![PCH Exterior[1][1]](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/pch-exterior11.jpg?w=426)
A block from the Mariposa on-ramp and in the eye-line of 90,000 cars whizzing by on 280 sits an old warehouse that was home to the San Francisco Bay Guardian, a local alt weekly, and Digg. Most of the building is gutted and inside they are working on the “greatest enabler of hardware on the planet,” according PCH International head Liam Casey. It will be the new home of Lime Labs, a hush-hush… → Read More
China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba and Qihoo 360 have teamed up to launch 360.etao.com, an online shopping search engine that rivals similar products by Baidu, China’s biggest search engine. → Read More
China now has more active iOS and Android devices than the U.S., up from about 40-50 million in circulation the last time I visited in late 2011. What that means is local entrepreneurs can finally build scalable mobile software businesses. iDreamSky is one of the companies riding this wave. → Read More
Codoon is one of the first wearable tech gadgets produced by a Chinese company. It’s also an almost exact copy of the Jawbone UP. Sina Tech reports Chinese consumers will be able to get a Codoon on their wrists by the beginning of June. → Read More
The Chinese government will reportedly begin issuing 4G licenses (link via Google Translate) by the end of this year or early 2014 at the latest, following news that China Mobile is set to take construction bids for its 4G network as soon as this month. The country’s efforts to build out its TD-LTE network as quickly as possible is a potentially lucrative opportunity for telecom equipment makers… → Read More
After weeks of rumors, Baidu finally confirmed today that it has acquired the online video business of Shanghai-based PPS for $370 million. PPS will be merged into iQiyi, Baidu’s video platform Baidu, to form China’s largest online video platform by the number of mobile users and video viewing time. The sale is expected to close in the second quarter of 2013. PPS will continue to… → Read More
Amazon quietly launched its Appstore in China this weekend in a surprise move that paves the way for the rollout of Kindle devices in that country.
At the same time, Amazon also debuted its Chinese-language Web site for developers (link via Google Translate), promising that they will soon have access to customers in 200 countries. → Read More
China is investing $810 million into the development of Beidou (BDS), the navigation satellite system that it is positioning as a rival to the U.S.-developed GPS. According to China Daily, the money will be used to build an industrial park that will house 30 to 50 companies focused on developing an ecosystem for Beidou. Based in Tianjin, the industrial park is expected to welcome its first 20… → Read More
Tencent’s social blogging site, Qzone, has Asia’s largest active social network user base, with 600 million (and counting) users who log in more than twice a month. Besides Qzone, the Chinese Internet giant is perhaps better known for its flagship QQ instant messenger and the exploding WeChat smartphone messaging app. I spoke to Peter Zheng, vice president of Tencent’s social… → Read More
China’s e-commerce market racked up a whopping 1.3 trillion RMB ($190 billion USD) worth of transactions in 2012, according to a report by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) (linked article is in Chinese), an increase of 66.5 percent over 2011′s total. Last year, 242 million Internet users purchased goods online, and e-commerce transactions accounted for 6.1 percent… → Read More
The president of ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) Fady Chehade told the Wall Street Journal that the organization will launch Chinese character options for top-level domains in the second half of this year. (A top-level domain is the part of the Web address after the dot, so the Chinese characters would replace the .com, .net, .org’s, etc. that you see in most Web… → Read More
Tim Cook’s apology to Apple’s Chinese customers has divided observers, some of whom claim that the public mea culpa might undermine the Cupertino company by giving credence to government criticism. Cook’s letter was posted (link via Google Translate) on the Chinese Apple Web site on Monday after two weeks of heated attacks by China’s state-run media. Cook focused on… → Read More
As it already warned, ZTE posted its second-straight quarterly loss, due to vastly trimmed margins in emerging markets, as well as contract delays and falling handset sales in China. It made a net loss of 1.14 billion yuan ($183 million) in the three months ended Dec. 31, compared with its net income of 991.16 million yuan a year prior. Sales in the fourth quarter also fell 16 percent to 23.5… → Read More
Tim Cook has said that China will soon become Apple’s biggest market, but the government is not as besotted as Chinese consumers. China’s state-run media has taken several swipes at Apple this month, moves which may be part of a (heavy-handed) public relations strategy to pave the way for locally grown operating systems as the Chinese government seeks to move its IT industry away… → Read More
The funding bill President Barack Obama signed this week didn’t just prevent a government shutdown. It also included a provision requiring that U.S. government technology purchases first go through a cyber-espionage review process–a move that could potentially impact the sales of Chinese tech companies like Lenovo, which relies on sales to U.S. government agencies and schools as part of its North… → Read More
Apple is in court again in China, defending another of its products from attack based on pre-existing claims from a Chinese company. This time around it’s Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant, that has landed it in Chinese legal trouble, after last year another company took issue with the iPad trademark resulting in a $60 million settlement deal. → Read More
Known as the Twitter of China, Sina Weibo is also infamous in the West for the number of high profile users who have had tweets censored, including Kai-fu Lee. The former head of Google China, who was once booted off Sina and Tencent Weibo for three days, recently made a graph of how often his microblogging posts have been censored. Computer scientists Jed Crandall and Dan Wallach conducted a… → Read More
Canonical announced via its blog yesterday that it will be building an Ubuntu-based open-source OS for China, in partnership with the Chinese government and members of the Chinese developer community. The joint-venture, which will produce a version of the Linux-based Ubuntu called “Ubuntu Kylin” for an April 2013 release date, is said to “go beyond localization,” and include specific features and… → Read More
The research chief of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said yesterday (link via Google Translate) that there is still a significant gap between China’s broadband coverage and that of developed nations, and that the lag is increasing. → Read More
China Telecom, the third-largest telecommunications company in that country, reported better-than-expected 4Q profit as customers using the iPhone helped boost sales of wireless data.
Net earnings fell 17 percent to 2.36 billion yuan ($380 million USD) from 2.84 billion yuan a year earlier, but outperformed the 2.04 billion yuan average estimated by analysts asked by Bloomberg. 4Q sales rose 17… → Read More
Microsoft launched its flagship online store in China today on Tmall.com, in a move that could help bolster the market share of its hardware, including tablets and smartphones in that country. → Read More
Global PC shipments are expected to decline even more due to slower-than-expected growth in China, the world’s top PC market, during the first quarter of 2013, according to new data released by IDC. → Read More
Former Google China head, Kaifu Lee, has been tracking how many times his Weibo posts on Tencent and Sina have been censored and deleted, and has helpfully made a graph of the past 8 months. The outspoken investor has had his tweets deleted most often in the recent weeks because he was discussing the story on the 13,000 dead pigs found in a Shanghai river, as well as a session in the Chinese… → Read More
Earlier this week, the Data Center of China Internet (DCCI) released a report (h/t Tech In Asia) that showed nearly 35 percent of the Android apps it surveyed were secretly stealing user data unrelated to the app’s functionality. The DCCI, a research institute, looked at 1,400 apps downloaded from different app markets and found that 66.9 percent were tracking users’ private data… → Read More
Gary Wang, the founder of China’s largest online video site Tudou.com, now plans to launch a Beijing-based animated film studio that the Wall Street Journal calls “China’s answer to Pixar” on April 1. Wang says he has already secured “tens of millions of dollars” in funding from an undisclosed international group of investors–and he’s looking to staff his studio with experts from the U.S. so his… → Read More
Chinese Android-based phone maker Xiaomi said it will produce 15 million handsets for this year, and expects no overstock. This is double the 7.19 million units that were sold in 2012, which netted the firm 12.6 billion RMB ($2 billion) in revenue after tax. Its CEO and founder, Lei Jun, said that the firm is going to produce as many handsets as it expects to sell, because it doesn’t intend to… → Read More
Alibaba, China’s e-commerce giant, today named insider Jonathan Lu Xaoxi as its new CEO — filling a hole two months after founder Jack Ma announced that he would be stepping down from the position. The move is another step in the company’s wider restructuring, which saw the creation of some 25 separate business units to account for the company’s various interests, which range from the Taobao… → Read More
China’s technology Ministry has criticised the dominance of Google’s Android platform, according to Reuters. “Our country’s mobile operating system research and development is too dependent on Android. While the Android system is open source, the core technology and technology roadmap is strictly controlled by Google,” a Ministry whitepaper states. → Read More
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) minister Miao Wei announced yesterday (link via Google Translate) that the Chinese government plans to increase the number of households with broadband access, and that more than 70 percent of China’s Internet users will have 4M broadband service by the end of 2013. The initiative is part of the 2013 Broadband China project, which… → Read More
Jolla, the Finnish startup formed by ex-Nokians with the hope of rising, phoenix-like, from the ashes of Nokia’s abandoned MeeGo platform — via its Sailfish OS — has secure an outside investment from a company based in Hong Kong. The company, China Fortune, formerly known as Fortune Telecom Holdings, has taken a 6.25 per cent stake in the startup. → Read More
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