China Tech News

With ever-slimmer margins, making and selling smartphones in China has become riskier and more difficult. Not only is the market awash in foreign brands from Samsung and Apple, but local rivals like Xiaomi, Oppo, ZTE, Huawei, and Vivo fight each other and dozens of smaller mobile phone firms.

So news that Chinese smartphone maker Oneplus has officially announced that they have closed all their self-owned offline retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai is not surprising.

Starting in November 2015, the upstart smartphone company gradually closed 45 offline experience stores, which were operated with Oppo, across China. With the closure of its final two flagship stores, Oneplus will no longer have any self-owned offline channel in the country.

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Seeking to capitalize on a proposed government regulation requiring online lending businesses to use electronic signatures, venture capitalists have poured money into SSqian, a two-year-old Chinese startup that hopes to ride demand for the digital marks.

Shunwei Capital led the series A+ round in the company and existing investors Matrix Partners and DCM also participated. It is unclear how much was invested and what size of stake the VCs claimed, so this A+ round could be part of a marketing and media push for the company.

SSqian previously raised RMB7 million in a pre-A round from Matrix Partners and a RMB30 million series A led by DCM and joined by Matrix.

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Shanghai-based online recruitment app HunterOn says it has raised RMB200 million to expand its recruitment services to more sectors, including finance, healthcare and consumer.

UOB Venture Management, an investment arm of Singapore's United Overseas Bank Group, led the series C round, and existing investor IDG Capital Partners also participated in the round.

Founded in 2012, HunterOn provides a platform connecting recruiters and headhunters. Its web and mobile apps aggregate 20,000 headhunting companies and 60,000 headhunters, providing services to 30,000 companies.

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Microsoft announced that Microsoft Online, which was formerly known as MSN China, has reached a management buyout agreement to become a subsidiary of Xichuang Technology and Microsoft Online's general manager Liu Zhenyu is now chief executive officer of Xichuang Technology.

Microsoft confirmed via its blog that Xichuang Technology and Microsoft are implementing close cooperation to realize operating model optimization for the Internet search advertising business of the existing company to ensure the continuity of core businesses and partnerships. All the details were effective from August 10, 2016.

Microsoft added that China will still be a strategic market for Microsoft and the company will still make long-term investment in this marketplace in the future. Microsoft China has the company's largest research and development center outside America. It will be committed to creating more personalized computing, building smart cloud platforms, and re-establishing core strategies, including productivity and business process.

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Gone are the days of trudging to the northern reaches of Beijing to visit the huge automobile malls to buy a used car, as RenRenChe now provides all these services via the Internet.

The Beijing-based online used car marketplace RenRenChe is adding new investors for expanding its second-hand auto service. Prometheus Capital and China Minsheng Investment joined a US$150 million new funding round in the company, according to Chinese media reports.
New investors in the round also included HanFor Holdings and Xinjun Capital, while existing investors Shunwei Capital, Ceyuan Ventures and Redpoint Ventures also participated.

Since being launched in April 2014, RenRenChe has facilitated the transaction of 200,000 used cars cumulatively, while its monthly transaction volume reached 18,000 in July.


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Selling smartphones and tablets in China has become cutthroat as dwindling margins and consumers' appetites for cheaper phones have eaten into the profits and future plans of one of China's biggest smartphone makers.

Chinese smartphone maker Coolpad published its semi-annual performance for the first half of 2016, stating that the company's operating revenue was HKD5.277 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 39.9% from HKD8.783 billion. Meanwhile, the company reported net losses of HKD2.053 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 173%.

According to Coolpad, its revenue decrease was mainly attributed to its group business unit restructuring and the severe competition of the Chinese mainland smartphone market during the first half of 2016. Its losses were mainly attributed to the sales of several rights and interests of the joint venture within the group.

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Zhang Chen, chief technology officer of JD.com, announced the company's VR/AR strategy and has established the first e-commerce VR/AR industrial alliance to make virtual reality and augmented reality core research directions for the company.

Zhang said that in the technology sector, JD will provide a set of unified modeling tools which allow users to make e-commerce applications and VR/AR content with unified standards. Meanwhile, the company will establish a content distribution platform to solve the current lack of content within the sector.

JD's VR/AR industrial alliance integrates over 30 VR/AR upstream and downstream enterprises, covering a complete VR/AR ecosystem. With brand, marketing, operations, and finance methods, the company will organize industrial resources to provide full support to VR/AR companies. At the same time, the company has launched VR.jd.com and established a VR social networking community.

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Chinese telecom device maker ZTE says its net profit attributable to shareholders was CNY1.766 billion, a year-on-year increase of 9.33%, during the first six months of 2016.

Then company published its semi-annual performance report, stating that from January to June 2016, ZTE realized operating revenue of CNY47.757 billion, a year-on-year increase of 4.05%.

Meanwhile, the report showed that ZTE's net profit excluding non-recurring gains and losses was CNY1.673 billion, a year-on-year increase of 78.38%; its basic earnings per share was CNY0.43; and its net cash flow from operating activities was CNY2.355 billion, a year-on-year increase of 56.17%.

ZTE's operating revenue in the domestic Chinese market reached CNY27.803 billion, accounting for 58.22% of its total operating revenue; and its operating revenue from international markets was CNY19.954 billion, accounting for 41.78% of its total operating revenue. The company's carrier network business, consumer business, and government and enterprise business all achieved increase compared with the same period of last year and the revenue was CNY28.735 billion, CNY14.415 billion, and CNY4.607 billion, respectively.

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Is Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. planning a takeover of Sina.com's Weibo microblogging service?

The e-commerce behemoth just acquired another three million American Depository Shares of Weibo Corporation from the company's management team for a total of US$135 million, increasing Alibaba's stake in the Twitter-like service to 31.5% from 30.1%, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

But unlike Twitter, Weibo is not blocked and filtered in China. Plus Weibo's features include many more Chinese-friendly features than the troll-ridden Twitter, which is based in the United States, and Weibo offers marketers good access to key opinion leaders. And Alibaba's move could be geared toward further stake purchases as Alibaba may eventually take over the whole company, as it did with online video site Youku Tudou.

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Hong Kong has beautiful beaches, rule of law, and a free press, but its high cost of living, paucity of trained technology engineers and small local market have persuaded many China-focused entrepreneurs to avoid the Special Administrative Region. A new investment fund though is trying to keep entrepreneurs in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Cyberport announced that the new Cyberport Macro Fund for Hong Kong-based digital entrepreneurs is now open. With an initial size of HK$200 million, the CMF aims to accelerate the growth of digital technology startups in Hong Kong.
The investment fund will offer seed to Series A stage funding to digital startups by co-investing with other private and public investors to encourage the development of a venture capital ecosystem in Hong Kong

Successful applicants, set to receive between HK$1 million to HK$20 million in accumulative investment per each investee, will be assessed based on their business model including the areas of compliance, governance, financial position and business viability as well as the potential return on investment in business and proven involvement in the Cyberport community.

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