China Tech News

About 12,000 buses in Beijing have completed their Wi-Fi network card upgrades and opened services to all travelers in the nation's capital.

Wireless network bandwidth on the buses can reach 50M per second and the Wi-Fi network on a single bus can be used by at least 40 people at the same time. By accessing the hot spot named "16WiFi", passengers will be redirected to a website to download a Wi-Fi client. After completing the registration process, they will be able to surf the Internet or even play videos.

At present, Wi-Fi network cards on those buses are all 4G. Before the upgrade, they used mobile Wi-Fi routers with 3G network cards, which had problems like poor signal and network instability.

Though the system is still undergoing a stability debugging process, the buses already enabled the free use of Wi-Fi for passengers.


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American electronics retailer Best Buy finally bids farewell to its failed China experiment as it sells some of its assets to a Chinese firm.

Best Buy reportedly reached a final agreement with Jiayuan Group, a Chinese mainland real estate company, to sell its Chinese subsidiary Five Star Appliances to the latter. Best Buy said the sale of Five Star Appliances will not affect the operation of its other brands in China.

In 2006, Best Buy entered the Chinese retail market by acquiring a majority stake in Jiangsu Five Star Appliances. After eight years of operation, the performance of this subsidiary is still unsatisfactory and the company finally decided to dump the business. Five Star Appliances has 184 self-owned retail stores.

Hubert Joly, Best Buy's chairman and chief executive officer, said that they have been striving to improve their Chinese business over the past two years and have gained certain success.

Joly revealed that in the future, Best Buy will focus on the North American market. The sales of Five Star Appliances will not affect Best Buy's businesses in Canada or Mexico. In addition, the company will continue to develop its other brands in China, including Dynex, Insignia, Modal, Platinum, and Rocketfish.

In February 2011, Best Buy closed its nine retail stores in mainland China as well as its Shanghai headquarters due to poor operations. Instead, the company put its focus on Five Star Appliances, but the performance of the subsidiary was not satisfactory either.

According to Best Buy, the transaction is subject to the approval of related authorities and it is expected to close in the first quarter of 2016 financial year. Further financial terms were not released.


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Wang Juan, chief editor of Tencent's video business, announced that Tencent is preparing its over-the-top content plans for 2015 by cooperating with license owners and hardware manufacturers.

Wang said Internet TV in China is a regulatory focus of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of China because smart TVs will become a mainstream platform for video distribution in China. She said the OTT market brings business model diversification opportunities and the clear policy will benefit the long-term development of the industry's domestic Chinese players.

Tencent vice president Sun Zhonghuai pointed out that Tencent video will enhance upstream content investment and production to seize market-leading content supply. Tencent video will rely on content source investment, strategic cooperation, and in-house production to ensure its competitiveness in the content sector.

Sun said that Tencent will build a content distribution platform to maintain its advantages on multiple terminals, including PC, mobile device, smart TV, and set-top box.

Pricing and hardware specifications for Tencent's venture into the sector are not yet available.


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Just being a Chinese-made smartphone puts Xiaomi at a branding and security deficit on the global stage, but now a legal decision in India has further stymied the company's growth plans in the world's second-largest nation.
Xiaomi published a note on its official Indian website, stating that the company will suspend sales of Xiaomi smartphones in this country. The Delhi High Court ruled that Xiaomi infringed a patent from Ericsson and it issued an order to suspend the sales and import of Xiaomi smartphones in India.

Hugo Barra, Xiaomi's global vice president, said in the letter that Xiaomi has been committed to continue their sales of Redmi Note and Redmi 1S devices in India. However, they have been forced to suspend sales until further notice due to an order passed by the Delhi High Court. As a law abiding company in India at least, they are investigating the matter carefully and assessing their legal options.

Related reports revealed that Ericsson previously asked Xiaomi to pay patent fees in July 2014, but did not receive any response which appears in line with many Chinese tech companies' decisions to ignore intellectual property rights. Based on the decision of the Delhi High Court, Xiaomi will not be able to import, promote or sell their products in India until they settle the patent dispute with Ericsson.

Ericsson also said in a public statement that it is unfair for Xiaomi to benefit from Ericsson's substantial R&D investment without paying a reasonable licensee fee for their technology. They look forward to working with Xiaomi to reach a mutually fair and reasonable conclusion.


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SinoCom Software announced plans to acquire the entire stake in Heroic Coronet Limited, a game designer and operator, for HKD260 million, which is about CNY210 million.

SinoCom Software will reportedly pay HKD200 million in cash; while for the remaining HKD60 million, the company will issue 75 million new shares at the price of HKD0.8 per share.

SinoCom Software said that they have been looking for acquisition opportunities which can improve long-term growth. To further develop and expand the group's business range and considering the potential of the mobile game industry, their board of directors believes this acquisition is in line with the overall interest of shareholders.

According to public files, Heroic Coronet is mainly engaged in the design, development and operation of mobile games and web games. SinoCom Software is a high-tech enterprise that provides outsourcing software development and technical service support.


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Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi achieved operating revenue of about CNY26.583 billion in 2013 and its net profit was about CNY347 million.

These accounting details are the first concrete look into the private company's financial health. The data was released to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange because of an investment deal between Xiaomi and Midea. The two parties recently reached an agreement for Xiaomi to invest CNY1.266 billion into Midea Group.

Under the agreement, Midea Group will issue 55 million shares at the price of CNY23.01 per share to Xiaomi. Meanwhile, the two parties will start cooperating in various sectors, including comprehensive collaborative development of smart home supply chain services; full cooperation in mobile Internet e-commerce business; and joint investment in smart home ecological chain and mobile Internet innovation.

The report showed that Xiaomi's operating profit in 2013 was about CNY486 million and its total profit was about CNY524 million. By December 31, 2013, the company's total assets were about CNY6.452 billion, its total debts were CNY6.057 billion, and its owners' equity was about CNY395 million.

As the largest shareholder of the company, Xiaomi chairman Lei Jun owns a 77.8% stake in the company.
On the completion of the share issuance, Xiaomi will hold a 1.29% stake in Midea Group and can nominate a core executive for the board of directors of Midea.


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A couple of Chinese technology companies are helping to turn old mobile phones into profit.

Shenzhen GEM has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Aihuishou.com for a long-term brand partnership. With the cooperation, Shenzhen Green Eco-Manufacturer High-Tech Company Ltd. will become the prefered environmental-protection processing partner of Aihuishou.com in China.

Aihuishou.com will deliver its collected materials, including scrap electronics products such as mobile phones, laptops, and batteries as well as related parts, to Shenzhen GEM for processing. In return, Shenzhen GEM agrees to implement a harmless environmental recycling processing to those products.

Through this deal, Shenzhen GEM will start to convert its business from offline recycling to focusing on online e-commerce recycling.

Headquartered in Shenzhen, Shenzhen GEM is one of the largest old and useless batteries and electronic waste recycling companies in China.

Financial terms of the deal were not released.


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One of China's top travel, hotel, and airline booking websites has partially gone down.

Elong.com, one of the original online booking platforms in China, has seen its non-mobile website redirected to only its mobile site. So any desktop user hoping to get the full website experience at the Nasdaq-listed company's website is shunted to the mobile-only site. The outage has lasted for at least a few hours, but the company has given no indication on exactly when it started.

To make matters worse, the entire English-language part of the travel site is offline, in both mobile and desktop versions. The English website resides normally at Elong.net, but users are redirected to the Chinese-language mobile version of the site at Elong.com.

ChinaTechNews.com phoned Elong.com this morning and spoke to customer service representatives who said they are aware of the outage and have no idea when the site will be used again. They said, in the meantime, if users can not use the Chinese-only mobile site, they can instead call Elong.com hotline to make tourism reservations.

The Chinese online travel sector has a very crowded market of competitors like Qunar, Ctrip, and others all vying for online purchases from Chinese consumers.


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Chinese telecom device maker ZTE announced its redesigned enterprise logo along with its new brand slogan "Tomorrow never waits".

This is reportedly the first time for ZTE to change its logo. This new logo will be applied to the company's full product lines from March 2015 and the full logo replacement is expected to be completed in 12 months.

The new logo has rounded design and lighter color, which dovetails with the company's new CGO philosophy (Cool – Green – Open). Based on the new CGO philosophy, ZTE will drive innovations that are dynamic, youthful and compelling to users, sustainable and environmentally responsible, as well as open-minded and collaborative.

According to ZTE, the new logo presents a new corporate identity that is aligned with its strategy to focus on transformative value-added M-ICT innovations for consumers, carriers, enterprises and organizations as mobile connectivity and cloud-based technologies reshape the digital landscape.

Meanwhile, the new ZTE slogan, "Tomorrow never waits", reflects the company's ongoing commitment to providing customers with access to technology solutions that will define the future.

Shi Lirong, president and chief executive officer of ZTE, said that ZTE is evolving their operations in line with their broader M-ICT vision, which will help them deliver higher value to customers and drive the growth of their business. The new M-ICT strategy will open up a total addressable market of USD3.5 trillion for ZTE, far bigger than the USD350 billion telecommunications market.


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Crushing masses of people, airborne viruses, and smelly air are not the only threats for travelers on Beijing's subway system as a hacker has revealed a new technology exploit that can bring havoc to the capital city's underground transportation maze.

Zhao Wu, a Chinese security expert and head of the Butian loophole response platform, revealed on his microblog that the Beijing subway official background management system has a vulnerability which can lead to hackers gaining control of subway lines.

This vulnerability was submitted by a white hat hacker to Butian loophole response platform, which was established by Qihoo 360. This platform encourages white hat hackers to discover manufacturer loopholes by providing cash and gift bounties and help manufacturers fix loopholes and eliminate potential risks as soon as possible.

According to information from Butian, hackers can take advantage of this Beijing transportation vulnerability to directly login to a system administrator account to add, delete or change information such as subway stations, surrounding attractions, and hotlines, so as to disturb the normal operation of subway.

At present, the related details of the vulnerability have been reported to Beijing subway and the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center of China. There has been no posted timeline on when this will be fixed.

The Beijing subway just implemented a fare increase and restructuring of how fares are calculated last week. It also opened new lines that extend the massive network to many more stations.


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