China Tech News

China's Ant Financial and Thailand's payment enterprise Ascend Money signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Hong Kong.

Ant Financial will implement a strategic investment in Ascend Money and deliver its Alipay model to Thailand, as the company aims to serve over half of Thai netizens in the next five years.
Douglas Feagin, president of Ant Financial's international business unit, said that Ant Financial's globalization push will benefit overseas users and micro enterprises.

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Baidu Cloud, the big data side of Chinese search engine Baidu.com, has signed a deal with Agora.io, a real-time communications provider delivering video and voice communications.

No terms of the deal have been released by either party, but local media report that Baidu Cloud will have access to the audio and video communications and interactive live broadcast products of Agora.io.

Agora.io was founded in 2014 by Tony Zhao, former CTO and board director at YY.com. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley and has a research and development center in Shanghai. It mainly focuses on providing developers with stable real-time audio and video communications and interactive live broadcast technology services. With a simple integrated SDK, developers can add high-quality audio and video communications and multiple-host interactive live broadcast functions to apps.

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Chinese smartphone and smart devices maker Xiaomi has signed a strategic agreement with Philips Lighting to establish a new joint venture for smart lighting development.

According to Xiaomi and Philips Lighting, they signed the agreement in Beijing. With the establishment of the JV, the two parties will jointly develop home-use intelligent interconnected lighting products which will be integrated into Xiaomi's Mijia Internet of Things platform.

Xiaomi previously signed a joint declaration with 13 lighting enterprises, including Forest Lighting, Yankon Energetic Lighting, Opple Lighting, and Philips Lighting, in February 2015, aiming to jointly explore the smart lighting sector.
In addition, Xiaomi invested in Yeelight, a smart bedside lamp designed by a company named Yeelink.

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HTC's virtual reality content management and sales platform named Viveport Arcades is coming to China.

HTC announced during the 2016 VR Developers Conference held in San Francisco that the company will soon open the service the U.S., China, and Europe as it aims to provide the opportunity to experience virtual reality to the public.
HTC will authorize the use of this app to cinemas, cafes and VR gaming halls to allow retailers to establish their own VR public space. The entire process can be realized via a Viveport program and it is easy to operate for vendors.

At the same time, developers can list their games in the arcade game catalog of Viveport app store and HTC will share their profit from Viveport apps with developers. At present, Viveport app store has 120 kinds of games for trial and final prices have not yet been determined. Currently the trial costs range from USD5 to USD13.

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Providing fresh food for China's hungry consumers is the key behind a new investment.

Chinese home appliance retailer Suning Commerce Group has led a US$200 million series C+ round in Yiguo.com, a fresh produce e-commerce platform backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Yunfeng Capital, with participation from other unnamed investors.

As a part of the deal, products of Yiguo.com will be incorporated into Suxiansheng, a fresh produce unit that Suning launched last year.

The investment follows a multi-billion dollar collaboration deal between Suning and Alibaba that was inked last August, which added massive offline capabilities to Alibaba's dominant online presence.

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Months after acquiring its American rival Uber in China, Didi Chuxing is dealing with the headaches of appeasing local governments and old-school taxi companies in China.

Didi Chuxing announced it has reached deals with over 150 taxi enterprises, as it is aiming to promote the transformation and upgrade of the taxi industry, increase income and operating efficiency of drivers, and improve passenger experiences in China.

Didi has launched a special channel for the fusion development of taxis and Internet-hailed cars. All taxi enterprises that meet the criteria can apply for cooperation negotiations via the official website of Didi.

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International Data Group is reportedly in acquisition talks with a Chinese consortium to sell-off the American media's media assets.

IDG is the owner of many well-known media, including PCWorld, and the market research firm IDC.
The leader of the consortium is Xiong Xiaoge, chairman of IDG Greater China. However, the identify of other investors and the detailed trading scale are not available.

An insider revealed to lcoal Chines media that as a private company, IDG hopes to gain a valuation between USD500 million and USD1 billion. The insider also said that the negotiation is at the initial stage and it is unclear if a final agreement can be achieved.

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Chinese Internet tourism service provider Tuniu.com held its tenth anniversary strategy conference and announced that they will become a multi-faceted online services group company.

Tuniu said that they will separate their businesses into two major sections: a tourism and resort subsidiary and a financial and technology subsidiary.

Yan Haifeng, president of Tuniu, said that the company's move to become a group aims to serve the fast growth of sectors like air tickets, hotel bookings, financial services, movie tickets, and wedding services. Yan said diversified customer demands are driving the changes within the tourism industrial chain. In the past, air tickets mainly targeted business trip customers. However, the greatest driving force for the growth of air tickets and hotel markets is now leisure tourists.

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Didi Chuxing's new joint venture with Volkswagen China is set to come online in the coming months.

According to Didi, the two parties will coordinate their respective strengths in products, marketing, brand building, and data technology to provide Chinese users with safer and more efficient transportation services. As long-term strategic partners, they will also combine their innovative resources to work towards an "Internet Plus" strategy and promote the development of smart city transportation system.

The new joint venture aims to create a smart ride-hailing platform. Jochem Heizmann, chief executive officer of Volkswagen China, said Volkswagen will be the OEM and vehicle provider in the JV. Heizmann also revealed that Volkswagen will provide a large number of new energy cars for the cooperation.

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China's second-hand automobile market is expanding and Internet companies are making bigger investments in the fragmented marketplace.

Chinese growth capital investment firm Pagoda Investment, Tencent Holdings Ltd., Bitauto Holdings Ltd., SB China Capital and SIG Asia Investments have invested US$100 million in a series C funding round in used car online auction platform Tiantianpaiche.

The company will use the proceeds on market expansion, services improvement, as well as adding financial services and new car sales to its existing platform.

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