China Tech News

Chinese mobile phone manufacturer Oppo plans to invest USD216 million to build an industrial park in India's Greater Noida, and this project will include a manufacturing plant.

According to Sky Li, Oppo's vice president and president for its India branch, the company's industrial park will cover an area of 1,000 acres and the construction will be divided into stages. The entire project is expected to be completed in two or three years. Its initial annual output is expected to be 50 million phones and its ultimate goal is to produce 100 million phones every year.

At present, Oppo already has one factory in Greater Noida.

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Horizon Robotics, a Chinese start-up focusing on artificial intelligence algorithm chips, systems, software, and hardware, revealed that the company has reached a deal with Intel.

According to Horizon Robotics, they will launch an Advanced Driver Assistance Systems product prototyping system together with Intel during CES 2017 in Las Vegas. This system is reportedly based on a monocular camera and FPGA. Horizon Robotics is the technical solutions provider for the system, while Intel offers hardware support.
Yu Kai, chief executive officer of Horizon Robotics, said that they will show the testing video of this system to the public. Yu also emphasized that their cooperation with Intel is open and non-exclusive.

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Is a Chinese private equity firm hoping to take on e-commerce giant Alibaba via a new investment?
China-based private equity firm Hillhouse Capital is reportedly making a USD250 million minority investment in Magento Commerce, a cloud e-commerce provider. Magento was previously owned by eBay, but became an independent entity in 2015.

The Hillhouse investment will be used to fuel the American company's worldwide growth, with an emphasis on Asia. Magento's cloud-based open platform is supported by a global ecosystem of solution integrators and technology partners.

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During the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s, it was common to see old-school Chinese work units and staid State-owned companies transform themselves overnight into high-tech businesses. News from Hubei suggests the trend has not died.

Hubei Guochuang Hi-tech Material Co., Ltd. has agreed to acquire Shenzhen Yunfang Internet Technology Co., the operator of online real estate leasing and agency platform Qfang.com, for RMB380 million.
Shenzhen-listed Guochuang Hi-tech is an asphalt manufacturer and says it will raise RMB2 billion from eight investors, and plans to use the proceeds to pay for the transaction.

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Not only will China's biggest search engine have access to netizens' online search habits, it will soon also hold dominion over their bank accounts too.

Baidu Inc. reportedly obtained regulatory approval to establish a direct banking unit in partnership with China CITIC Bank.

The joint venture bank named Baixin Bank will tentatively have RMB2 billion in registered capital. Baixin Bank, which is 70% owned by CITIC Bank, with the remaining stake held by Baidu, will not have any brick-and-mortar outlets. It will only operate via the Internet, ATMs and mobile banking.
Rivals Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., founded their own banking units in 2014 and 2015, respectively.

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Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group will cooperate with American wearable technology company Kopin to set up a new company.

This new venture was announced at CES and aims to jointly develop augmented reality smart wearable industry solutions and expand the global AR commercial use market.

Based on the cooperation between the companies, Kopin will invest technologies and capital to provide a whole set of industrial smart glasses solutions, including the latest miniature displays, optics, software, and Whisper voice chip technologies. The two parties will work together to promote the development of their joint venture to expand its leading advantages in the global AR market.

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Chinese more Chinese going out to eat, restaurants are under pressure to ensure reservation booking are handled efficiently. Meiweibuyongdeng's mobile app hopes to solve this problem.

Alibaba's local-services platform, Koubei, and Zhongshi Capital reportedly invested in Meiweibuyongdeng, a mobile app that helps restaurants better manage their bookings and customer wait times.

The financial details of the investment were not disclosed, according to an announcement. The company said the series C+ round values the start-up at RMB3 billion.

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Online games have become a huge spectator sport in China, and new statistics show the overall market scale topped CNY40 billion last year.

China's mobile e-sports market saw rapid development and became one of the major drivers for the growth of e-sports. Due to the surge of mobile e-sports users, the overall e-sports user group also increased quickly and reached 170 million. In addition, the e-sports industrial chain became more complete and the maturity of the industry was further improved.

China's mobile e-sports market scale was CNY5 billion in 2015 and the number increased to CNY11.2 billion in 2016, representing a year-on-year increase of 120%. In the future, more mobile e-sports products will be launched and further promote the development of the mobile gaming market.

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Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has reached an Advanced Audio Coding patent licensing agreement with Via Licensing Corporation.

Under the agreement, Via will allow Xiaomi to use the patented technologies in its AAC patent pool on Xiaomi's full channel of products. Via's AAC technologies can achieve high audio quality via high compression efficiency and lower data consumption and processing power.

Via Licensing Corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dolby Laboratories and it has over 50 years of experience in technology and innovation licensing. The company is committed to the development and management of licensing programs for mandated, de facto, and emerging standards on behalf of innovative technology companies in the audio, broadcast, wireless, and automotive markets.

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Hard disk manufacturer Seagate announced that they will shut down their plant in Suzhou and cut over 2,000 employees.

The Suzhou plant already posted a dissolution notice, stating that due to "continuous operating efficiency optimization", they have to make the decision to dissolve the plant ahead of schedule. According to the notice, Seagate will pay compensation according to China's Labor Contract Law. Staff turnover procedures will be handled between January 11 and January 18, 2017.

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