China Tech News

Amazon is working with China Mobile's subsidiary Migu to launch the world's first joint-brand Kindle e-book reader.
With a retail price of CNY658, this new Kindle product will be formally shipped on July 20, 2017.

Customized for the Chinese market, the new Kindle aims to explore the massive online literature reading market in China. With this new product, Chinese readers will be able to enjoy the reading experience across two platforms. Kindle's e-book store will provide over 460,000 e-books while Migu will provide over 400,000 selected online literature works to offer combined e-book choices of more than 800,000 to Chinese readers.

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Microsoft announced that Horace Chow, general manager for Microsoft Hong Kong, will replace Philippe Rogge to be Microsoft's chief operating officer for the China region.

In his new role, Chow will be fully responsible for the management of Microsoft's China business and he will directly report to Alain Crozier, Microsoft's senior vice president and chairman and CEO of Greater China.

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Alibaba Group plans to invest an additional USD1 billion into the Southeast Asia e-commerce platform Lazada to increase its share ratio from 51% to 83%.

Lazada was established in 2012 and headquartered in Singapore. By the end of March 2017, the company had 23 million monthly active users. By investing in Lazada, Alibaba is able to reach six markets, including Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

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Xiaomi and Nokia have signed a business cooperation agreement and a multi-year patent licensing agreement covering cross-licensing of standard essential patents for mobile networks.

At the same time, Xiaomi will acquire some patent assets of Nokia as a part of the transaction. Full financial details of the transaction were not released.

Rajeev Suri, chairman and chief executive officer of Nokia, said that Xiaomi is one of the leading smartphone manufacturers and they are glad to reach the agreements with Xiaomi. They are also looking forward to cooperating with Xiaomi in many projects with strategic meanings.

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Silicon Valley start-up company Stripe has reached deals with Chinese digital payment service providers Alipay and WeChat payment to enable global vendors to accept payments from Chinese consumers via its platform.
Stripe said that starting from July 10, 2017, the cooperation allows online vendors to accept payments via Alipay and WeChat payment by using Stripe.

In China, payments with credits cards only account for a small part of online payments. Stripe hopes to explore China's massive consumer market by integrating payment services, which will increase its revenue for providers. At present, Alipay has over 520 million users, while WeChat payment has over 600 million users.

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Xiaomi plans to open more than 2,000 new stores around the world over the next three years.

Xiaomi's vice president Wang Xiang revealed during an interview reported in Chinese media. Wang is in charge of Xiaomi's global strategy, and he said half of those new stores will be opened in China and owned by Xiaomi; while the other half will be opened abroad and operated by its partners.

This is a part of Xiaomi's overseas growth strategy. Xiaomi will become a global company and consumers will be able to see it in nearly every country, said Wang. In 2017, Xiaomi has already expanded into Russia, UAE and Egypt and the company started localized production in India and Indonesia. Wang revealed that the company plans to put more efforts in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe.

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Hong Kong-based online personal financial platform CompareAsiaGroup announced the completion of its latest round of financing of USD50 million.

CompareAsiaGroup revealed in a statement that its investors include Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, Japanese financial service company SBI Group, and H&Q Utrust. Meanwhile, its existing investors like Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, Nova Founders Capital, and Route 66 Ventures also participated in the investments.

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Chinese telecom device maker Huawei and digital transfer services provider WorldRemit reached a deal to offer international transfer services to Huawei's mobile phone users in Africa.

David Chen, Huawei's vice president for the South Africa region, said in a statement that in Africa, international transfer is a very important mobile financial service. By cooperating with WorldRemit, Huawei will directly provide the international transfer service to its users in Africa.

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Mark O. Clift, the chief operating officer of Hong Kong's technology hub, passed away this week.
The news was confirmed in a message from Pagan Wong, acting chief executive officer of Cyberport, the Hong Kong's government's subsidized campus of technology businesses, startups, and investors. Clift passed away from undisclosed causes on July 16.

Clift joined Cyberport in 2003 and then launched its Smart-Space within its environs as one of Hong Kong's first co-working spaces.

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Many Chinese companies have risen on the back of mobile advertising, but a new report says fraud is rampant in the sector.

Global ad revenue wasted on fraudulent traffic could reach $16.4 billion in 2017, according to information from AppLift China. AppLift conducted a twelve-week study and found out that certain app categories are more susceptible to fraud than others, with entertainment apps and news apps seeing the most fraud traffic.

Mobile app categories with the most fraudulent activity include entertainment, news, and education with 22%, 22% and 21%, respectively. Meanwhile the apps with the least fraudulent activity dealt with parenting and shopping with 2% and 3%, respectively. More complex and sophisticated types of fraud have evolved such as click injection and click stuffing.

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