This morning Ma Hui, the general manager of Dangdang’s present clothing supplier Beijing Topnew (a veteran clothing manufacturer as well as a major supplier of Vancl’s children’s wear), released that Beijing Topnew has accepted a contract to design and produce of Dangdang’s private clothing brand. The clothing will be formally released in April or sooner.

The forthcoming private brand clothing will maintain the brand name of Dangdang — “Dangdang Kids” for example — and will consist of underwear, shirts, T-shirts, pants, jackets and coats etc., following with a series of additional lines in new areas such as home textile and home furnishing, according to an earlier interview from shopex.com with Dangdang’s CEO Li Guo-qing.

Mr Li also said in that interview that Dangdang’s clothing will take the same marketing route as GAP and UNIQLO, featuring fashionable clothing, and positioning itself at a higher level than Vancl.

[via Sina Tech]

Imagine this situation: An awesome coat catches your eye when you are watching a drama or TV show online. You have no idea which brand it is or where to buy it. But then a link to a shopping and payment webpage appears just beside the coat on your screen? Consumers can enjoy this new video shopping experience during March 6th to 8th on Tmall.com, and also enjoy a special sale for Women’s Day.

More than 30 women’s clothing brands joined in the debut show of Tmall’s video shopping, catering to young consumers and online shoppers. Click here to enjoy the fashion show and browse around for some clothes you like.

By using a dynamic image recognition technique, this video shopping service can associate goods in a video with a matched commodity in Tmall.com, and then give access for browsing or placing an order. If fails to find an exact match, it will offer alternates.

On February 27, an underwear fashion show hosted by Tmall.com gave the public its first glance at how video shopping service functions. You can check it out here.

According to hexun.com, Youku.com started its collaboration with Tmall.com as strategic partners on this new shopping service two years ago in 2009. Data from Taobao.com shows 77 percent of videos with goods descriptions are from Youku.com.

[Via china.com and tech.hexun.com]

Weibo mascots on a break, GMIC 2011

No longer does the V-for-Verified logo on a Sina Weibo blogger’s site indicate that they are the person they say they are and not an impostor. To a degree, anyone can have his or her Weibo account verified by paying some money on Taobao.com, ranging from 10 to 600 RMB.

Originally, Sina’s (NASDAQ:SINA) verified Weibo accounts were essentially the same as Twitter’s, displaying a ‘verified’ badge to make it easy for the public to recognize an account (mostly public figures who have a certain popularity or reputation) is the real thing. According to china.com, the previous verification process by Sina was strict and complex. Applicants should have popularity in fields such as entertainment, sports, media, politics, etc, and they also need to hand over identification and a certificate from their employers to keep on file.

For some reason, the verified accounts seem to gather followers much easier and they command a higher degree of trust from the public on Weibo. Their tweets get more comments and retweets, their opinion and recommendations initiate responses and approval. So it’s little wonder more and more bloggers on Weibo want to get a “verified badge”.

Search for ADD V on Taobao

Perhaps this is why the trade on Taobao.com is so prosperous. Most online sellers promise to deliver a verified account within 24 hours after payment. And it seems they really do come through according to the praise and feedback given by buyers. Another frequently-used shortcut to get verified is with the help of Weibo insiders — if you happen to know one — who has the right to modify accounts.

If it is only for chasing vanity, then abused verifications are of little harm. However, ‘fake’ verified accounts could also be used for misleading marketing, or worse. Regardless, there seems to be no stopping them: fake verified accounts on Weibo have developed into an interesting micro-economy.

[Via china.com]

The TSF Shell launcher app, which will launch next week on February 29th.

An amazing 3D homescreen interface experience is about to hit Android phones, and it’s thanks to a team of Chinese engineers who call themselves The Special Forces (TSF). The crew’s upcoming first app is, essentially, a third-party launcher app that gives Android users a new way to interact with their phones.

From the demo video (embedded below), the UI is certainly something to look forward to. The main feature of TSF Shell Pro – which is the launcher app’s name, which will launch in the Android Market on February 29th – is the great customizability of your screens. It adds all kinds of new gestures apart from the usual tap, long-touch, or zoom: it has double touch for making multiple selections, a lasso-like action for moving stuff, fast and fluid screen-switching, advanced menus, the ability to rotate app icons, and even to randomly organize the icons and stuff them into box-like folders on your screen.

TSF Shell features animated special effects. Click to enlarge.

Lots of extra 3D widgets are built into its launcher app – for notes, weather, music – and all featuring a uniquely interactive and animated style. Other interesting creations include a a pop-up menu, lots of lovely props for theming your homescreens, special effects such as icons splashing in a sea (pictured right; plus there’s a video showing that graphic effect on Youku), and even icons on fire which you can use just for fun. After the app’s launch, users can download new widgets, themes and other gizmos from the upcoming TSF in-app store.

The Shenzhen-based TSF crew describes themselves as “passionate about creating new computer graphics display effects as well as innovative and practical human-computer interaction modes.” TSF says it uses a custom-built “C3D engine” in its Shell Pro launcher to enable all this extra action on your regular Android phone, and that the aim of it all is to make the mobile user-experience more fluid, so that you can fling things around just as you would with papers or physical objects.

It’s not yet clear what are the performance requirements for a phone to be able to use this app. There are a lot of other launcher apps on the Market, but most of them are just about theming (such as Launcher Pro, or other Chinese-made ones such as Go Launcher EX, or QQ Launcher) and don’t have such a remarkably different user-interface.

So, if you want a new homescreen experience for your Android phone, check back on the TSF homepage or the Android Market on ‘leap day,’ February 29th.

Here’s the team’s own demo video (or mobile readers can go watch on YouTube, or Youku):

[Source: the TSF homepage]

According to Huawei chariman ‘Richard’ Yu Cheng-dong, posting to his Weibo account, the company is ready to impress with its upcoming MediaPad 10 tablet. He claims that it is the “most powerful tablet that ever existed.”

It will be powered by something called the Hisilicon K3 V2 processor, but it has not been made clear if it will be dual- or quad-core. It might well be a quad-core beast if it shares the same heart as the forthcoming Ascend D1 Q phone.

Photos of the 10-inch screen MediaPad 10 tablet have leaked, giving us a few angles of its sleek frame and slim body. In an earlier Weibo posting made by Richard Yu, he said the MediaPad won’t show itself until MWC 2012, which kicks off next week, where Richard himself is scheduled to take off the wraps.

According to Sina Tech and PC Online, the MediaPad 10 has a quad-core processor (which, as we mentioned above, is debatable), a proper HD resolution screen that’s 1920 by 1200 pixels (also a questionable claim), an 8-megapixel camera, stereo speakers, a slimline build, a microSD card slot for expandable storage, and a SIM slot for 3G cards. It looks to be running Android 4.0, the very latest version of Google’s mobile OS.

There’s no word on price and availability for now.

[News and photo source: CnBeta.com]

Changhong chief designer Liu Huajun demonstrating the Ciri smart TV.

One of China’s leading electronics manufacturers, Changhong (SHA:600839), has released a series of smart TV sets with a voice recognition system built-in, a first for the domestic TV industry.

Supposedly, the TV can even understand some local dialects in addition to Mandarin, like Sichuanese, Cantonese, and Hunanese. And, much like the Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) Siri (from which the set clearly draws its name), Ciri does its processing in the cloud, meaning that you need an internet connection to use the voice interaction features.

If you speak Chinese, you can check out an introduction to the TVs on Changhong’s site here. But if you want to see how the thing actually works, here’s a video from Changhong’s press conference (the somewhat disastrous live demo starts around 3:20 into the video):

It seems Changhong’s engineers have to put in quite a bit more work to smarten up Ciri. If the video above is any indication, its reactions are inaccurate and slow enough that most customers will probably prefer to use the remote.

[Source: ea3w]

China’s most popular TV serial of all time, the iconic historical costume drama Princess Pearl, will soon get a postmodern twist as it’s reinvented as a computer game.

Now at the stage of being drawn and mapped (pictured below), the game will be an online multiplayer title developed by a small studio called Beijing WuShen Century Network, and will be distributed on 17173.com, the huge gaming portal that was recently acquired by Changyou (NASDAQ:CYOU).

Princess Pearl, when it was first screened, enjoyed the highest viewership in Chinese television history. Seasons one and two received up to 54 percent and 65 percent of audience share respectively during its broadcast. It has become the television series with the most reruns in China from the 1990s to today. It went on to similarly phenomenal popularity in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand. The classic TV series was known as My Fair Princess in some nations.

This image, and the three others below, are initial sketches of the game characters from 17173.com.

The drama was actually based on a book by the contemporary author Chuing Yao, who has licensed the rights to the game developer. We are expecting to see the online game go live within this year, launching simultaneously in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

A report from Sina Games says that the online game version will feature some plot elaborations that were not covered directly in the novel or TV series, such as the reason why the Empress and the elderly battleaxe Rong Mo Mo (pictured below) were always displeased with Xiao Yanzi.

The report also states that the licensing fee paid by the game studio to the author, Chuing Yao, is at least one million RMB (US$159,000), though no precise figure was given. Apparently, it took two months to negotiate that. Ms Yao will supervise the game development and can interject at any time for the sake of the quality of the adaptation. Both the developers and Changyou must be hoping for some kind of repeat of the success of the classic TV series once the game goes online.

[Source of news and images: 17173 News [1] and [2], and Sina Games – articles in Chinese]

Unlike the common group-buying websites in China, Handsup.cn has an interesting new spin. It is the first domestic site that allows consumers to request deals. Seeing goods or service which they want, users can create and promote their own deals, turning a local business’s customers into its biggest advocates. It will be interesting to see if it’s successful.

According to Handsup, it takes just three steps for consumers to request a deal:

1. Find an item that you’d like to buy. Other e-commerce sites like Taobao or Amazon China can be used for ideas.

2. Submit the idea along with a photo, pick a realistic discount amount, and add a deal description. Here it goes through a review process behind the scenes. If the deal is approved, you will see it in action on the site. Now you can wait for it to gain traction, or rally people to sign up for the deal by sharing it online.

3. Again behind the scenes, if enough people are interested in the idea, Handsup reps will contacts businesses with the details, and if a business approves it, the deal is on. Now you can buy it with a nice discount – such as the USB-powered speakers pictured below that come with a 35 percent discount.

The more people 'hands up' a deal, the greater the discount will become.

The advocator of the deal will get a reward of 100RMB for each deal that goes on sale, no matter if he or she buys it.

There are three levels of price for each deal (pictured above); the more people vote – or ‘hands up’ – the deal, the greater the discount could become. This is how Handsup inspires social sharing and word-of-mouth marketing in its innovative group-buying model.

This consumer-to-business (C2B) model – in contrast to the usual B2C on the likes of Meituan and Lashou – is so new in China that nobody knows whether it will be success or not. Liu Lei, one of the founders of Handsup, says that his website offers a stronger deal alternative than those normal group-buying sites, and lower prices as well.

Currently, the items on Handsup.cn range from clothing and gadgets, to food and cosmetics. Its revenue model is more traditional, though – getting a cut of the daily deals that are bought by its users.

[Source: Tech2IPO - article in Chinese]

The new Lezhong ROM, based on Android, by Shanda.

Shanda (NASDAQ:SNDA), a leading web and gaming company in China, has released the open beta of its new Android ROM, dubbed Lezhong. It’s the first step towards launching its own budget Android smartphone later this year, on which we reported recently.

The Shanda Lezhong OS is based on the open-source parts of Android, and incorporates all of Shanda’s standalone apps. These include Yuncheng, its cloud-based e-book platform, and the Evernote-style note-syncing app Mknote.

This effort is an attempt by Shanda to make use of Android to push more into mobile. It’s also a challenge to China’s other web giants who already have a mobile platform of their own – and ones which are also very oriented around cloud computing – such as Baidu’s Yi, and Alibaba’s Aliyun phone.

As QQ Tech News points out, Shanda’s upcoming OS looks a lot like MIUI, the ROM that eventually got a life of its own in the popular Xiaomi phone. Unintentionally proving that there’s some copying going on, the Lezhong ROM will be auto-updated over-the-air every Friday, just as the MIUI team does with its own software.

Other than the built-in Shanda apps (which exist already), I don’t see anything new, surprising, or enticing about the Lezhong version of Android. Seems that ordinary folks might as well just buy any existing Android phone and then, if they so wish, install a bunch of Shanda apps on it.

The Lezhong ROM is available only in Chinese, so if you’re an expert tweaker and tinkerer, go here to download it.

According to rumors in the Chinese media, Alibaba’s online payments platform, Alipay, has completed its technical preparation for expanding to global users. In the next one or two months, sources claim, overseas users will be able to use Alipay directly on the company’s own e-commerce sites – Taobao, Tmall, and Alibaba.com (HKG:1688) – as well as numerous Chinese domestic websites that make use of it for online purchases.

We spoke to an Alipay representative at Alibaba HQ this morning, who said that the company doesn’t have any information on this topic at the moment.

With 600 million users, Alipay is the world’s biggest online payment platform. Such a move would again throw down the gauntlet to eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) owned Paypal.

Currently, users in only the Greater China area – Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan – who have a Visa (NYSE:V) or MasterCard (NYSE:MA) can use Alipay for shopping on Taobao.com. The total number of such Alipay users in these areas is already up to 1 million. But that could all change and become easier if Alipay’s global expansion goes ahead.

For the moment, Alipay is reportedly busy negotiating with several of the world’s biggest credit card organizations, expecting to start its global business before the end of this year. By then, overseas consumers should be able to shop on Chinese websites, and buy anything so long as its saleable – or ship-able – to other territories. It’ll be interesting to see if this will prompt a number of Chinese web companies to globalize their own businesses in-line with the new opportunities this would afford them.

The company has already worked with overseas partners before, for its AliExpress payment system, which is largely confined to the international B2B e-commerce site Alibaba.com.

It would be a really big leap if Alipay succeeded in making this global move, and it would mean a lot for its business around the world, which is reportedly Taobao’s long-term plan.

[Sources: PPCN, and CNbeta]

A screenshot from the Renmo promo sequel - it all turns out to be for a NetDragon MMO game!

When we previewed the upcoming launch of Renmo last week, which promised to be a devilish twist on social networking, we were intrigued by how it might subvert social media in China by encouraging naughtiness and flirtation. But it turned out to be a PR stunt. And the final product is actually an online game.

We’ll confess it’s a disappointment; but we promised an update to readers, so we’ll take the bait and check out what Renmo offers as a game. Actually it’s called Dungeon Keepers Online, and is available on 91.com, the online gaming platform that’s run by NetDragon (HKG:0777), which also operates the official Transformers Online game in China.

Now, after its October 20th launch, when you enter the home page of Renmo.com, the sequel of the original darkly erotic video promo shows up (the video is embedded below). This time the sexy model turns out to have an evil role in the online game (or maybe she plays the game and then becomes evil). When the promo ends, there’s a page telling you to choose to be a human or a devil, which decides your role in the game. There’s also a letter to all the fans of Renmo, which explains its marketing tactics – confessing it’s just a trick to introduce the new online game – and incites you to register to play.

Although reviews of Renmo… oh, I mean Dungeon Keepers Online… are mixed, there’s no doubt that it’s the most successful marketing ploy in the online game industry in China this year.

This kind of complex marketing is pretty new in China. It was full of gimmicks, with high exposure to grab plenty of attention. Also, it cleverly questioned some of the ulterior motives of why people socialize online. The homepage of the game retains the playful tagline “Evil is good!” from earlier in the marketing campaign.

By 12 noon on launch day, the official Weibo account of the game – take a look here – released statistics claiming that page-views on Renmo.com jumped to 564,788, and that the online game had garnered nearly 9,000 registrations already. It’s really an amazing start after its 14 days of cunning marketing. Let’s wait and see whether the game is good – or evil enough.

Here are two videos for you. First the sequel promo; then a brief gameplay video:

[Source: JRJ.com.cn]

China Mobile's M-Zone: a SNS and mobile services store that's bleeding new users.

A new school year in China, a new battle for mobile subscribers amongst China’s three mobile telcos. It’s an annual campus battle, in which the competing companies see a chance to lock-down a customer to one phone number – and one brand – perhaps for life. But China Mobile (HKG:0941), the country’s largest mobile network, is rapidly losing this fight for freshman customers, and that risks its entire market domination.

Compared to its previous amazing success of up to 98 percent market share on China’s campuses, China Mobile is really suffering an unhappy time seeing a decline all over the country – down to as low as 70 percent of new sign-ups amongst university students in many cities this semster.

Early in May this year, a Chinese tech site, ChinaByte.com, published an essay which warned of China Mobile’s slow demise, saying:

Unless it can make a success of its 3G mobile communication services, the world’s biggest telecoms operator enterprise won’t be able to retain its customers even with price reductions.

It painted a picture of the inevitable shrinkage of China Mobile’s business, inspired by a report from ccidcom.com, and of a previously monopolistic company that might be killed by a greater choice of apps and platforms, and by a strengthening China Unicom (HKG:0762), and China Telecom (HKG:0728).

In the past, when everyone was clutching feature phones, and the notion of apps hadn’t caught on, China Mobile’s “M-Zone” was the best and hippest deal in town. M-Zone was the biggest and greatest source of apps and paid mobile services in China, as well as a huge social network. Now it’s just one of many choices – and looking quite rusty and boring.

M-Zone was key to bringing on-board younger users, too. But now many Chinese youngsters have iPhones or Android smartphones, and now they can get games easily from numerous sources. So now the campus market will not be the exclusive domain of China Mobile any longer. This is really a big red flag, which – to mix metaphors – could trigger a butterfly effect of losing new and prosperous (and gadget-loving) 20-something customers way into the future. It’s threatening to China Mobile, in spite of the impressive-sounding performance of an average 80 percent share in the Chinese campus users market.

A China Mobile booth at a university campus, trying to sign up new users. (Image source: china-zhongzhi.com)

From M-Zone to ZZZZZZ-Zone

China Mobile made a smash hit in 2001 when pushing out the M-Zone brand, which it aimed at students. With an SMS package service offering free SMS between China Mobile’s users, M-zone got hundreds of millions of students thumbing their little mobile phones over the years. Also, its VPMN (Virtual Private Mobile Network) service also meets the needs of college students, allowing them to talk for hours on the phone and pay very little money. Sometime later came Fetion,，an instant messenger (IM) software which enable users to send massages from both the PC client and the mobile app – a sort of precursor of the current trend for group messaging apps. These services were really welcomed by younger customers at that time when 3G was not so mature in China, and smartphones and high-end cell phones were not so popular as they are today.

But things change so fast. China Unicom now has its ‘Wo You’ group-messaging app, and China Telecom launched one last week as well. Meanwhile, China Mobile offers free public broadband and WiFi to its own customers in hundreds of cities. Competition is tougher now, and the choices for users are more appealing.

As one of China Mobile’s loyal users for almost nine years, dating from my high school days, I have mixed feelings on this speculation. Though I see more and more friends changing their cellphone numbers to move to other networks, I’m still keeping my M-Zone number – only because of the 3,000 minutes free calling that I get. But now that we all like to download apps from app stores, and engage in mobile gaming and microblogging, I really expect China Mobile to show me something new if they want to keep me – and many other youngsters – as a customer.

[Source: TechWeb - article in Chinese]

In most consumers’ minds, Suning (SHE:002024) is still just a retail chain selling home appliances. In fact, it is not only China’s second-largest 3C (home appliances, computers, communications) appliance High Street retailer, but it also has an e-commerce platform. And that will will expand later this month, after Suning executives announced officially that its online bookstore will open within the month. As a teaser, one book is already up for pre-order on the site: the Chinese version of the upcoming Steve Jobs: A Biography (pictured above).

According to Min Juan-qing, a senior manager at Suning Appliances, over 600,000 SKUs will be on the virtual shelves upon launch – a greater volume of stock that any competing B2C website. That might suggest that the company will leverage on its high-street operations for storage and infrastructure. Suning claims it’ll be aiming at the higher-end of the market.

Although its e-bookstore sales targets are still unclear so far, Suning states that it will break into third-place in the B2C online book retailing market before the end of this year.

There’s obviously a strategic significance to Suning’s latest move. Having determined a long-term e-commerce development plan, Suning chose the book market as its first step in diversifying its online store. Industry insiders say that might be because of the relatively higher profits in online book sales – higher, indeed, than in the 3C appliances sector.

The online book-selling market in China is so fiercely contested that Dangdang (NYSE:DANG) and 360Buy seem perpetually locked in price wars and public spats over their tactics in this sector.

As a general consumer, accustomed to searching books on Dangdang.com or sometimes joyo.amazon.cn (the Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) joint-venture in China), I’m really curious about what we can expect from this newcomer to the online book scene. Competition always benefits consumers, so ultimately this should be good news for us.

[Source: Sina - blog post in Chinese]

A screenshot from Renmo's darkly sexy promo vid.

“Are you a human or a devil? Let people know your other side.” That’s the suggestive tagline of a brand-new, somewhat twisted, Chinese social network called Renmo (which means human-devil in direct translation). It will launch on October 20. Renmo wants users to be deliberately two-faced, and possibly evil, by providing them with two different IDs and social zones at the same time. In this way, Renmo wants to overturn the traditional pattern of SNS such as Renren (NYSE:RENN) and Weibo, which enforce real-name IDs and non-disruptive conduct.

Although the web site is not online for another week, the start-up’s marketing campaign is in full swing, with adverts across cities luring users into ditching Renren so as to give voice to their darker side. There’s a darkly shot promo video (see below) named “the most beautiful devil ever” featuring a sexy model stripping off.

But despite all this hype, it’s not clear what the new social media site aims to be: is it just a hook-up site, a dating site, or a sort of anti-Renren in which you’re not obliged to upload photos of your food or chit-chat with co-workers. Also, how will it monetize if advertisers don’t even know what kind of demographics are on the site?

Renmo's outdoor ad campaign is in full swing.

This week, Renmo’s outdoor advertising kicked off, with mostly bus-stop box-light ads (pictured right) in major cities saying things like, “When Renmo’s on show, Renren trembles.” The “renren” name in this context is a pun referring to “everyone,” as well as China’s Facebook-esque SNS.

If this is supposed to be a flirtatious site for potential hook-ups, then it has been beaten to launch by a more cutting-edge, LBS-based mobile social network called Mix, which allows you to connect with people nearby.

We’ll check out Renmo in full once it launches next week. In the meantime, you could follow Renmo on Weibo, check out its promo page, or – I get the feeling you’ll prefer this – watch the darkly erotic video promo: