China Tech News

Coolpad Group announced that the company plans to establish a joint venture with China Baoli Technologies Holdings Limited to develop dual-screen phones with both e-ink and color screens.

Coolpad will own a 49% stake in the joint venture, while China Baoli will own the remaining 51%. The joint venture will have registered capital of CNY200 million, including CNY98 million invested by Coolpad and CNY102 million invested by China Baoli. The joint venture will not be considered an affiliate of Coolpad, but rather a wholly separate venture.

China Baoli already has a seven-year exclusive promotion and sales rights of Russia's dual-screen phone YotaPhone in mainland China, so this new new joint venture aims to undercut the Russian deal and propel China Baoli towards its goal of manufacturing and selling its own product.

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"Panem et Circenses" (bread and circuses) was used in ancient Rome to curtail revolts and appease the citizenry. In today's China, online Web company Netease.com has also decided that engaging in public services like news dissemination is too destabilizing, so it has chosen to move away from news and concentrate instead on online games that appease the masses and the government.

Netease.com is one of China's oldest Web firms, and began in the late 1990s as an email product that cloned the services of U.S.-based Hotmail.com. It grew over the years to be one of the key destinations online for Chinese netizens, but today its news operations reportedly only contribute about 6% to the company's revenue.
To make matters worse, in recent months the Chinese government has made news dissemination much more difficult for Web companies. Online news hosts must now be licensed and much of the news must come from government-endorsed press releases.


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Ant Financial, the fintech company running's Alibaba Alipay affiliate, has just purchased an American cybersecurity firm for US$70 million, according to local media.

Ant Financial Services Group announced the acquisition of U.S.-based EyeVerify, Inc., the creator of Eyeprint IDTM, a patented, secure mobile eye verification technology. The acquisition furthers Ant Financial's mission to increase user trust and safety in financial transactions worldwide and allows EyeVerify to draw on greater resources to advance its technology.
Earlier this year, Ant Financial and EyeVerify entered into a licensing agreement in which Eyeprint ID was integrated into Ant Financial's payment authentication platform.


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Road safety is a hot topic in China with news this week that a driver in China reportedly died while his Tesla car was operated under autopilot mode. So a new deal between security company Qihoo 360 and Didi Chuxing aims to gather more auto data to curb driving fatalities.
Chinese ride-hailing app Didi Chuxing reached a deal to install Qihoo 360's tachographs on Didi's premium cars. With this move, the two parties are expected to promote accident responsibility identification and evidence gathering for Internet hailed cars, regulate safe driving behaviors of drivers, and ensure road safety.

Qihoo 360 said that the cooperation between Qihoo 360 and Didi premium cars is a pilot project. By installing their tachographs on Didi premium cars, it will be easier and faster to identify accident responsibility and solve disputes between drivers and passengers. On the other hand, it will help enhance Didi's management of vehicle dynamics to improve its service quality.
According to Deng Qiuwei, president of Qihoo 360's car networking business, the two companies will explore cooperating opportunities of software and hardware customization in the future.

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China's Kingsoft Group announced that its current chief executive officer Zhang Hongjiang will retire on December 1, 2016 and Zou Tao, current chief executive officer of Seasun, will become the CEO of the group.

According to the online security and cloud computing software company, Zhang's retirement is due to family reasons, and Zhang decided to retire on the expiration of his contract. After retirement, Zhang will no longer be executive director of Kingsoft Group or hold any position in its affiliates. However, he will help with business development of Kingsoft Group as a consultant.

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Chinese smart lighting company Qubic recently announced that they gained CNY50 million pre-A round funding from investors Plum Ventures and Cyanhill Capital.

Founded in 2014, Qubic focuses on the integrated application of intelligent lamps and central control platforms. At its founding, the company says it gained CNY22.5 million angel investment from Yunfeng Capital.
Qubic's founder Huang Xiaojun is a well-known figure in the smart lighting industry in China. He once led a major LED lighting project in 2010. In addition, he is an angel investor for Yeelight, the smart lighting company in Xiaomi's supply chain.
According to Huang, Qubic's product ecosystem is formed by super switches, super lamps, wireless small switches, and an app. It adopts Zigbee and WIFI wireless communications protocols and can support the control of 5,000 lamps simultaneously. The company hopes that with the new funding, they can launch new consumer and commercial lighting products with adjustable color temperature and brightness.

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What better way to track and surveil smartphone users than to have them online all the time playing a game?

John Hanke, president and chief executive officer of Niantic, revealed at a tech conference in the United States that India or China are possible destinations to next launch Pokemon Go.

Due to the strict regulatory rules in China, India may beat China to get the game first. Though they live in a special administrative region that is part of China, players in Hong Kong can access the game already because they operate in a more laissez-faire regulatory environment.
Niantic is the independent gaming company that jointly developed Pokemon Go with Nintendo. Niantic previously announced that Pokemon Go would also be available on the Apple Watch, but it does not mean Apple Watch would be the exclusive platform, said Hanke. The company is also considering other devices such as Google's Android Wear.

Apart from the Apple Watch edition, Niantic developed a wearable device named Pokemon Go Plus with the help of Nintendo. This new product was officially launched on September 16, 2016, with the price of USD35.

Since its launch, Pokemon Go has achieved remarkable performance. By combining geographical locations, augmented reality technology, and Nintendo's popular Pokemon elements, this game has dominated players' smartphones during the summer and continues to set new download records. Official statistics released on September 8, 2016 showed that since its launch in July, Pokemon Go had been downloaded over 500 million times and it maintained the record of the most downloaded app during the first week of its launch at App Store.


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Many non-HP cartridges used in its printers are manufactured in China, and HP has now upset these manufacturers and HP printer owners by disallowing private label ink cartridges in its printers.

Online ink seller 123inkt confirmed that HP printers started to reject non-HP cartridges on September 13, 2016. Printers displayed the error message "One or more cartridges appear to be damaged. Remove them and replace them with new cartridges," as reported originally by Myce.com.

HP intentionally added a failure date of September 13 to all non-HP cartridges in the firmware of its printers.
"Affected printers will continue to work with refilled cartridges if they contain the original HP security chip. Other cartridges possibly don't work," an HP representative told media. HP says it wants to maintain the integrity of its intellectual property, so it has the right to disallow other types of printer cartridges.

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Chinese Internet portal NetEase says that due to media business development needs, the company's online forums will stop providing services from October 19, 2016.

This is yet another media service closed by NetEase, following its recent community and microblog service closures.
According to the notice on NetEase's forums, the company will provide a "memories packaging" service before its shutdown. With one click, users can pack and download their personal article data and favorites. Once the forum is closed, user data will not be maintained.
Meanwhile, the notice pointed out that in the future, NetEase hopes to continue to provide interactive content services to users via other products, including its news client and follow-up posts.

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The frustrations for foreign companies doing business in China are on display in a new incident that shows how government roadblocks are created to dissuade investment in Chinese technology.

Zeus Entertainment says it will terminate its CNY192.5 million investment project in Xiaodu Interactive Entertainment because of Chinese restrictions on foreign ownership of media technology companies.

Zeus Entertainment announced on April 27, 2016 that the company made a CNY192.5 million investment in Xiaodu Interactive Entertainment with its own fund and the company gained a 10% stake in the latter on the completion of the investment.
Xiaodu Interactive Entertainment is a new company separated from Baidu's video business. The company aims to become the leading platform for professional generated contents in China.


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