Microsoft to Invest 100 mln USD in China over Five Years

From ChinaTechNews:

"Microsoft China announced at its 2007 fiscal year media communications conference that it would continue to enlarge investment in China and work to push forward the development of the local software industry by cooperating with the Chinese government and local business partners.

Microsoft China says that in the next five years, it will complete US$100 million strategic investments and US$100 software outsourcing investments in China and train about 80000 software talents as an effort to carry out an agreement reached with the Chinese government."

Lenovo Recalls 500,000 Batteries

From BBC News:

"Chinese computer-maker Lenovo has announced the worldwide recall of more than 500,000 laptop batteries made by Sony because of a fire risk.

The problem affects ThinkPad laptops sold from February 2005 both under its name and the IBM brand.

It follows earlier recalls of Sony batteries by Dell, Apple and Toshiba over the same fire risk."

China Telecom Teams up with Microsoft

From CRIEnglish:

"China Telecom, a leading fixed-line phone operator in China, has joined the country's fierce Internet search engine competition with Microsoft as its technical partner.

A search engine titled "114", an established telephone inquiry service in China, has appeared on China Telecom's partner website, http://www.vnet.cn/..

The service is still in trial period and formal service will be started in early October, a source at China Telecom told Xinhua Thursday."

China Rolls Out Next Generation Internet

From International Herald Tribune:

"China has built its own version of an ultrafast next-generation Internet network that promises to reduce the country's dependence on foreign companies, the state news media reported Monday.

The China Education and Research Network has linked 167 institutes and departments at 25 universities in 20 cities through the Internet Protocol Version 6, China Central Television reported."

"The new protocol can work at speeds of 2.5 gigabytes to 10 gigabytes of information per second, around 100 times current Internet speeds, the report said."

eBay May Exit China, Rumors Abound

From Auctionbytes:

"eBay will sell its China division and PayPal service to Tom.com, the Shanghai Daily reported, citing the 21st Century Business Herald. However, Pacific Epoch said eBay is negotiating with Tencent about an acquisition, citing a rumor reported by Sohu. Pacific Epoch also reported another rumor that eBay Eachnet is for sale, and Tencent is an interested buyer."

The Rise of Baidu (That’s Chinese for Google)

From The New York Times (tipped by China Herald):

"While Baidu continues to gain market share in China — and does so with a Web site that the Chinese government heavily censors and that gives priority to advertising rather than relevant search results — some analysts question whether Baidu can withstand competition from Google and Yahoo, which possess superior technology and global work forces.

But Baidu’s evolution, and Mr. Li’s journey as an entrepreneur, offer textbook examples of the payoffs and perils of doing business in China and suggest that Baidu may prove to be far more resilient than some analysts believe. China has a population of 1.3 billion, about 130 million of whom are Internet users, an online market second in size only to the American market. Because China is the world’s fastest-growing major economy, analysts consider it the next great Internet battleground, with Baidu uniquely positioned to prosper from that competition.

In exchange for letting censors oversee its Web site, Baidu has sealed its dominance with support from the Chinese government, which regularly blocks Google here and imposes strict rules and censorship on other foreign Internet companies."

Google's China Problem

From CBIZ.CN:
By Fons Tuinstra

"When a huge an successful company comes to China and screws up in a massive way, I tend to be fascinated. For nobody the China market is a sure win and everybody is allowed his or her share of mistakes. But then, when you are as huge and successful as Google, the expectations might also be high. But then, I'm not much of aclearvoyant but the current downturn in its Chinese fortune does not come as a surprise."

"Earlier other US-based internet companies like Ebay and Yahoo dramatically underperformed in China. In those cases increased domestic competition was one reason. Another was that the American management just did not want to get they had to play in China a fully different ballgame."

Google's Market Share Declining more than 10% in China

From ChinaTechNews:

"The 2006 CIC China Search Engine Market Survey Report has just been released and it shows that Baidu's market share has increased dramatically in the year by taking up 60% of the market share in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Google's market share has declined by more than 10% compared with the same period of last year."


From Red Herring:

"Google is not the only search provider likely to be ruffled by the results: the search engines of portals Sina and Sohu both saw their market share shrink to 3.5 and 3.4 percent, respectively, while Zhongsou.com, which has been pushing its integrated search desktop Internet gateway aggressively in the last year, hardly even registered in the survey results.

Besides Baidu, only Yahoo China made any measurable gains, with a 1.7 percent increase to 5.4 percent market share."


From China Tech Stories:

source: it.sohu.com

Among school users, 77.1% use Baidu, 13.4% use Google
Among office users, 54.3% use Baidu, 29% use Google
Among enterprise users, 64.7% use Baidu, 31.0% use Google
For all users, 64.7% uses Baidu, 20.7% use Google

Related: Google's China Office Unveiled

Alibaba Reveals Plans to Go Global

From ChinaKnowledge:

"Alibaba.com Corp., China’s largest e-commerce company, plans to expand to India, Southeast Asia, and even Europe, Porter Erisman, vice-president of international marketing and business development, was quoted as saying in a report by the South China Morning Post.

The Hangzhou-based company plans to expand in the new regions in the next one or two years, and will triple the size of its overseas staff. It currently employs about 4,300 staff, including 40 in Hong Kong and 10 in foreign centers."

Google's China Office Unveiled

The People's Daily Online unveiled a couple of pictures from Google’s new office building in Beijing, China.

From the site: “Google’s China Office moved into its permanent office building in Tsinghua Science Park, Beijing, on September 4 after temporarily operation out of Xinhua Insurance Mansion and Tsinghua Science Mansion.”

Details:

More pictures:
Google's China Office 1
Google's China Office 2

Dell's Pain Is Lenovo's Gain

From TheStreet:

"During a sultry August in Beijing, local PC giant Lenovo was kicking the heat up even higher on a struggling Dell.

In less than a month, Lenovo has poached nearly half a dozen of Dell's key Asia executives -- a move likely to bolster its standing outside its home market and deal a setback to Dell.

"It's a coup for Lenovo," says Victor Ma, a Hong Kong-based analyst for Morgan Stanley. "Given that [Lenovo CEO] Bill Amelio came from Dell, it's within expectations that he would take some of his troops to the new company. But the surprise is how many people have left, which is obviously symptomatic of the problems Dell's having."

Huawei Takes Alcatel's Optical Crown

From TELEPHONYonline:

Alcatel was bumped from its spot as the world's leading supplier of optical networking hardware for the first time ever in the second quarter, according to Infonetics Research.

Huawei Technologies took the biggest share of the $3.1 billion optical hardware market in the second quarter, jumping from fourth place to first as its optical revenue jumped 83%. Infonetics principal analyst Michael Howard called the leap "a rare feat.

Rounding out the top four were Nortel Networks and Tellabs, in that order."

What is Huawei? If You're In Comms, You'll Be Finding Out

From Digital-Lifestyles.info:

"In the west the initial push has been towards core networking equipment for carriers and ISPs (markets which have historically been dominated by Cisco)."

"If you're in any form of communication business, don't kick back and think, "Well Cisco needs a competitor. We should be OK." Huawei's plans extend far beyond merely eating Cisco's lunch.

If you get a chance to wander into Huawei's showroom in China, you may be lucky enough to get taken into a hangar the size of a football field. In one small area there's the ISP/Telcocore kit, we've mentioneed. The rest of the space is filled with other technologies such as IN (Intelligent Network - the brains behind telco voice networks), GSM, GPRS, Edge, 3G, NGN (Next Generation Networks i.e. IP-based voice and data networks like BT's 21CN), xDSL (both end-user and network), optical (driving fibres), routers and LAN switches and of course consumer devices for it all."

DSL Prime: China as Number One

From ISP planet:

"China will soon pass the U.S. as the country with the most broadband users, probably mid-2007 at 55 million to 60 million. Almost all is DSL. China Telecom's 23.5 million subscribers are more than the entire U.S.; China Netcom 13.5 million makes them the world's second largest DSL carrier. China also has 365 million land lines and 426 million wireless subscribers."

"The majority of DSL manufacturing has moved to China in the last five years. The largest DSLAM maker, Alcatel, has moved manufacturing from North Carolina to Alcatel Shanghai Bell, and Huawei is a growing number two. Most modems are also manufactured in China, even if the name on the box is Siemens or Alcatel. An increasing proportion of DSL engineering now comes from China as well. Key Alcatel work on AT&T Lightspeed is performed in inland China."

No Alibaba IPO Soon

From Reuters:

"Jack Ma, Alibaba's founder and chairman, .. told Reuters at the China Century Summit that he has frozen plans to go public because he wants to focus on building the business rather than on financials. He said Alibaba will roll out a new service in the next month but declined to give details.

"We still need to do a lot of things and we only have two investors and they don't push me," the wire-thin executive said at the Reuters office in Beijing. "With an IPO ... I don't think investors will listen to me."

"Ma, who aims to build Alibaba into one of the world's top three most powerful Internet companies in the coming decade, wants a global listing when Alibaba finally does pull the trigger on an IPO."

Chinese Gov Takes on Alibaba

From Red Herring:

"If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then China’s leading B2B e-commerce platform, Alibaba.com, should feel complimented indeed.

On Monday, the China Internet Information Center, a government agency under the State Council Information Office, launched “China Suppliers,” a web site billed as China’s largest government-run e-commerce platform. The site has a pearl of a URL—www.china.cn—and a slick layout.

That layout—along with the site’s list of product categories and all its core functions—is a near-perfect replica of Alibaba’s."

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Asian Trader: A Promising’ Net Bet in China

From The Wall Street Journal Asia:

"Ask fund manager Ryan Jacob what he thinks about Chinese Internet stocks, and you'll get a quick answer: "One of the best long-term growth opportunities."Volatile? Yes. Politically and economically risky? Natch. "But still, dollar for yuan, one of the best plays on China's present and future growth," he says.

Jacob should know, since he's bought and sold Internet stocks all over the world in his near-decade as a money manager. His Jacob Internet Fund (ticker: JAMFX) was one of the hottest-air balloons around in the late 1990s, but assets under management, which peaked at about $300 million in 2000, later plummeted to $10 million."

Lenovo Not yet Ready to Do Global Mobiles

From silicon.com:

"Don't expect Lenovo-branded mobile phones outside of the Chinese PC giant's home turf yet, according to the company's head honcho William Amelio.

Speaking at an industry-sharing event held in Singapore on Friday, Amelio admitted Lenovo did "entertain some ideas" about making its mobile phones available beyond the Chinese market. However, he noted, the time is not ripe, even though Lenovo's mobile business has gained traction steadily within China."

Microsoft Chairman Replaces Mao in China

From The New York Times:

"When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise. The new standard world history text drops wars, dynasties and Communist revolutions in favor of colorful tutorials on economics, technology, social customs and globalization.

Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese Communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence."

"The new text focuses on ideas and buzzwords that dominate the state-run media and official discourse: economic growth, innovation, foreign trade, political stability, respect for diverse cultures and social harmony.

J. P. Morgan, Bill Gates, the New York Stock Exchange, the space shuttle and Japan’s bullet train are all highlighted."

Telstra Buys China's SouFun

From iTnews:

"Australian telecoms giant Telstra has paid US$254 million to buy a controlling stake in Chinese website SouFun.com, the company announced today.

SouFun is a news and information portal and business directory aimed at China's real estate sector and related markets. An approximate transliteration of the Chinese words for 'house search', SouFun has tapped into a booming real estate sector and a growing home improvement market in the nation of more than 1.2 billion people."

China to Lead the Broadband World

From vnunet:

"China will overtake the US next year to become the world's largest broadband internet market, analysts have forecast.

The number of broadband subscribers in China is growing at a staggering 79 per cent annually, and will reach 79 million in 2007, consulting firm Ovum predicted in research released today."

China Telecom and SMG Launch Internet TV Service

From Reuters:

"China's largest fixed-line company, China Telecom Corp., and Shanghai Media Group launched a joint internet TV service on Friday, as companies in China's maturing telecoms market forage into Web-based areas.

BesTV, the Internet Protocol Television service -- TV sent over telecoms networks using Internet protocol -- may reach 80,000 to 100,000 households by the end of 2006, BesTV chief operating officer Li Huaiyu said on the sidelines of the launch."