China Tech News

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With a total investment of over CNY5 billion, Motorola's global development and quality test center has been positioned within Lenovo's Wuhan operational zone.

This new center will cover various sectors, including manufacturing, operations, management, development testing, trade, and sales. The first batch of Motorola mobile phones is expected to realize volume production in Wuhan in May 2015.

Lenovo plans to transfer the manufacturing of Motorola products to Wuhan base in two phases. During the first phase, Lenovo's existing plant in Wuhan will be responsible for the manufacturing of Motorola products. The company plans to start trial production from May 11, 2015, and the first batch of products will be shipped on June 15. In 2015, the Wuhan base aims at production of 16 million units, including four new Motorola products. Meanwhile, its output value will reach CNY15 billion and export value will reach USD2.4 billion.

During the second phase, Motorola Mobility's global production operating center and global development test center will be established in the Wuhan comprehensive bonded zone, which will cover about 300 mu and is expected to implement initial trial operation in the second half of 2016. The new plant's designed annual capacity is 80 million units and it plans to realize CNY30 billion output value and USD6 billion export value in the 2016 financial year.

On the full completion of the project, the center will add 8,000 to 10,000 industrial and technical employees by the end of 2017.

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Chinese automaker BAIC Motor Corporation and Internet company Letv signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Hong Kong for smart systems, the EUI operating system, and Internet of Vehicles system cooperation.

At present, Letv is establishing its video industry-based smart ecosystem, covering platform, content, terminal, and applications. The company has formed a top research and development team in Silicon Valley with more than 260 people, and many of them reportedly previously worked for Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen, and Ford.

In January 2015, Letv officially launched its first full terminal smart operating system LeUI in Beijing. LeUI has various editions which can run on automobiles, mobile devices, and TVs. Compared with other car systems, the LeUI auto edition features sidebar design, a simple interface, multi-touch motion sensing, and voice functions. In addition, LeUI integrates other functions like online map navigation and group-based social functions.

BAIC and Letv will launch their first product of cooperation during Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition held in April 2015.

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BMG, a music business subsidiary of Germany's Bertelsmann Group, has signed an exclusive online music distribution agreement for the Chinese market with Alibaba.

Under the agreement, Alibaba will become the exclusive online distributor of BMG music and artists in the Chinese market. Alibaba will sell those products on its own platforms such as Xiami.com. In addition, the Chinese e-commerce group will assume the monitoring responsibilities and take actions for BMG-related infringements in the Chinese market.

For large Internet enterprises in China, entertainment is an important asset to maintain user loyalty and prevent use loss to competitors. But neither Alibaba nor BMG released figures on the expected revenue derived from the venture.

In 2014, Alibaba's major competitor Tencent also formed similar alliance with global music companies. In December 2014, Tencent became the exclusive online distributor for Sony Music Entertainment in mainland China. In November 2014, Tencent signed a distribution agreement with Warner Music.

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Thousands of Chinese websites will soon be marked unsafe by Google's Chrome browser.

Adam Langley, a Google security engineer, says, "On Friday, March 20th, we became aware of unauthorized digital certificates for several Google domains. The certificates were issued by an intermediate certificate authority apparently held by a company called MCS Holdings. This intermediate certificate was issued by CNNIC."

Your web browser knows a website is secure because it trusts the company that issues the secure certificate. But a malicious company can issue a certificate that allows one website to masquerade as another or for a hacker to easily grab confidential information. So Google will be marking any website whose certificate is derived via the China Internet Network Information Center as unsafe. So if a Chinese website has an "https" prefix and ".cn" domain suffix, it will be blocked in the Google Chrome browser.

Langley then says in an update to his original post: "As a result of a joint investigation of the events surrounding this incident by Google and CNNIC, we have decided that the CNNIC Root and EV CAs will no longer be recognized in Google products. This will take effect in a future Chrome update."

This move by Google could be a boon to Chinese technology companies like Qihoo 360, which is itself both a cybersecurity and browser company. Chinese users of Chrome may find it easier to switch to a 360 browser, rather than put up with the hassle of not being able to view domestic Chinese websites.

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Chinese telecom device maker ZTE published its performance report for 2014, stating that its operating revenue reached CNY81.47 billion, a year-on-year increase of 8.3%; its net profit attributable to shareholders was CNY2.63 billion, a year-on-year increase of 94%; and its basic earnings per share were CNY0.77.

ZTE said that the company realized operating revenue of CNY40.58 billion in the domestic Chinese market, accounting for 49.8% of the total operation revenue of the group; meanwhile, its operating revenue in international markets was CNY40.89 billion, accounting for 50.2%.

During 2014, ZTE's wireless products saw a year-on-year sales increase of 20% and its 4G base station market share was over 25% in the global market. In the future, ZTE will continue to invest in 5G. At the latest Mobile World Congress, ZTE displayed the world's first pre-5G Massive MIMO commercial base station.

For mobile devices, ZTE shipped 100 million units in 2014, including 48 million smartphones. Meanwhile, of those smartphones, about 60% were 4G smartphones.

ZTE's research and development expense in 2014 was CNY9 billion, accounting for 11% of its total operating revenue. Statistics from World Intellectual Property Organization showed that ZTE applied for 2,179 patents in 2014.

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Nokia Networks, previously known as Nokia Siemens Networks, announced its adjustments to its global customer operation structure.

The new customer operation were formed by seven major regional markets, including Greater China, effective on April 1, 2015. With the adjustments, Mike Wang has been appointed new Greater China president of Nokia Networks; meanwhile, former Greater China president Markus Borchert has been appointed new European president.

In his new role, Wang will lead Nokia Networks' operation in Greater China, covering sales, business management, delivery, and operations.

Under the new structure, Nokia Networks global customer operation will include seven regional markets: Europe, Greater China, North America, Latin America, India, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa. Each head of the seven regional markets will report to Ashish Chowdhary, chief operating officer of Nokia Networks.

Wang joined Nokia Taiwan in 1999 as regional general manager of the communications system business unit, leading the operating teams in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Prior to that, he also worked for IBM, ADC Telecom, and Sun Microsystems.

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Chinese online game developer and operator Shanda Games announced that they have signed a final privatization agreement with Capitalhold Limited and its wholly-owned subsidiary Capitalcorp Limited.

According to this final agreement Capitalhold Limited will pay USD3.55 per ordinary share, which is USD7.10 per ADS, to Shanda Games. Calculating by this price, the valuation of Shanda Games will reach about USD1.9 billion.

On the completion of the deal, Shanda Games will integrate with Capitalcorp Limited as a subsidiary of Capitalhold Limited. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2015. As the result of the transaction, Shanda Games will be delisted from Nasdaq and become a private company.

On January 24, 2014, Shanda Games announced that they received a privatization proposal from its parent Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited and a subsidiary of Primavera Capital Group, aiming to acquire Shanda Games for USD6.9 per ADS. In April 2014, Perfect World announced that they would participate in the transaction and agreed to acquire 30.33 million Shanda Games class-A ordinary shares for USD100 million.

However, in September 2014, Perfect World sold out the purchased shares and withdrew from the privatization transaction. After that, Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited and Primavera Capital Group dropped out from the privatization alliance as well.

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Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision and South Korea's SK C&C, a subsidiary of SK Group, will establish a joint venture to provide information technology services in mainland China.

Hon Hai said that the joint venture will first provide information technology services to Hon Hai's plants in mainland China and offer integrated security systems to other companies in mainland China. According to Hon Hai, the joint venture, which will be formally launched in May 2015, will also explore information technology business opportunities in medical and financial sectors.
At present, Hon Hai owns a 4.9% stake in SK C&C.

To promote enterprise growth, Hon Hai has been developing businesses with lower labor intensity and higher profit over recent years. Prior to the establishment of the joint venture, the group announced a deal to develop smart electric cars along with Tencent and China Harmony Auto. In addition, Hon Hai is making own-branded mobile phone accessories and prepares to provide telecom services in Taiwan.
The joint venture total investment and stake splits were not released.

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Chinese telecom device maker Huawei realized global sales of CNY288.2 billion in 2014, which was about USD46.5 billion, a year-on-year increase of 20.6%.

The company's net profit was CNY27.9 billion, which was about USD4.5 billion, a year-on-year increase of 32.7%.
By business lines, Huawei's carrier business revenue was CNY192.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 16.4%; its enterprise business revenue was CNY19.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 27.3%; and its consumer business revenue was CNY75.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 32.6%.

By regional markets, Huawei's revenue in China was CNY108.9 billion, a year-on-year increase of 31.5%; its revenue in Europe, the Middle East and Africa was CNY101 billion, a year-on-year increase of 20.2%; its revenue in Americas was CNY30.9 billion, a year-on-year increase of 5.1%; and its revenue in Asia Pacific was CNY42.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 9.6%.

In 2014, Huawei invested CNY40.8 billion in research and development, an increase of 29.4% compared with 2013 and accounted for 14.2% of its total sales in 2014. Over the past ten years, this Chinese company invested over CNY190 billion in R&D.

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Youzu Interactive Co., Ltd, a web and mobile game platform in China, will invest CNY538 million to acquire the entire stake in Guangzhou Zhangtao Network Technology Co., Ltd.

According to the report, Youzu will purchase the 100% stake in Zhangtao Technology from ten sellers by paying cash and newly issued shares.

Youzu said that with the transaction, Youzu aims to enhance gaming product promotion capacity of its listed company and save marketing expenses by using Zhangtao Technology's big data services.

Youzu's chairman and general manager Lin Qi reportedly also owned a 20% stake in Zhangtao Technology; therefore, Lin gained CNY100 million from the transaction. This may send red flags to investors who may not consider it an arm's length transaction.

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Express Mobile, an information technology company in the U.S., has sued China's Alibaba for patent infringement.
According to Express Mobile, the company filed the patent infringement lawsuit against the Alibaba Group in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division.

In the statement, Express Mobile accused Alibaba for infringing its patent related to the development of platform independent websites. The involved patent record number is 6,546,397.

Express Mobile is an enterprise mobility solutions provider. In November 2013, the company formed a sales and intellectual property partnership with NYSE-listed enterprise solutions provider Document Security Systems, which became a minor shareholder of Express Mobile in 2014.

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The news in recent days of China's "Great Cannon" and a related research report from Canada has cast a spotlight from outside China on the machinations of China's government-run Internet services.

Dubbed "Great Cannon" in a research report from the University of Toronto's Citizenlab, the researchers say, "The Great Cannon is not simply an extension of the Great Firewall, but a distinct attack tool that hijacks traffic to (or presumably from) individual IP addresses, and can arbitrarily replace unencrypted content as a man-in-the-middle."

In particular, the Great Cannon report shows how a recent coordinated Distributed Denial of Service attack hijacked Baidu.com's web traffic to help shutdown services on foreign-run websites such as Github.com.

Citizenlab adds, "We believe there is compelling evidence that the Chinese government operates the GC. In recent public statements, China has deflected questions regarding whether they are behind the attack, instead emphasizing that China is often itself a victim of cyber attacks."

Baidu has not released any official statement either about their involvement with Great Cannon or how it impacts their financial bottom line, but other media outlets have quoted Baidu representatives as saying the Chinese search engine company has not been involved with any activity related with Great Cannon.

"The incorporation of Baidu in this attack suggests that the Chinese authorities are willing to pursue domestic stability and security aims at the expense of other goals, including fostering economic growth in the tech sector," says Citizenlab.

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Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi announced that the company has terminated its exclusive cooperation with Flipkart, a leading e-commerce provider in India, and signed agreements instead with Amazon and Snapdeal for the sales of smartphones in India.

Xiaomi started an exclusive cooperation with Flipkart for the sale of its smartphones when the company entered the Indian market last year. The news to drop Flipkart was unexpected and the company did not provide concrete details on whether the relationship soured.
Apart from the e-commerce channels in India, Xiaomi teams with Airtel in the development of physical stores for the sales of 4G edition Redmi Note. In addition, the company is working with The Mobile Store to sell Xiaomi smartphones in designated stores.

China's Xiaomi is good at phone device marketing and the company recently started selling phone accessories on its official website Mi.com. By adding Amazon and Snapdeal as its partners, Xiaomi will be able to provide products on all the three top e-commerce platforms in India.


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Ensogo, an e-commerce website which focuses on discounted daily deals, has received a USD5 million strategic investment from Vip.com, an online discount retailer for brands in China formerly known as Vipshop.com.

According to Ensogo, China Renaissance was the exclusive financial consultant for this deal.

Founded in 2010, Ensogo was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in December 2013. Ensogo provides discounted products to over 600 million users in Southeast Asia and its businesses currently cover Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

Kris Marszalek, chief executive officer of Ensogo, said that by cooperating with Vip.com, the company expects to further enhance and develop its businesses in Southeast Asia in the future. They believe a long-term partnership will create positive synergistic effects.

Gu Weiguo, investment management director of Vip.com, said that Ensogo is a well-known discount e-commerce provide in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. The strategic investment in Ensogo is an important measure of the global e-commerce platform development strategy of Vip.com. With the investment, Vip.com will be able to better understand the fast-growing Southeast Asia e-commerce market. At the same time, the company will use its experience in the discount retail sector to help Ensogo achieve better performance.

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Meican.com, a Chinese meal ordering platform, announced that the company has completed its third round financing of CNY140 million, and its investors included Dianping.com, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Nokia Growth Partners, and TBP Capital.
Zhao Xiao, chief executive officer of Meican.com, said that by introducing the strategic investment of Dianping.com, the company will be able to accelerate its coverage expansion and provide a comprehensive service platform to the enterprise consumer market.

Jiang Yueping, chief strategy officer of Dianping.com, said that taking corporate dining as an entrance to the sector, the two parties can offer food and beverage as well as entertainment services to enterprise users in the future to serve more users.
Founded in 2011, Meican.com currently provides services in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Chengdu. Its services cover online meal ordering for employees of enterprise clients, business meals, and team buffets. Meican.com claims that their annual turnover had reached several hundred million yuan; their operating revenue realized year-on-year increase of over 800%; and their commission rate was over 10%.

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Lenovo has appointed new regional presidents for North America and EMEA as part of its business unit restructuring.

Lenovo says Aymar de Lencquesaing, former president of EMEA, is the new president of North America, effective from April 7, 2015. Lencquesaing joined Lenovo at the end of 2013 and was responsible for mobile business in EMEA. In February 2014, he was promoted to president of EMEA and senior vice president of Lenovo Group.

Under Lencquesaing's leadership, Lenovo gained 19.7% PC market share in EMEA in the third financial quarter of 2014, which was a record high; the region's operating revenue reached a year-on-year increase of 40%; and it contributed 29% of global operating revenue of Lenovo. In addition, EMEA became Lenovo's largest tablet market and Lenovo's smartphone business reached nearly 50 countries in this region.

Before joining Lenovo, Lencquesaing already had over 20 years' working experience in the American market. In his new role as president of Lenovo North America, Lencquesaing will be responsible for promoting Lenovo's business growth in this marketplace.
At the same time, Lenovo announced to appoint Eric Cador as new president of EMEA and senior vice president of the company, effective from May 1, 2015. Cador has over 30 years' IT market management experience and previously worked for HP as senior vice president of the PSG unit.

Both Lencquesaing and Cador will report to Lenovo's president and chief operating officer Gianfranco Lanci.

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Consumer complaints during the first quarter of 2015 for Internet shopping increased by 174.4% year-on-year to 24,100 cases, according to statistics published by State Administration for Industry and Commerce of China.

The State Administration revealed that China's nationwide industry and commerce administrative units received a total of 1.701 million consumer complaints, reports and inquiries in the first quarter of 2015, representing a year-on-year increase of 18.7%.
During the reporting period, consumer complaints saw a year-on-year increase and complaints related to service saw a significant growth. The industry and commerce administrative units reportedly received 266,000 consumer complaints, a year-on-year increase of 8.6%. Of those complaints, service consumer complaints increased by 17.8% year-on-year to 111,000 cases; while product-related consumer complaints increased by 3%.

Among service consumer complaints, Internet shopping complaints accounted for the largest part and with the fastest increase. The top three complaint categories were Internet shopping, which reported 24,100 cases and accounted for 21.8% of total service consumer complaints; resident services, which reported 14,000 cases and accounted for 12.6%; and telecom services, which reported 13,000 cases and accounted for 11.6%.

The State Administration said that they will investigate and punish acts that disturb the market order, enhance network market supervision, and handle legal provisions to protect Chinese netizens.

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Chinese lifestyle service platform 58.com announced a merger with its classified information listings competitor Ganji.com.
According to the agreement, 58.com will acquire an approximately 43.2% fully diluted equity stake in Ganji.com for a combination of share consideration and cash, including approximately 34 million newly issued ordinary shares and USD412.2 million in cash. Meanwhile, the two companies will maintain independence of their respective brands, websites, and teams; and they will continue independent development and operations.

The report also revealed that Tencent will purchase USD400 million newly issued shares of 58.com at the price of USD52 per ADS. Following the completion of this additional investment by Tencent, Tencent will hold in aggregate approximately 25.1% of the total issued and outstanding shares of 58.com on a fully-diluted basis.

Yao Jinbo, chairman and CEO of 58.com, said that they are pleased to make this large-scale strategic investment in Ganji.com to jointly realize major cost, revenue, and strategic business synergies in China. This transaction is part of a larger plan to execute their vision of integrating their respective businesses and creating a larger and more effective local services Internet platform to help consumers around China find the services that they need in their local areas. Ganji.com has done a tremendous job building a talented team, Yao said, and 58.com is looking forward to working more closely with them as they continue to expand in this growing and underserved market.

Yang Yonghao, chairman and CEO of Ganji.com, said that after extensive discussions, they are pleased to reach this strategic agreement with 58.com. Both Ganji and 58.com are leading players in the online classified market and have developed unique capabilities in O2O. Personally and on behalf of Ganji, Yang says he looks forward to taking advantage of the great chemistry between Ganji and 58.com, and leveraging their respective resources and advantages.

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Japan-based Rakuten has taken a minority stake in Fanli.com, one of China's online rebate and rebate-based flash sale companies.

The C-series round values the Chinese online shopping company at approximately USD1 billion. As part of this investment, Kevin H. Johnson, CEO of Ebates, a Rakuten Group company, will join Fanli's board of directors. Rakuten's investment gives it less than a 10% stake.

Fanli is one of the largest rebate-based loyalty shopping programs in China and a pioneer in flash promotion service, a combination of cash back and flash sales for brands. Ebates, which operates Chinese cross-border loyalty shopping sites Ebates.cn and Extrabux.com, is one of the largest online shopper loyalty programs in the United States. Rakuten, which acquired Ebates in 2014, is the largest e-commerce site in Japan and is rapidly expanding its global market service and cross-border shopping capabilities.

Fanli is headquartered in Shanghai and claims over 70 million members.

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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. published its performance statistics for March and the first quarter of 2015.
According to TSMC, the company achieved operating revenue of NTD222.03 billion, which was about CNY42.25 billion, during the first quarter of 2015, representing a year-on-year increase of 49.8% and a slight decrease of 0.2% compared with the previous quarter.

Meanwhile, the company stated that its operating revenue in March 2015 was NTD72.269 billion, which was about CNY14.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 44.7% and an increase of 15.4% compared with the previous month.

Mark Liu, co-CEO of TSMC, revealed that the company may realize volume production of 10-nanometer production process at the end of 2016. As the manufacturing base of the 10-nanometer process, TSMC's plant in Central Taiwan Science Park will start construction in May 2015.

In addition, TSMC predicted its 16-nanometer process will realize volume production between the second quarter and the third quarter of 2015.

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Following several years' operation in the Japanese market, Chinese search engine company Baidu announced a decision to close its Japanese search engine service Baidu.jp.

A spokesperson from Baidu confirmed that the Japanese search engine has been shut down. However, the spokesperson quoted in local Chinese media said they will not rule out the possibility to re-launch the services in the future or provide search services via other platforms in Japan.

According to public files, Baidu announced its international strategy in 2006 and took the Japanese market as its first stop outside China. In March 2007, the company started testing in Japan and the services were formally launched on January 23, 2008.

Commenting on choosing Japan as the first stop, Robin Li, chairman of Baidu, once explained that competition in the Japanese market was not too severe and its structure was stable for several years, with the search market shared by Yahoo and Google. Li said that both companies were non-Japanese companies and it would be better for Japanese consumers to have one more option.

After many years of operation, Baidu admitted that it is obvious their Japanese search engine did not attract a lot of users. Disregarding the closure of Baidu.jp, the Chinese company will maintain its office in Japan and continue to promote its Simeiji app, which is a keyboard app for Japanese input on iOS and Android devices.

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At Huawei's Global Analyst Summit, the company's rotating CEO and deputy chairman Xu Zhijun said Huawei will launch public cloud services in China in July 2015.

This launch will put Huawei in direct cloud service competition with Alibaba's Aliyun service. Microsoft and Amazon already launched their public cloud services in China, but those services will ultimately not be able to compete on a large scale because of their foreign investment structures.

Xu said Huawei wants to provide customers with a complete cloud service solution. Huawei can also provide related solutions to carriers while offering public cloud services. As for the overseas markets, Huawei will continue to cooperate with other carriers and provide public cloud solutions to them soon.

In March 2015, Huawei established a strategic partnership with Intel to jointly provide public cloud solutions to telecom operators around the world.

In January 2015, the market research firm IDC published a report on the Chinese public cloud service market which showed that the market scale of China's public cloud service reached USD327 million in the first half of 2014; and the market scale was expected to reach USD717 million for the entire year, representing a year-on-year increase of 46.7%. The report predicted that from 2015 to 2018, the public cloud service market will maintain fast growth and the annual average compound growth rate will reach 33.2%.

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Chinese B2C e-commerce provider JD.com formally launched its cross-border Internet shopping services, which allows Chinese users to conveniently purchase quality products from many countries and regions such as the U.S., France, U.K., and Japan.
This new platform will first offer over 150,000 kinds of products and 1,200 brands in 450 stores. Those products cover maternal and baby supplies, food and health products, personal care and cosmetics products, and apparel and shoes.

JD.com emphasized that this platform will not allow sale of fake goods. Once found selling fake goods, vendors would be charged a penalty of 20 times of their turnover or USD10,000.

JD.com said that the company will provide customized and personalized services to vendors who join this cross-border e-commerce platform. Vendors can autonomously select from JD's existing ports and supply chain partners. By reducing intermediate links, they can directly provide consumers with high-quality products and services.

In the logistics sector, JD will cooperate with large international third-party logistics companies to cover over 50 countries and regions around the world. In addition, JD will open three bonded zone ports in Ningbo, Hangzhou, and Guangzhou, respectively.

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Alibaba Pictures Group Limited, formerly known as ChinaVision Media Group Limited, announced that they have fully acquired Guangdong Yueke Software Engineering, an online solutions provide for the movie industry, for CNY830 million.
Yueke Software's 100% stake was previously on sale at Southern United Assets and Equity Exchange and the listed price was CNY180 million. Alibaba finally won the bidding for CNY830 million in cash.

Yueke Software's core businesses include movie ticket sales management, chain management, an e-ticket platform, mobile ticketing applications, third-party e-commerce platform access, and automatic display systems. Yueke Software has provided services to over 30 third-party cinema e-commerce operators in China.

With the popularization of online sales of tickets, the online seat selection market also saw rapid growth. Between 2010 and 2015, China's online seat selection market realized a compound growth rate of 198%. Industry watchers believed that China's large chain cinemas will all open the online seat selection functions in the future.

This is reportedly the second large-size capital transaction of Alibaba Pictures recently. Prior to this, the company received a capital injection suggestion from its controlling shareholder Alibaba Group. The report revealed that Alibaba Group intended to inject Taobao's film ticket business and related value-added service platform into Alibaba Pictures. The two parties are currently pushing forward relevant details.

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Chinese smartphone maker Meizu announced a strategic deal with mobile phone retail chain D.Phone that aims at annual sales of CNY2 billion.

Meizu revealed that its products will enter 3,000 D.Phone chain stores across China and the company will complete the building of 1,000 image sites within 2015. At the same time, Meizu will invest CNY400 million in post-sales improvement. Over the past three months, Meizu provided up to 100 training sessions to sales staff at D.Phone stores and a total of over 2,000 sales representatives attended the trainings.

Commenting on the cooperation, Li Nan, vice president of Meizu, said that the cooperation with D.Phone will help Meizu establish a sales channel to effectively cover all customer groups in a short time, realize full marketing, and provide faster and more thoughtful post-sales services. In the future, D.Phone's O2O channel will become another important strategic channel of Meizu.

Jin Xin, president of D.Phone, said that based on its offline advantages, D.Phone is building a ales process and experience combining online and offline resources. In addition, the company has a mature service system and hundreds of millions of consumers visit D.Phone stores to experience and purchase mobile phones each year.

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Chinese enterprise management software and e-business application solution provider Kingdee International Software Group has signed a global strategic cooperation agreement with Amazon Connect Technology Services (Beijing) Co., Ltd.

Under this global strategic cooperation agreement, the two parties will implement comprehensive and in-depth cooperation in various sectors, including enterprise resource planning, cloud service business transformation; product and technology innovation; automated operation and maintenance; user experience; international market service; and talent development. The cooperation is expected to help Kingdee establish a world-class ERP cloud service platform and accelerate the development of enterprise cloud computing market and the construction of a cloud computing ecosystem in China.

According to the terms of the agreement, Kingdee will become a core partner of Amazon AWS in the global cloud service sector. Amazon AWS will share its cloud computing technologies, methods, experience and knowledge with Kingdee and support Kingdee's building of ERP cloud service capacity.

In addition, the two parties will strive to further assist Chinese enterprises to expand cross-border e-commerce businesses and help them promote their businesses to the overseas market more easily.

Financial terms of the deal were not released.

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Foxconn will reportedly invest USD3.5 billion in India over the next two to three years.

According to a report in India's Business Standard, Foxconn executive Josh Fougler revealed that the company plans to invest USD3.5 billion in India in the next two to three years, covering smartphone, software, TV, and other electronic products.

In addition, The Economic Times in India quoted an insider by saying that Foxconn is considering building two smartphone product lines in Gujarat and Noida, respectively. Moreover, Foxconn will set up a small-scale trial product line in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh. The report said those product lines will make products for Apple; however, Hon Hai, parent company of Foxconn, did not provide any comment on the news.

Foxconn previously had three manufacturing plants in India which made mobile phones and related parts for Nokia. After Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia, Foxconn also closed those plants.

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Allegations against Chinese anti-virus company Qihoo 360 are doing little to quell fears about using Chinese security software.

At least three of the world's top testing laboratories — Virus Bulletin, AV-Comparatives and AV-Test Institute — have revoked certifications for Qihoo 360's products because of the cheating. The bodies stated that Qihoo 360 provided one set of results for certification, but then provided consumers a version of the software that had a "considerably lower level of protection".

For its part, Qihoo 360 says, " The allegation highlights that the default configuration of the product available for the public, differs from the configuration used by the labs for testing. This configuration was explicitly declared upon submission of the tests, and was thereafter confirmed by the test labs."

The company further states, "In the public version, 3rd party engine is off by default, in the consideration that the majority of our users, are running on lower computing power. To satisfy lab conditions, the consideration of power constraint was therefore discarded. In any case, no alleged comment indicates that the level of protection from the product, is lower than the records achieved during the testing sessions."

The provision of a less secure version of the software to consumers confirms suspicions by some China Internet watchers that Chinese security software companies purposely discount the efficacy of their solutions to give the Chinese government a softer means to penetrate users' computers. It also confirms worries that Chinese security companies may not always follow generally accepted global guidelines for testing and distributing software to netizens.
Qihoo 360 says it will continue to submit more data to the bodies in the hopes of regaining certification.

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Qualcomm is enhancing its relationship with Chinese businesses by launching a new unit to help Chinese smartphone manufacturers sell products in overseas markets.

About half of Qualcomm's revenue is reportedly from Chinese clients; however, the company still faces a series of challenges in the country. Prior to this, Qualcomm was punished for having monopoly in China. At the same time, the Chinese government is trying to lower their dependency on foreign chip manufacturers and other technology enterprises. To cope with this situation, Qualcomm hopes to prove their value to Chinese enterprises with the new seemingly-altruistic move.

According to Steve Mollenkopf, chief executive officer of Qualcomm, after the company paid their penalty in China, more and more Chinese clients showed their willingness to sign licensing agreements. As industrial giants like Apple and Samsung started using self-designed chips, revenue from Chinese smartphone makers became more important to Qualcomm. With the new move, Qualcomm wants to attract Chinese smartphone makers who aim to develop on the global stage, including Xiaomi and Huawei.

Jeff Lorbeck, vice president of Qualcomm China, told local Chinese media that the company previously opened a global office in Shenzhen that aimed to help Chinese smartphone makers explore the global marketplace. He said they are currently focusing on assisting Chinese clients to expand into overseas markets.

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Cyanogen will terminate its cooperation with OnePlus, a Chinese smartphone maker, and find a new hardware manufacturer partner.

Cyanogen's CEO Kirt McMaster and founder Steve Kondik reportedly made the announcement at a conference in Beijing.
As a result of this decision, the exclusive system dispute between OnePlus and MicroMax, a smartphone maker in India, will also end. In 2014, OnePlus launched a smartphone product named OnePlus One in India, which runs on Cyanogen OS customized system and was well received in the local market. However, MicroMax later claimed that they were the exclusive partner of Cyanogen in India and sued OnePlus, which led to the suspension of sales of the Chinese smartphone.

Kondik said that Cyanogen and OnePlus have different visions for software and the two parties have been arguing about it. Therefore, it is impossible for them to continue a cooperation.

Though terminating cooperation with OnePlus, Cyanogen said they will seek new partners in China and they prefer those who want to promote their products to the international market. The company did not reveal the name of their new partner, but it is reportedly a manufacturer focusing on the low-end phone sector.

Cyanogen is currently the largest third-party Android coding team in the world. Based on the Android system, its CyanogenMod ROM provides more personalized controlling options than many rivals.

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Kingdee International Software Group and JD.com announced an agreement in which JD will invest HKD1.3 billion in cash to acquire about a 10% stake in Kingdee.

Meanwhile, the two parties plan to form a strategic partnership to provide small- and medium-sized enterprises with ERP integrated solutions based on cloud computing services.

Xu Shaochun, chairman and chief executive officer of Kingdee, said the two parties will integrate their enterprise customer and user resources to develop e-commerce and warehouse logistics solutions and accelerate Kingdee's cloud service business development.

Liu Qiangdong, chief executive officer of JD, said that they hope to further combine JD's e-commerce and logistics IT solutions with Kingdee's ERP solutions and move the combined solutions to an enterprise cloud platform. With this move, the two parties aim to better meet the growing demands for enterprise solutions in the Chinese market.

JD will purchase Kingdee shares at HKD4.6 per share. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2015.

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Chinese Internet security provider Qihoo 360 announced the establishment of a new enterprise security group.

Qi Xiangdong, president of Qihoo 360, will be chief executive officer of this new enterprise security group. Financial details, including capitalization structure for the technology business, were not made available by the company.

Using the research resources of Qihoo 360's mobile security research institute, network security research institute, network attack and defense lab, and vulnerability Research Lab, the enterprise security group aims to provide security solutions and services to enterprise users throughout China.

Qihoo 360 also released its new product named "SkyEye", which features a big data-based unknown threat sensing system. It can help large enterprise customers in the government, finance, and energy sectors discover and track unknown threats.

According to Tan Xiaosheng, technology vice president of Qihoo 360, while providing security solutions to enterprises, Qihoo 360 also offers a full range of security services, including security consulting, security operation and maintenance, and security training.
Earlier this month, Qihoo was accused of fraudulent activities in relation to its anti-virus services. At least three of the world's top testing laboratories — Virus Bulletin, AV-Comparatives and AV-Test Institute — revoked certifications for Qihoo 360's products because of the alleged cheating. The bodies stated that Qihoo 360 provided one set of results for certification, but then provided consumers a version of the software that had a "considerably lower level of protection".

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China's Hainan Airlines Tourism Group and Lede Technology, a subsidiary of NetEase, have formally signed a cooperation agreement in Hangzhou to establish a new online travel company.

Financial terms of the arrangement were not immediately available.

HNA and NetEase had previously signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement in December 2014. Based on the framework agreement, the two would implement cooperation in Internet tourism and Internet finance services. The establishment of the new joint venture shows that the two parties are optimistic about the rapid development of the Chinese Internet tourism market and it is a realization of their strategic cooperation framework agreement.

The joint venture will focus on Internet tourism product development, including user-oriented traveling tips, travel routes, and exclusive travel services for all product lines. At the same time, the JV will explore big data analysis and online payment sectors.

Lede Technology will use the advantages of its Internet technologies and applications to provide technical and marketing support to the new company; while HNA Tourism Group will use its tourism operating experience to aid the related innovative products of the JV.

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Letv and D.Phone announced a deal for D.Phone to open Letv experience zones in its over 4,000 outlets across China.
Those experience zones will become pre-sales and post-sales service sites of Letv products, which are mainly super phone and super TV products. Financial terms of the arrangement were not released.

Letv's LePar sales vice president Zhang Zhiwei said that D.Phone will not keep any stock of goods. Instead, the related deliveries will be provided by LePar. So, D.Phone will only play the role of having experience stores and the product purchases still need to be completed via the Internet. LePar is a partnership project launched by Letv.

By cooperating with Letv, D.Phone will gain commissions from the sales of Letv smart devices, accessories and derivatives. It can also gain income from post-sales services. In addition, as a partner of Letv, the company will have the opportunity to subscribe to possible equity of Letv.

As a traditional 3C channel, D.Phone is transforming itself to a service provider. The company hopes to use its offline network channels to provide complete O2O services to the technology industry. Meanwhile, Letv wants to establish an experience center ecosystem via the nationwide offline channel of D.Phone that allows users to experience the products before purchasing them online.

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China's X86 server market scale reached USD1.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of 23%, according to a report from market research firm Gartner.

Inspur, Dell, and Lenovo ranked the top three in this market.

Statistics from Gartner show that during the first quarter of 2015, the global server market saw obvious growth with shipments of 2.67 million units, representing a year-on-year increase of 13%. This was reportedly the first time for the global server market to reach double-digit growth since the global economic crisis in 2008.

Global server market growth was mainly contributed by America and Asia Pacific. Though the Middle East and Africa gained 21% growth, the net unit increase was not large.

In the Chinese market, Inspur servers led the marketplace with 21% market share, followed by Dell and Lenovo. The market shares of those top three manufacturers did not have large gaps.

In addition, Gartner reported that market shares of non-branded server providers further shrank, marking a year-on-year sales decrease of 68%.

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Gone will soon be the joys of walking to a curbside stall in a Chinese city to squeeze and select fruits.

Chinese fresh fruit and vegetable e-commerce provider Fruitday.com announced that the company has completed its series C financing of USD70 million. The investment will be used for the company's basic construction, team development, nationwide business expansion, and upstream supply chain construction.

The B2C e-commerce giant JD.com led the investment, and SIG and Clearvue participated.

With the investment, JD will further improve its market reach. In the future, Fruitday.com can be an important supplier to JD's online fruit channel. Meanwhile, JD can provide logistics support to Fruitday.com to help the company expand market share across China.
Shen Haoyu, chief executive officer of JD, said that e-commerce will become a major channel for fruit and fresh food consumption in China in coming years. The investment in Fruitday.com will benefit JD's in-depth development in the vertical sector and enhance their platform position.

Founded in 2009, Fruitday.com is an early starter in the Chinese fruit and fresh food e-commerce market. It has years of experience in cold chain distribution and supply operation and claims to have realized a profit. The company completed its series A financing in 2013 and series B in 2014.

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The Internet of Things is expanding quickly in China, as Chinese Internet security provider Qihoo 360 and real estate developer Huayuan Group have now formed a strategic partnership to promote secure smart home services.

Financial terms and organizational details of the new arrangement have not been released by either company.

The firms will design and provide family security smart products and management systems, covering smart cameras, secure routers, healthkit devices, home appliance safety alarms, and gas and smoke smart alarms. With those products, Qihoo 360 will help Huayuan Group improve existing public area security monitoring system and establish a new family security smart management service.

Meanwhile, the two companies will team to build China's first smart community, which will be located in Changsha. The cooperation will then expand to Beijing, Shanghai, and Huayuan's other real estate projects across China that will integrate the Internet of Things devices.

Zhou Hongyi, chairman of Qihoo 360, said that the strategic IoT cooperation with Huayuan Group aims to create various innovative smart hardware using the omnipresent Internet to establish secure and convenient smart community and smart homes.

In addition, Zhou and Huayuan Group former chairman Ren Zhiqiang jointly initiated China's first venture capital fund for smart homes. This fund will focus on supporting smart hardware start-ups.

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Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holding Limited is investing nearly USD194 million into a Chinese financial news media company.

Alibaba Group signed a strategic agreement with Shanghai Media Group to leverage both companies' Internet technology and media resources to penetrate China's financial information services industry. Alibaba Group intends to invest CNY1.2 billion into China Business News, a Chinese financial media subsidiary of SMG, to create a financial data and information services company.

By utilizing Alibaba Group's big data and cloud computing capabilities, both companies will jointly develop a comprehensive financial data and information platform that will provide users with timely financial news and information in order to enhance their investment and financial decision-making capabilities.

Financial news and information is a high value vertical sector within China. Foreign entrants Euromoney Institutional Investor, Economist, WSJ, Haymarket, Financial Times, and Incisive Media are trying to cope with other local players like China Money Network and China Finance Online who have a much better grasp of the Internet news needs of Chinese investors and decision-makers.

The aim of this combined CBN and Alibaba platform is to raise the bar on enterprise efficiency in China by leveling the information playing field. By giving a greater number of Chinese enterprises access to precious financial data that can be easily mined and analyzed for actionable investment and business decisions, this platform is expected to help these enterprises scale and expand their businesses.

This strategic agreement with SMG is expected to help Alibaba Group develop data-driven financial products and services to enrich the lives of Chinese users.

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Chinese Internet video company Letv.com, which established its Asia Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong in August 2014, now plans to invest HKD6 billion in Hong Kong in the next three years to build the largest Internet movie and TV entertainment platform in Asia.

The company will produce TV series in Hong Kong and plans to shoot five TV shows within two years.

According to Mo Cuitian, Letv's vice president and Asia Pacific executive president, the new Internet movie and TV entertainment platform will replace the traditional live broadcast model with a video-on-demand model, providing flexible entertainment choices to audiences in Hong Kong.

Mo said that Letv will implement active development and hiring in the Hong Kong market. For program content and transmission technologies, the company aims to offer unprecedented experiences to the local Hong Kong audience.

Letv previously expressed its intention to cooperate with Asia Television. Mo said that Letv has no intention to participate in TV license bidding in Hong Kong and its cooperation with Asia Television will be limited to the existing resources of that company. At present, all cooperation plans are undergoing discussion.

So far, Letv boasts 100,000 clicks in Hong Kong in peak time. Mo said the vide-on-demand service will be a paid service and its paid users are expected to increase to one million by the end of 2016. Hong Kong has less than eight million residents, though, which is about the same as a medium-sized mainland Chinese city like Hangzhou.

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Chinese online game and mobile Internet application developer NetDragon announced that Simon Leung, former Microsoft worldwide senior vice president and Greater China CEO, has joined NetDragon as deputy chairman of the board of directors.

Meanwhile, Leung will be chief executive officer of Huayu Education Technology Company Limited, a subsidiary of NetDragon, leading the company's overall strategy development and daily operation. In addition, Leung will be responsible for strategic planning and development of NetDragon's worldwide education business.

According to public files, Leung joined Motorola as Asia Pacific president in March 2005 and he also worked as chairman of Motorola (China) Electronics Limited. On November 13, 2008, Leung was appointed Microsoft worldwide senior vice president and Greater China chairman and CEO. On April 13, 2012, Leung resigned from Microsoft.

Commenting on the joining of Leung, Liu Dejian, chairman of NetDragon and founder of Huayu Education, said that they value Leung's rich experience in team management, government relationship, and education sector. It will help Huayu Education achieve development in cooperation between government and enterprise and drive the company's overseas business expansion.

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