 million mobile phone apps from 135 Chinese app stores in 2014 and discovered 28,000 apps were malware.

According to the ministry's website, those 28,000 malware apps were banned and removed from the app stores, and 155 other "bad software" were exposed.

MIIT said that in 2014, China's telecom industry user complaint rate was 32.9 times per million users, representing a decrease of 30% compared with the previous year.

MIIT said they checked 1,085 paid services of the three major telecom operators and 620 value-added telecom service providers; meanwhile, the ministry checked over 5.4 million mobile phone application software applications from 135 app stores.

At the beginning of 2014, MIIT clarified seven important tasks for the year, including handling spam short messages; remediating adverse mobile apps; and standardizing service agreements and data traffic charges.

MIIT enhanced its punishment of illegal infringement activities of enterprises and 29 telecom enterprises were investigated for violations.


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Alibaba's cloud computing service Aliyun announced that its data center in Silicon Valley has started trial operation and is providing cloud services to users in North America and around the world.

This is reportedly Aliyun's sixth data center, following those opened in Hangzhou, Qingdao, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shenzhen. It also means that Aliyun will start competing with Amazon's AWS and Microsoft's Azure in the cradle of cloud computing. In addition, Aliyun plans to establish data centers in various markets around the world, including North America, Europe, Japan, and the Middle East.

But the creation of the American data center shows a double standard between Chinese and American laws and business practices. The Chinese offshoot of Alibaba can easily open a data center in the United States with limited worries about regulation, but a competitor like Amazon cannot participate in the same type of Internet Service Provider business in China because of China's anti-foreign business environment, its exclusion of foreigners in the ISP sector, and laws omitting Amazon and other non-Chinese businesses from engaging in the same type of Cloud Computing business. In fact, Amazon recently setup small cloud computing operations in China, but it did so via a third-party company, ChinaNetCenter.

Located in the Silicon Valley, Aliyun's data center meets the international Tier3+ standard. At present, this data center provides five kinds of cloud services, including cloud server, server load balancer, relational database service, cloud shield, and cloud monitor.

Users can customize their services based on demands on the official website of Aliyun and realize direct purchase. They will enjoy the same service guarantee as that offered in Hangzhou, Qingdao and Beijing. Meanwhile, the Silicon Valley data center will connect with Aliyun's data centers in China, which allows users to manage their cloud applications in both America and China with a single account to achieve unified deployment and operation. In the future, Aliyun will launch more cloud computing and big data innovative services.

According to Yu Sicheng, Aliyun's vice president of international business, the reason for setting up the American data center is for user convenience. For Chinese companies that want to expand businesses in America, they can realize American website and mobile application deployment from China by a few clicks on Aliyun official website.

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Amazon China Z.cn announced that its official flagship store on Tmall.com has started trial operation and will be formally launched in April 2015.

This flagship store will initially provide Chinese netizens with directly procured imported products, including shoes, food, wine, kitchenware, and toys.

Products sold on Amazon's Tmall flagship store will be delivered via Amazon China's logistics system. At present, Amazon China's same-day delivery and next-day delivery services have reached over 1,400 districts and counties in China; meanwhile, the company has established more than 5,000 pick-up sites across the country, which offer flexible delivery options to consumers.
Niu Yinghua, vice president of Amazon China, said that Amazon aims to provide products from all over the world to Chinese consumers, no matter where they are.

With the entry of Amazon, Tmall will be able to learn from Amazon's global supply chain management model; at the same time, Amazon will bring more international products to the Tmall platform, which is owned by rival Alibaba.


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Chinese Internet tourism service provider Tuniu.com will acquire majority stakes in two travel agencies.

The two travel agencies are Hangzhou-headquartered Zhejiang Zhongshan International Travel Services and Tianjin-headquartered China Classical Holiday. No financial details was released about the transactions.

Both travel agencies reportedly have licenses for organizing tours to Taiwan. By acquiring the two companies, Tuniu.com will be able to expand its Taiwanese tourism market. In 2014, about four million Chinese mainland tourists visited Taiwan, representing a year-on-year increase of 39%%.

Zhejiang Zhongshan International Travel Services and China Classical Holiday have operated for 20 years and 17 years, respectively. In 2014, the two travel agencies' operating revenue from outbound packaged tours and Taiwan tours accounted for about 70% of their total revenue.

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Japanese electronics company Sony announced that their flagship video game console PlayStation 4 and handheld gaming device PlayStation Vita will be officially available in the Chinese mainland market on March 20, 2015.

Prior to this, Sony announced plans to provide the two products in China from January 11, 2015. However, due to various reasons, the debut launch was postponed.

Sony also revealed that by March 8, 2015, the company had sold 20 million PlayStation 4 consoles worldwide.
According to Sony, the retail price of PlayStation 4 in China will be CNY2,899 and the retail price of PlayStation Vita will be CNY1,299. The company said that with the launch of gaming consoles, Sony will also launch the first batch of game options for Chinese users, including Final Fantasy by Square Enix Holdings Co, Knack, and Rayman Legends.

As a major competitor of Sony's PlayStation 4, Microsoft's Xbox One already entered the Chinese mainland market.

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Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi plans to open 100 experience stores in India in 2015.

According to Xiaomi, those experience stores will not sell any products. Instead, they will become channels for Indian consumers to experience Xiaomi products.

Xiaomi entered the Indian market in July 2014 and its products are mainly sold via the local e-commerce operator Flipkart.com. India is currently the third largest smartphone market in the world.

Manu Jain, Xiaomi's head of India operations, said that those service and experience stores will have areas between 500 square feet and 1,000 square feet. They are expected to be launched during the first week of April 2015 in Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bangalore.

Jain also said that though Xiaomi started selling the Hongmi Note via retail stores of Bharti Airtel, the largest carrier in India, from January 2015, the company has not yet discussed cooperation with any offline partners.

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Chinese mobile game developer and publisher Linekong announced that the company has reached an agreement with 228.com.cn, an online ticket provider in China, to invest CNY23 million in the latter.

This is reportedly the first capital strategic layout of Linekong since its IPO in Hong Kong at the end of December 2014.
228.com.cn is a Chinese ticket provider in entertainment and sports sectors. The company claims to have ticket operating experience of over 50,000 cultural performances and sports activities, and it has established more than ten branches across China.

In addition, 228.com.cn has issued and invested in several movies. The company said they will further expand their businesses in the movies sector and will produce two more movies during the first half of 2015.

Statistics published by Linekong showed that by June 30, 2014, the company's operating revenue was about CNY363 million, a year-on-year increase of 53.2%. Of which, its mobile game operating revenue was about CNY314 million, accounting for 86.6% of its total revenue.

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Alibaba Group chief executive officer Lu Zhaoxi announced the appointment of Yu Yongfu, general manager of AutoNavi's Internet business, as new president of AutoNavi.

Effective from March 15, 2015, in this new role Yu will be responsible for the overall business of AutoNavi, which will continue to maintain its independent operation from Alibaba.

According to public files, UCWeb merged into Alibaba Group on June 11, 2014, and Alibaba's UC mobile business group was founded based on the company. At the same time, as former chairman and CEO of UCWeb, Yu was appointed president of UC mobile business group and joined Alibaba Group's strategic decision-making committee.

On July 18, 2014, Alibaba Group announced that AutoNavi, which was previously acquired by Alibaba, formally completed its privatization process and started full business integration with Alibaba Group. Following that, Yu took over AutoNavi's mobile Internet business unit.

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A Yahoo senior vice president reportedly announced via an internal email that they will close their research and development center in Beijing.

According to reports in Chinese local media, the shutdown of the Beijing R&D center is a part of the company's global layoff plan. An internal employee revealed that Yahoo will offer "N+4" compensations to employees; however, detailed compensations need to be discussed with their respective managers.

The Yahoo Beijing R&D center was established in June 2009. As an innovation engine of Yahoo worldwide, the Beijing R&D center was committed to providing innovative technologies, products, and development platforms to global businesses of Yahoo. It focused on four major R&D directions, including personalization, advertising, mobile and cloud computing.

Over recent years, Yahoo changed its CEO frequently and the company continued to cut employees around the world. From 2008 to 2012, Yahoo dismissed up to 6,000 employees. In Asia, the company cut 400 employees in Bangalore office in October 2014. However, Yahoo offered working opportunities in the U.S. to over 40% of those impacted employees.
Most importantly for the company's China tenure, Yahoo released private email account details to the Chinese government that resulted in the imprisonment of Chinese journalist Shi Tao in 2005. Yahoo ostensibly forfeited the information in exchange for maintaining a smooth business operation in China.

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Chinese B2B e-commerce platform Hc360.com has reached a purchase deal with Zol.com.cn, an information technology vertical portal website in China, worth CNY1.5 billion.

The acquisition deal covers several assets, including Zol.com.cn, Zol.com, and Ea3w.com. ZOL stands for Zhongguancun, which is the name for the area in Beijing rife with universities and technology companies. Zhongguancun is considered the Silicon Valley of China.
Hc360.com will pay 30% in cash and the remaining 70% will be realized via new stock issued by Hc360.com to the overseas sellers. As the largest shareholder of Zol.com.cn, Liu Xiaodong, who owns a 60% stake in the company, will gain CNY900 million from the deal.
At the same time, Zol.com.cn executives promised that the company will achieve post-tax net profit of CNY100 million, CNY130 million, and CNY170 million in the next three years.

At the beginning of 2015, Zol.com.cn was separated from CBSi Group and moved its office from E-wing Center to Dinghao Plaza in Beijing. Prior to this, rumor said JD.com would invest in Zol.com.cn; however, the news was denied by Liu Xiaodong.

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China's Lenovo Group announced that they will appoint Gianfranco Lanci, current chief operating officer of Lenovo Group, as new president of the group, effective April 1, 2015.

Meanwhile, Lanci will continue his role as chief operating officer.

Lanci joined Lenovo Group in 2012 as executive vice president and COO, leading and expanding global PC business; managing businesses, operating integration and strategic alliance in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific; and promoting the group's business review and operating process.

The report published by the group also stated that Lanci will continue to report to Yang Yuanqing, chief executive officer of Lenovo Group.

Lanci was born in Turin, Italy in 1954. He graduated from the Politecnico of Turin where he also earned his degree in civil engineering. He worked for Texas Instrumentals Italia in 1981. He was also a country manager for the printers division and portable computers in Italy, Africa, and the Middle East. In 1996, he was appointed president for Texas Instruments' productivity products division of EMEA. Gianfranco Lanci became the managing director of Acer Italy when TI's portable PC business merged with Acer in 1997.

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Chinese and Russian technology companies plan to jointly launch an e-commerce platform which aims to promote the cross-border trading between China and Russia.

Russian online payment system Yandex.Money will start handling payment services for China online payment platform TradeEase. This project is expected to be launched in summer of 2015 and its turnover is expected to reach USD830,000 within three months.

Russian media revealed that this e-commerce platform will be jointly launched by Chinese online payment platform TradeEase, Bank of China, Heilongjiang province, and the border city Suifenhe. At the same time, Yandex.Money revealed that at the initial stage, about ten sales representatives from Suifenhe and other cities in the southern part of Heilongjiang will join the platform. With the development of the platform, the number will increase to several hundred in a month and will reach over 1,000 by the end of 2015.

Survey results provided by Yandex Market and German research organizations showed that e-commerce platforms with many Chinese online stores are the most popular in Russia. Yandex Market is an Internet shopping website under the well-known Russian portal website Yandex.

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