A few months ago we spotted that Tencent’s WeChat app was censoring certain ‘sensitive’ political words. That turned out to be temporary, but the company was clearly capable and ready to implement such blocking. Today it emerges that Japan-made Line app is primed and ready to censor users of its social messaging service as well.

Line app contains a string of code that looks for “bad words” and connects back to a server to cross-check those terms with a list of politically sensitive words. That directory contains a lot of inconvenient truths that Chinese authorities would like air-brushed from history, such as recent revelations about the personal wealth of Party leaders, and historical incidents such as a certain something that happened at Tian’anmen Square.

The Line censorship machine was found by Twitter user @hirakujira and detailed by TheNextWeb this morning. The word filter is currently not activated, but as with WeChat’s it seems all ready to be turned on at any moment. If it were turned on and a sensitive word were to be sent via the app, it would be blocked and the user would see an error message saying “Your message contains sensitive words, please adjust and send again.” @hirakujira was able to hack the app to replicate that scenario:

This is what the code looks like within the app (and here’s the current list of banned words):

Watching you chat

Made by NHN (KRX:035420) by teams in both Japan and South Korea, Line currently has just over 150 million users worldwide. Line launched officially in China in December last year with the Chinese name ‘Lian Wo’, but there are no statistics available for its progress in the country. On the plus side, this bit of censorship shows that NHN Line is serious about succeeding in China, because that kind of suppression is a fact of being an online or offline media business in the country.

The findings seem to suggest that Line app is monitoring all of its users around the globe despite the filter not being turned on. That’s likely the case with WeChat as well. So while WeChat and Line are not technically censored at present – not even in China – it’s clearly ready to do so. Note that in both apps it applies to Chinese text only.

For users in China who have signed up for either Line or WeChat via SMS, it means that authorities can easily piece together your full identity. That’s because purchasing a SIM card in the country can only be done (in theory) by showing your national ID card or passport, which is then recorded.

China’s most heavily censored social network is undoubtedly Sina Weibo, which is hit with directives from authorities almost daily on what it should erase from the Twitter-like service.

(Source: TheNextWeb)

With China Mobile thought to be keen to launch its 4G network nationwide later this year, the behemoth telco is prepping its biggest ever city-wide 4G trial to start soon – this time in Shanghai.

But of the metrpolis’ 23 million inhabitants, only 5,000 Shanghai citizens will be selected to take part in China Mobile’s (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) trial, which will begin on June 1st. The telco already has 700 outdoor TD-LTE base stations in place across the city, complemented by 300 indoor ones focused on transportation and business hubs. That should cover most of the sprawling city.

Shanghai-based testers will either make use of 4G-equipped smartphones or 4G mobile wifi dongles.

Sun Yun, the product manager of that telco’s local subsidiary, Shanghai Mobile, told Chinese tech blogs that while the company is not ready to reveal 4G tariffs for users, “4G rates will not be higher than for 3G, and they could be cheaper”.

China Mobile has been doing trials in smaller cities for the past couple of years.

Since China Mobile is using the country’s homegrown TD-LTE band, the carrier’s 4G network is not compatible with any current iPhone or iPad models. But TD-LTE will be rolled out by other carriers worldwide, so there will be more and more quality smartphones available that support the network in due course. Those include handsets from LG and Huawei, with Nokia, Samsung, and perhaps even Apple likely to support the protocol in future.

As we reported earlier this month, China Mobile will invest US$6.7 billion to build 200,000 4G base stations that will cover 344 Chinese cities this year. Though there’s no clear date from China’s tech ministry, MIIT, on a nationwide rollout, it seems that China Mobile is being given an unfair advantage and a head-start in rolling out its TD-LTE services; rivals China Unicom and China Telecom will likely not receive any permits for their FDD-LTE networks until months or possibly even a year after China Mobile.

(Source: New Business Daily – article in Chinese)

EatAds, the Singapore-based startup that’s an online platform for buying and selling offline adverts, has today revealed that it has entered the Indian market. Just as the online ads industry has been revolutionized by such services, EatAds aims to do the same for outdoor and out-of-home (OOH) media.

It enters India with one major company already onboard in the form of Times OOH, which is a local powerhouse in outdoor, road-side and landmark advertising. EatAds already has over 100 media owners listed in Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Thailand, and now India as well. The platform has over 6,000 outdoor ad listings.

EatAds co-founder Nigel Hembrow says in today’s announcement:

Being such a large and fragmented country, we had always suspected a need for EatAds in India, and over past months all the India buyers and sellers we have met here have validated this need. We’re excited to be working with our Delhi- based partner to grow our user base in India.

You might recall that EatAds raised seed funding last December. The startup got back into action in October 2012 after remaining dormant for a while as co-founder John Fearon was focusing on building Dropmysite and Dropmyemail. Now EatAds’s expansion is beginning all over again having previously scrapped some of its earlier overseas moves.

After today’s India launch, EatAds is teasing more expansion in the region which will be announced soon. I get the feeling it’ll involve Myanmar and Cambodia or some other market where the outdoor ads industry is fragmented, under-utilized, and somewhat chaotic.

The core EatAds team: Nigel (left) and Dhruv.

Meituan’s T-shirts for gay couples.

Today and tomorrow is a sort of Chinese Valentine’s, so it’s an apt time for couples to be thinking of one another. That explains the timing behind China’s most surprising daily deal being offered by a Groupon-style site. The homegrown deals startup Meituan is offering a free trip to Vancouver, Canada, for one gay couple to go get legally married in that country.

The deal is being offered for free (see it here) to one Chinese gay couple. While Canada has legalized same-sex marriage, China hasn’t, so the resultant marriage certificate will be just a fancy piece of paper once the couple returns to Big Red.

Meituan’s free deal will cover travel expenses and one night of accommodation for the couple in Vancouver. Only one couple can win, with a draw to be held tomorrow to choose a winner. So far, nearly 80,000 people have entered to win.

As the site points out, same-sex couples do not need a Canadian residence permit or any such paperwork in order to get hitched there, and it can be done in a “very convenient” way on a tourist visa. Other cities and nations have been encouraging gay tripper tourism like this. I’m not sure why Meituan chose Canada over the US, but perhaps it’s because maple syrup is awesome – or because a wedding day can be rather ruined by being shot in the head.

As a sign that China’s youngsters are a lot more open than the traditionalism displayed by authorities, Meituan’s deals page hails “true love, regardless of gender” and calls on gay Chinese to “bravely get married”. Last year Meituan gave out free rainbow T-shirts for the two Chinese Valentine’s days. Today is the day for men to profess their love, while tomorrow is for women to reciprocate.

Meituan is China’s largest indie deals site right now with 13.1 percent market share in the highly fractured market. It pulls in over $150 million per month in transactions.

(Hat-tip to @bokane for spotting this)

Qihoo’s new search engine emerged nearly one year ago.

China’s Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU), a software maker and web portal turned search engine, has reported its Q1 2013 financials this morning. The company hailed a record number of users across its services – a total of 457 million active users in March 2013 – but saw mixed financial numbers.

Revenues were up slightly quarter-on-quarter to $109.9 million (up 58.6 percent in the past year). Operating income fell to $6.8 million in Q1, nearly half that in the previous quarter (and down from $14.4 million a year ago). Operating expenses crept up yet again to hit $89.2 million in the first quarter, nearly double the expense of Q1 2012.

Qihoo, which launched its search engine last summer to capitalize on all the traffic from its web portal and Windows PC software, also revealed a bunch of updated numbers:

• Total monthly active users of Qihoo’s products and services reached a record 457 million in March 2013, compared to 411 million in March 2012.
• Monthly active users of Qihoo’s ‘360 Browser’ across PC and mobile reached a record 332 million in March 2013, compared to 273 million at same point last year. User penetration of these web browser apps in China hit 69.6 percent.
• Average daily unique visitors to Qihoo’s “personal start up page” (hao.360.cn) of paid links rose to 94 million. That web portal generated approximately 489 million clicks.
• Paying users of Qihoo 360’s web game platform were approximately 281,000 in Q1.

Qihoo’s report made no detailed mention of the progress of its search engine (said by CNZZ to be at 12 percent market share in China), nor made any reference to all the company’s iOS apps being banned by Apple. Those issues will surely come up in the conference call later.

Qihoo expects a stronger second quarter with revenues between $142 million and $144 million.

See the full earnings report on the Qihoo IR homepage.

Antivirus products and services have been a renewed battleground in China in the past couple of years, enveloping several of the country’s top web businesses. According to rumors in the industry heard by TechinAsia, that battle is now taking the form of these companies vying to acquire NetQin (NYSE:NQ), a China-based expert in mobile antivirus apps. Both Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) and Tencent (HKG:0700) are thought to be in the running, but the market value of NetQin is proving to be a bone of contention.

NetQin executives even addressed the rumors late last week in the earnings call after revealing their Q1 2013 financials. Directly alluding to the suitors, NetQin co-CEO Omar Sharif Khan said during the call:

Over the past several months, NetQin has been approached by both strategic and financial investors for potential investment opportunities with us, while we appreciate this interest. We remain focused on delivering shareholder value to successful execution of our strategic planning initiatives. We will not fail on delivering shareholder value.

A few minutes before saying that, Khan lamented “a significant gap that exists between the market valuation and our business results”, which could well be the sticking point in negotiations with potential major investors or acquirers. NetQin is currently at $8.25 per share with a market cap of $363 million. Khan elaborated on this pricing:

We’ve also always believed that if we continue to deliver stellar results and growth, the market valuation of the company would appropriately reflect the fundamentals of the company. As both the shareholders and executive management of NetQin, we are not at all satisfied with a significant gap that exists between the market valuation and our business results. Frankly, it’s unacceptable. I want to be crystal clear, we are absolutely committed to creating shareholder value and we will put in a relentless effort to closing the before mentioned gap.

Asked by Oppenheimer analyst Andy Yeung about a 100 percent acquisition, Khan declined to reveal more except for saying that “multiple parties” had shown interest in both financial and strategic investments.

We’ve reached out to Baidu and Tencent about these rumors.

Tencent began pushing strongly into the antivirus market in China in 2010, setting themselves up on a collision course with well-known software maker Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU). After Qihoo launched a search engine last summer, Baidu has retaliated in recent months with antivirus products for Windows PCs aimed at both Chinese and overseas consumers.

Acquiring NetQin would propel Baidu into mobile antivirus products on the Android and iOS platform (where it currently has nothing), and would boost what Tencent already has in terms of mobile antivirus offerings.

NetQin shares fell 14 percent from Wall Street seeing its Q1 financials on Wednesday night to close of trading on Friday. That’s despite revenues rising to $33.2 million in Q1, with operating income up to $2.3 million.

Samsung (005930:KS) co-CEO Shin Jong-kyun has today hailed the company’s new Galaxy S4 phone as its fastest ever selling gadget. It’s expected to hit 10 million in sales next week, a mere three weeks after it first launched. JK Shin also told The Korea Times:

We are confident that we will pass more than 10 million sales of the S4 next week. It is selling much faster than the previous model S3.

He added that the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy S4 could ultimately reach 100 million units sold, a feat which would represent double the global sales of its predecessor, the Galaxy S3, which reached 50 million sales. Indeed, the S3 took 50 days to pass the 10 million sales mark.

The Galaxy S4 went on sale in South Korea on April 26, and promptly landed in the US, China, and India the next day ahead of a massive global roll-out backed up by major offline and online marketing. The big-screened S4 launched in Indonesia on May 3rd.

Samsung is the top smartphone brand in China, where it sold 30 million phones across various models in 2012.

(Source: Korea Times; via The Verge)

The fashion-loving Japanese startup Muse & Co has raised 350 million yen, about $3.4 million, in series B funding for its fledgling e-commerce business. The primary investors are Itochu Technology Ventures, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and Infinity Ventures Partners (IVP); this round comes exactly a year after a smaller first round.

Muse & Co aims itself at Japan’s savviest and most stylish shoppers – which are of course young, professional women. It’s a VIP flash sales site, something we’ve seen prove popular in the country with Luxa.jp, Monoco, Glamour Sales, and numerous others.

According to Startup-Dating, Muse & Co CEO Hirotake Kubo has revealed that the startup has 200,000 users and sees $500,000 in monthly sales, with 50 percent of that income from mobile shoppers. A whacking 70 percent of its traffic comes from mobile devices. The e-store has apps for iPhone and Android.

Started up in February 2012, the flash sales site has now grown to comprise 20 staffers. Like many such niche e-commerce services, it has a limited amount of items for sale each day – in Muse & Co’s case, just 30 – and flash sales on these last for just a week. It claims that most garments sell out before that deadline.

(Source: Startup-Dating)

Youku is seeing users go mobile – but so are the web pirates.

After merging into one company last year, Youku Tudou (NYSE:YOKU) further established itself as China’s top online video business with its two sites. Combining user-generated videos and licensed movies and TV shows, Youku and Tudou collectively spent over US$100 million last year on securing the rights to an array of Chinese and overseas streaming content. It’s a significant investment (with studios like Sony Pictures and Warner Bros) in capturing the attention of China’s web users – and it’s a treasure they need to protect from web pirates.

In this battle against piracy, Youku Tudou is up against illegal downloading sites that rip licensed content from the company’s sites, and rogue video streaming sites that seek to profit from uploading these rips. And not to forget the ample number of rival Hulu-like services in the nation, like the fast-growing Tencent Video, Sohu TV, and Baidu’s iQiyi (which recently made a major acquisition to expand even further). Yes, they also pay for the rights to content – thereby pushing up the price of licensing – but I get the feeling that they all keep a keen eye on each other.

Overseeing all this for Youku Tudou is Carl Lu, the company’s legal supervisor and leader of the anti-piracy team. Carl tells us that as the site has grown to 150 million daily views from mobile devices, the pirates are going mobile as well. That’s a phenomenon we’ve also seen with Chinese authorities struggling to take down mobile-only porn sites. He explains:

Ever since the establishment of our anti-piracy team in early 2012, […] we have seen a quick expansion for anti-piracy fronts from mainly PC to include mobile devices. Additionally, the fast growth in small piracy video sites is astonishing. The team in July and August 2012 recorded around 500 to 600 such video sites, yet the latest monitoring – now we have to outsource to a third-party agency – in mid-April reported as many as 1,995 such sites, many of them not registered [in China], or with their servers overseas.

The pirates are going mobile

The company’s apps for Tudou (left) and Youku.

Carl points out that Youku Tudou’s “content cost in 2012 was $118.3 million, representing 41 percent of our consolidated net revenues.” The anti-piracy team is there to protect those assets. That team, we’re told, expands as needed, and also loops in outside agencies for added support. Exclusive licensed content is inevitably the most closely guarded:

As a standard procedure, the team will issue warning letters to our contacts, to inform them the upcoming exclusive copyrighted content we carry. Once we detect any [copyright] infringement, we will send them take-down notices. Attorney letters if no response. If we need to prepare for more serious steps, we will take notarized evidence. The last resort is an official lawsuit.

The Youku and Tudou sites have to monitor what their own users are up to because an individual uploading, say, another site’s licensed content in bite-sized chunks will cause problems. Carl says, “For that, we have an in-house fingerprinting system, and another third-party system to detect pirated content in addition to our team’s manual review.”

Despite China’s top web companies pushing forward licensed content – like Baidu’s revamped music streaming portal, and many of China’s top video streaming sites converting their movie and TV serials content into kosher copies – there’s still plenty of offline and online piracy in mainland China. From the country’s notorious DVD shops, to P2P platforms like Xunlei, to blatant direct download pirates, there are still plenty of dodgy ways of watching a new movie or an entire season of a popular TV show.

Last month, authorities took down two of China’s biggest media piracy sites, conveniently enough on World Intellectual Property Day. But one of then, YYeTs, is now back online.

Chinese TV dramas make up 60% of traffic

Despite the challenges, it’s clear that web video is now a crucial draw for major web companies in China. A total of 4.1 billion hours of online videos were watched in one month last summer, and that number has plenty of room for growth as smartphones gradually become more ubiquitous across broader swathes of China.

Of all the licensed content on Youku and Tudou right now, 60 percent of total traffic on the sites stem from Chinese TV serials. US dramas – I see that The Vampire Diaries is the hottest right now on Tudou – represent, Carl says, “one of the fast growing categories” but still only account for three percent of traffic.

While much of the streaming is free, some require a fee as part of the Youku Premium package. That service has seen two million transactions since its beta launch, but that’s a figure which hasn’t been updated by the company since last year. While the transition to mobile seems to be going well for Youku Tudou and a few other such sites, it’ll be tougher to get consumers to pay for the latest movies or TV shows. In order to capture the fast-growing mobile user-ship, Youku is launching mobile ads this month.

Youku Tudou plans to ramp up its battle with the web pirates even more this year, so we’ve not heard the last of this fight.

China’s biggest web company by revenue has just posted its Q1 2013 financial report. Tencent (HKG:0700) reports rocketing revenues and profits for the whole group, which covers products across social media, gaming, advertising, e-commerce, media, and more. Tencent’s quarterly revenues hit US$2.161 billion, up 11.5 percent on Q4 last year, and up 40.4 percent from the same period last year; net profits reached $649.4 million in Q1, up 17.3 percent QoQ or 37.4 percent YoY.

Tencent makes China’s biggest social export, WeChat. In today’s report, the company revealed that it now has nearly 195 million monthly active users on the social messaging app (194.4 million to be precise); that’s up 23.1 percent on the previous quarter, which is up 228.4 percent in a year. WeChat has over 300 million registered users, and is likely to exceed 400 million some time this month. As we noted last week, WeChat’s significant number of active users puts it close to surpassing Whatsapps’s 200 million actives, though about 90 percent of WeChat’s user-base is within mainland China, so it’s not that much of a global success yet.

Other social numbers:

• QQ instant messenger hit 825.4 million monthly active users, up 9.8 percent on Q1 2012. QQ’s peak simultaneous users reached 173.0 million, which was down 3.3 percent across the year.
• Qzone, the broader social network around QQ, got up to 611 million monthly actives, up 5.9 percent in a year.
• QQ Game Platform saw peak simultaneous users of 9.2 million, up 5.9 percent over the same period.

In other financial data, value-added services accounted for 78.7 percent of revenues in Q1 this year, reaching $1.72 billion. That’s up 13.6 percent from the last quarter. Online gaming revenues increased 19.3 percent over the same period to amount to $1.21 billion. That was mostly down to China-area gamers on things like Crossfire, and was boosted by increased gaming activity during Chinese New Year.

Founder, chairman, and CEO Pony Ma says in today’s report:

During the first quarter of 2013, we saw broad-based growth in user engagement and revenue across our key activities. This growth has enabled us to fund investments in longer-term opportunities such as WeChat international user acquisition, online video content aggregation, and e-commerce footprint expansion, while maintaining a healthy expansion rate in earnings and cash flow. We saw both strategic and financial benefits from our portfolio of investee companies, including a further special dividend from Mail.ru.

We will continue to invest proactively in innovation and technology, and to cultivate our open platform, in order to capture the mobile opportunities ahead and strengthen our position as the leading internet platform company in China.

WeChat hasn’t really been monetized so far, but Tencent will soon endow it with social gaming integration similar to what has been done by rival apps Line and KakaoTalk.

Find the full report on Tencent’s investor relations page.

The newest earnings report from SingTel (SGX:T48) makes for painful reading. The giant Singapore-based telco, which has over 420 million subscribers on numerous networks across Asia-Pacific, saw its first full year drop in revenues for 14 years in today’s stats for Q4 and FY 2012. The only ray of light comes from SingTel’s digital business, which saw a 156 percent rise in revenues. Perhaps inspired by this, SingTel will set aside US$1.6 billion for startup acquisitions so as to find “next-generation growth engines in the digital space”.

That $1.6 billion investment will be spread over the next three years, and will be largely ploughed into strategic acquisitions in the online space that can tie in with SingTel’s phone services across the region.

Indeed, we’ve already seen SingTel doing this over the past couple of years, having acquired the mobile ad company Amobee for $321 million, snapped up the food recommendation startup HungryGoWhere, and made investments in things like TheMobileGamer. Plus the telco has a VC arm called SingTel Innov8 that has made lots of significant investments across the region. The most recent one was in the China-based mobile game developer and publisher Yodo1.

Profits down

Getting back to SingTel’s latest numbers, net profit fell 12 percent year-on-year to s$3.51 billion ($2.83 billion) at the end of March 2013. Group revenue fell 3.4 percent to S$18.18 billion ($14.66 billion) for the full year.

SingTel wholly owns Australia’s Optus, and has significant stakes in telcos like India’s Bharti, Philippines’ Globe, and several others.

See more financial data on the SingTel IR homepage or on ZDnet.

(Hat-tip to ZDnet for spotting this)

Using a smartphone is a very sensual and immersive experience, but so far our sense of smell has been left out of the fun. Not any more. A Japanese startup has created and is looking to launch ChatPerf, a hardware add-on for your iPhone that can emit smells.

The ChatPerk gadget (see the video below) could be synced up with various apps or games to emit specific odors at a certain time – such as the smell of burning rubber in a racing game, the scent of coffee to wake you up in conjunction with an alarm app, or to blast some soothing incense as you use a yoga app. I’m sure we can imagine some cruder smells that could be honked out as well.

ChatPerk is just a prototype for now, and the demo video below reveals that it looks very different to the conceptual designs on the startup’s homepage, so perhaps it’s all far from finalized. The biggest barrier to this being used extensively it that it cannot, inevitably, create scents magically from the ether, and so it requires the use of miniature plastic tanks of perfumes. That sounds a bit fiddly and troublesome.

A version of ChatPerk for Android is in the works, but there’s no indicated launch time or price yet for either that or the iPhone add-on. Check out the demo video shot by Diginfo.tv over the weekend:

(Source: Diginfo.tv)

Here are the newest rankings and China market share (where available) data from Canalys:

• 1st: Samsung, with 20 percent market share
• 2nd: Coolpad
• 3rd: Huawei
• 4th: Lenovo
• 5th: Apple, with eight percent market share

Samsung (005930:KS) and Apple are the only non-domestic brands in the top ten, continuing a trend that’s been going on for a couple of years. Canalys notes that 68 percent of all shipments within China are from domestic brands. Lenovo (HKG:0992) is aiming to outsell Samsung within China in the near future.

In contrast to the 82 million smartphones shipped in China (yes, Canalys focuses on units shipped, which admitedly doesn’t correlate with devices bought; many might be still sitting on shelves or in warehouses), the US market saw 27 million smartphones shifted.

For a rough idea of actual units sold, it’s worth noting that Samsung sold 30 million of its phones in China in 2012.

(Source: Macworld/IDG News)

We’ve seen all kinds of social fashion startups crop up in Asia in the past couple of years. One of the newest is Zoolook, created by a team of six people that’s split evenly between Tokyo and Hong Kong. This particular app focuses on the social and photography side of clothing, and is made up of a social network were people can share and tag their favorite looks (pictured below).

One big draw in the app, explains Zoolook founder Benoit Lavaud, is the presence of top fashion labels who have virtual “showrooms”, not dissimilar from Facebook brand pages, within the social network. This feature is being used by over 60 regional but prominent fashion companies, such as Kenzo, and… er… lots of others that I won’t pretend I know. But I’ve heard of Kenzo. For more clued-up fashionistas, the app is a way to keep up with trends, share their looks, and get inspiration from the numerous Asian fashion bloggers who also make use of the startup’s service.

Benoit explains this strategy to us:

Brands are quite lost in terms of promotion now that digital has entered their landscape. They lack resources to manage at same time in-store promotion and digital promotion. We have entered this category where they feel we do the job of connecting bloggers and influencers for both real and digital.

Zoolook is also working the floor at offline events in this sector, and was recently selected as the official app of the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tokyo. Readers in Hong Kong might want to check out Zoolook’s ‘live fashion snap’ event on Thursday (16th) evening at 6pm at Apple’s Causeway Bay store. Benoit explains what’s going to be happening that night:

We have invited over 20 top bloggers and Hong Kong Fashion icons to come and be snapped by Stephenie Kay, a Chinese fashion photographer. We setup a photo booth and a stage in the store and gather fashionistas to watch how Stephenie master photography snapping these influencers using an iPhone and our app. Very unique to be able to organize such a gathering in an Apple Store.

The Zoolook iPhone app is here, while the Android version is still in the works.

The one millionth customer was Singaporean mum-to-be Kelly Nguyen, who was surprised by the Zalora team at her workplace, who handed over her order (a maternity dress) free of charge.

The Zalora crew also concocted a little infographic (below) to show some of its other stats. For example, the e-commerce service has shipped to 16,853 towns in the region so far, and over 23,000 new products are added to the site each week. To hold all that stock, the company has over 20,000 square meters of warehouse space, which is the equivalent of five football fields.

Zalora released its iPhone app last month, and attracted a further $26 million in funding back in March.

Japan’s CyberAgent (TYO:4751) has burst onto Japan’s crowdfunding scene with the launch of its new CyberAgent Crowd Funding platform. Actually, it will launch fully this summer, by which time it’ll be ready to match startup companies and neat ideas with people who want to fund them. The new site aims to be raising $1 million per month for its listed projects.

The new service will be a spin-off from the CyberAgent parent company, who’s investing 40 million yen (US$400,000) to kickstart it. Ryotaro Nakayama will be the new CEO. It’s also separate from CyberAgent Ventures, the company’s investment arm.

CyberAgent Crowd Funding promises to fully investigate all projects before adding them to the site, and will also back them up with media and promotional support.

Japan already has several funding platforms, such as Campfire and Ready For.

CyberAgent Ventures itself might be interested in some of the social and e-commerce projects that come up on the site, as those are the areas where the Tokyo-based fund makes its investments across Southeast Asia. Most recently, CyberAgent Ventures invested in a Taiwan-based fashion social network.

(Updated: Changed headline and some phrases to reflect that this is created by CyberAgent, not the CyberAgent Ventures subsidiary).

Tencent’s (HKG:0700) chat service QQ is used by over half a billion people and is China’s top app for iPhone and Android. When the QQ mobile apps got a radical update and make-over recently to make them look more like WeChat, Tencent probably thought it was a great idea. But the vast majority of QQ users disagree – to the point of anger, hatred, and vitriol.

The new QQ v4.0 for iPhone currently has an average user rating of one star. Of 41,482 reviews of the updated app in the iTunes App Store, an astonishing 39,298 people (that’s 94.7 percent) have given it the lowest star rating. Prior to the WeChat-inspired update for QQ, the instant messaging (IM) app had been enjoying mostly five-star feedback. This is the scene now:

The anger is mostly about the looks – with users mockingly calling it a “second hand WeChat” – as the QQ v4.0 update for iPhone (or v4.1 for Android) has taken on less of a traditional IM user interface. For example, there’s no longer an indicator light besides contacts’ names on your QQ contacts list, so you can’t see who’s online until you click their name. Also, the chat window now looks more like a new-style messaging app – ie: more like WeChat or Whatsapp – which means that there’s a lot of wasted space in between users’ words (pictured top).

It seems that Tencent has not taken into account that their two very popular apps – WeChat will soon hit 400 million users – are used quite differently. QQ tends to be activated when someone specifically wants to chat, so that necessitates clearly seeing who’s online and being easily able to view a fast-paced conversation in one window. WeChat, in contrast, is for more casual messaging, sort of like a replacement for SMS.

QQ users are certainly making their displeasure known wherever possible. On the official ‘Mobile QQ’ account on Tencent Weibo, worried iPhone users are asking how they can downgrade to the previous version; others are telling Tencent that the update is “garbage”, “disgusting”, and “dogshit”. Over on the third-party Baidu Android app store, commenters are being more polite, asking and pleading for previous IM-like features to be restored.

One very useful feature from WeChat that’s in the new version of QQ is that it now supports group chats for up to 50 people. These can be accessed by sending invites through the app, or by sharing a QR code. I’ve been at a conference where this WeChat group chat feature was used to let audience members ask questions to onstage speakers, which was fun; that could also be put to great use in QQ. That is, if QQ has any users left after this kerfuffle.

(Hat-tip to Sina Tech for spotting this – article in Chinese)

I know that India’s Just Dial has been on the verge of an IPO before, but this time it’s for real. The local search engine, which now operates in seven countries and is accessible both online and by SMS, has just filed for its IPO, which will hit stock tickers on May 20th.

Just Dial seeks to raise as much as Rs 950 crore – that’s a little under US$175 million. It will list locally on the BSE, NSE, and MCX-SX markets, thereby foregoing a long anticipated US IPO. In contrast, the travel portal MakeMyTrip raised nearly $80 million in its 2010 IPO on NASDAQ.

Sequoia Capital has been a major investor in Just Dial over the years. It started up in 1994.

After Just Dial, it’s likely that BharatMatrimony and HomeShop18 will go public soon too, giving a big boost to India’s tech sector, which has previously seen few web company IPOs. But HomeShop18’s listing might not happen until 2014.

Over the weekend, Google quietly killed off its SMS search feature, which will be a shot in the arm for Just Dial and other ‘dumbphone’-oriented search services like SMSgyan.

Let’s take a look at the highlights from the infographic (the full thing is embedded at bottom) and the newest statistics for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Foursquare, and Line.

Facebook in Thailand

Zoning in on Facebook, the ZocialInc crew finds that the peak time for posting is 11pm. These are the demographics within Thailand:

Twittery Thais

There are now two million Thais on Twitter, who on average tweet 5.5 times each day. Like with Facebook, the country’s Twitterers are night owls, tending to post more between 10pm and midnight. 66.7 percent of Twitter posts in Thailand are made on mobiles.

YouTube boom

YouTube is still seeing great growth in Thailand, and is now up to 630,000 channels within the nation, adding up to 5.3 million videos uploaded by Thai users. The top video cateogry for these guys and girls is music.

Snapping up Instagram

With the most stellar growth in Thailand in the past year, Instagram is now up to 600,000 users in the country, up from 150,000 this time last year. In the first four months of 2013, they collectively posted 21.38 million photos. One of the most liked users is @aum_patchrapa, the beauty queen turned actress Pachrapa ‘Aum’ Chaichua.

Checking out of Foursquare?

Foursquare, the location-based service, saw a nine percent drop in check-ins in the past year in Thailand, but the number of venues grew. The best growth figure for Foursquare was that 55 percent more people checked in via Instagram.

Line up

There are no Thailand-specific numbers from WeChat for Thailand, so let’s focus on rival app Line, which has a pretty spectacular 15 million Thai users. It’s also an important new platform for social marketing and brands outreach, with the top Thai brand on Line having 4.6 million followers already.

Here’s the full slideshow presentation:

(Source: ZocialInc blog)

For more fun graphics like this one, check out previous entries in our infographic series.

This is what Alibaba wants: Autonavi’s mobile maps know-how and market reach.

You can wait years for a big deal to hit the Chinese web, but recently the blockbuster moves are coming in thick and fast. The latest sees e-commerce company Alibaba taking an approximate 28 percent stake in Autonavi (NASDAQ:AMAP), makers of online maps and navigation. This comes just two weeks after Alibaba got more social by taking a 18 percent stake in Sina Weibo, the country’s hottest social network right now.

Autonavi is China’s top independent online mapping company, with over 100 million users on its mobile apps, constituting just over 25 percent market share among mobile maps in China. Search giant Baidu is second in this sector, while Google Maps continues to lose market share. This evening’s announcement points out:

The parties plan to share certain data, including AutoNavi’s map data and location-related information of the merchants on Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms, including Taobao Marketplace and Tmall.com. AutoNavi and Alibaba will also cooperate in the areas of map engine, location search, navigation and cloud computing services and will cross-promote their respective products and services, with a goal of developing new location-based business models.

Joseph C. Tsai, executive vice chairman of Alibaba, and Eddie Wu, president of Alibaba’s mobile products division, will join AutoNavi’s board of directors upon the closing of the transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the near future, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

Alibaba, which is today celebrating 10 years of Taobao, its eBay-beating C2C shopping site, has been diversifying in the past year. Aside from acquiring the social music service Xiami last year and today’s significant stake in Autonavi, there’s lots of talk that the e-shopping behemoth is planning to do a lot of shopping of its own, with rumors of acquisitions/stakes in Umeng (mobile ads and analytics for app developers) and UCWeb, makers of the hugely popular mobile browser UC Browser. It’s no coincidence that these all relate to mobile.

We’ve been following the progress of Beijing-based MadeiraCloud pretty closely since last year, and today the cloud visualization and management startup has its biggest news ever – a round of series A funding worth $1.5 million from Sequoia Capital.

MadeiraCloud founders Peng Zhao and Daniel O’Prey

The funding will be used to open an office in San Francisco and to enhance its newly rolled out support for Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) service. MadeiraCloud will also grow to 12 staffers.

The simple idea behind the software-as-a-service (SaaS) MadeiraCloud platform is that it allows users to manage their AWS cloud architecture the way you design it – diagrammatically. It’s proving especially useful for startups managing an app backend on AWS as they grow and scale, and MadeiraCloud is currently utilized by thousands of users in 85 countries – from startups to large enterprise – to manage $25 million worth of AWS resources.

MadeiraCloud CEO and co-founder Daniel O’Prey puts the early success down to a “simple, familiar, self-service interface” that allows drag-and-drop re-organization that saves companies “significant time and money” in managing their servers and connections.

It seems that San Francisco will be the new base for this globally-minded startup, with Beijing retained as a development office.

Japan-based social gaming platform DeNA (TYO:2432) has just rolled out its Q4 and full-year 2012 financials. After an expensive previous quarter in which profits dipped, the same thing happened again for DeNA in Q4 (up to March 31st 2013) with an operating profit of $184 million, which is down from $216 million in Q3, but up three percent on the previous year.

Quarterly revenue was $528 million (up 22 percent from same time last year), but below Q3’s record-breaking figure.

Things are rosier for the whole of the 2102 fiscal year, in which DeNA brought in a record $2.04 billion in revenues and $775 million in profit. Here’s the key table:

DeNA chose its quarterly highlights as:

• MobaCoin consumption in Japan was 58.3 billion yen ($588 million), 2.5 percent lower than the previous quarter.
• Overseas MobaCoin consumption showed strong and steady quarter-to-quarter increase, approaching $70 million.
• Increased user engagement drove monetization growth. As a result, Mobage titles occupied top ranks in US Google Play’s top-grossing chart.
• DeNA and Nexon formed a global business alliance to bring new Nexon-developed games to Mobage networks.
• Groovy, DeNA’s new music player app was launched in Japan.

For the current Q1 2013, DeNA expects to make $175 million in operating profit (UPDATE: Corrected that figure. It’s for Q1 only, not FY13).

See the full stats on DeNA’s IR homepage.

Consisting of an incubator, accelerator program, and a final contest, ChainLabs is now seeking its first ever intake, with applications open until June 1st. It’ll begin one month later, with November 7th slated for the final demo day and competition.

This new incubator is run by Hong Kong-based company Chain Media, which also operates specialist logistics magazines and Chain.net, a “supply chain social network”. Though the program is based in Shanghai, it’s open to startups from around the world.

ChainLabs principal and Chain Media CEO Max Henry says in today’s announcement:

As the first supply chain accelerator in the world, ChainLabs will provide seed funding, a virtual workspace, mentoring program and a demo day that nurtures skills and relationships to enable entrepreneurs to build remarkable supply chain, procurement and logistics solutions.

While it won’t produce any sexy apps or anything that most of us will ever use, it’s an interesting move that broadens the startup landscape in the region.

Interested startups with big ideas for moving stuff around can apply for ChainLabs here.

With 190 million monthly active users on WeChat, that means the fast-growing app is poised to pass Whatsapp, which has 200 million monthly actives in new data revealed in April.

But Whatsapp enjoys far more international success. Tencent recently revealed that WeChat has 40 million users overseas, meaning that its reach beyond China is far smaller than Whatsapp’s – and behind Japan-made Line app as well.

Hou Xiaonan’s number, spotted by Marbridge Daily, was revealed yesterday at the final day of the Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) in Beijing. The day before that, we saw Tencent CEO Ma Huateng explaining some of the company’s strategies and visions for more mobile success.

This is part of our coverage of GMIC 2013 in Beijing, which was on May 7 and 8. For other stories from this event, click here.

Whereas the Jawbone Up costs a whopping $130, Codoon’s little clone – which will launch soon, though no date is set – will cost only RMB 299, which is $48. There is some demand for imported Jawbone Up devices in the country, but they sell for RMB 1,100, which is a staggering $177. Here are the two gadgets side by side:

The new gadget will work with Codoon’s existing tracking apps for iPhone and Android to give you analytics about your exercising, movements, and sleep patterns. The Codoon homepage has had a nice, slidey revamp to welcome its new product – and that’s reminiscent of Jawbone’s homepage as well.

The new Codoon Sports Bracelet and its fitness data app.

Codoon was founded in October 2009 and received over $1 million in investment in April 2011.

Aside from sending data to Codoon’s mobile apps, the new Codoon Sports Bracelet will also zap your data to a Baidu Cloud account.

In the past, Codoon’s wearable hardware was optional, as its smartphone app can do a lot of data tracking. But with its new Codoon Sports Bracelet, there’s much more emphasis put on its hardware, which will surely help with the startup’s revenue stream.

Regardless of the derivative design, the price is right on this new fitness-tracking gizmo. RMB 299 is definitely the kind of price-point where a lot of Chinese smartphone owners could think Well, I’ll give it a shot. Perhaps this kind of wearable tech, after a sluggish start in China, will finally pick up pace.

(Hat-tip to QQ Tech for spotting this)

Last time we got some China numbers from Evernote, makers of the notes syncing service, it had hit 1.1 million users in the country in July 2012, a mere two months after launching its Chinese operations. At today’s Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) in Beijing, Evernote CEO Phil Libin gave some updated figures, revealing that his company now has four million Chinese users.

Earlier today, the Evernote China team in Beijing flipped the switch on the Chinese version of its Evernote Business service (see here). That team has now grown to 17 people.

Aside from the stats and that launch, Phil talked about how China is an integral part of Evernote’s strategy of being a long-term startup that can survive up against the world’s top web giants. Speaking of China’s own web ecosystem, he said that the next decade will see Chinese tech companies going global, and the nation will, as it shifts away from manufacturing and towards a knowledge-based economy, become a creative melting pot. Startups in China will fit into that melting pot, Phil added, by being an innovation furnace.

Evernote still has two rivals larger than it in China: Shanda’s Mknote (five million users last year), and Netease’s Cloud Notes, which reached eight million users in December.

(Source: 36Kr – article in Chinese; Photo by @chadcat)

This is part of our coverage of GMIC 2013 in Beijing, running today and tomorrow (May 7 and 8). For other stories from this event, click here.

Rocket Internet’s Asia-based food delivery startup Foodpanda has announced another major round of funding today. The new round is worth more than US$20 million with investment from Sweden’s AB Kinnevik, Russia’s Phenomen Ventures, and several other unnamed investors.

Foodpanda takes orders online from over 5,000 partner restaurants in nine Asian countries and employs 150 staff. It was launched in April 2012. The new funding will be used “to further accelerate growth and optimize customer service,” according to Rocket Internet’s Ralf Wenzel in today’s announcement.

Co-founder at Foodpanda, Kiren Tanna

Foodpanda co-founder Kiren Tanna recently told us that growth has been especially great for Pakistan, India, and Indonesia.

The food delivery startup is run in conjunction with the similar Hellofood, so that the two services collectively cover some cities in 27 nations.

There’s plenty of competition in this sector in Asia for Foodpanda. Hungry netizens can make use of HungryDelivery and Dealivery in Singapore, and there are four strong homegrown rivals in Vietnam’s major cities.

China’s Jingdong (formerly called 360Buy) is expanding yet again from its original Amazon-style offerings, this time adding a supermarket channel (see here) to its e-commerce site. The addition brings more than 5,000 types of groceries, packaged foods, beverages, and snacks.

This move is a direct challenge to Yihaodian, the country’s largest food-only specialist e-store, which is majority owned by American retailer Walmart. Like Yihaodian, Jingdong ships its foodstuffs direct from its own warehouses. In contrast, Jingdong’s main rival, Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao sites, serve as intermediaries for food retailers, and those stores then dispatch the items to online buyers.

Jingdong says that shoppers can buy a single item if they wish, and there’s no obligation to buy a huge virtual basket of groceries. Aside from some common food staples, Jingdong’s new supermarket stocks some interesting imported items that most regular brick-and-mortar stores wouldn’t have, such as Spanish olive oil, or dried mangoes from the Philippines.

Jingdong switched to its current branding in March. The company’s latest funding round in February this year raised $700 million.

One of the most popular Chinese-made apps around the world is Camera360, the photo filter app made by a startup team in Sichuan province. Today the crew has revealed that Camera360 has 100 million global users across its three versions for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone. Of that number, the startup tells us that 30 million of them are active monthly users.

The major milestone comes almost exactly a year after Pinguo, the makers of Camera360, received nearly $10 million in funding. At that time, it had 30 million users across its three mobile apps, Camera360, Photo360, and Movie360.

In the intervening year, Camera360 – which doesn’t have an Instagram-like social element – added its Cloud Albums feature to allow easy photo back-ups. While optional, the team has already seen more than 240 million photos uploaded into Cloud Albums.

Camera360 has also built a platform on its popular photo filters in the past few months, and that SDK is now available for free to other developers. The SDK has been used to put filters into apps made by major web companies like Tencent, Renren, and Kaixin. Camera360 is now in talks with a number of smartphone manufacturers to have its filters preinstalled in some new phones.

Of course, Camera360 is up against a lot of competition in this niche. We recently rounded up 25 Asia-made photo apps, which is a list worth seeing.

We’ve seen crowdfunding been put to use for zany gadgets and enacting positive social change, but we’ve not yet seen it being used for investment purposes. But Crowdbaron wants to change that. It’s a Hong Kong-based startup that wants to make investing in real estate as simple as booking a hotel online. Aimed at folks who want to bolster their personal investment portfolio, the idea is that buying a small stake in one or numerous properties lets you take advantage of surging property prices in several countries.

While you are buying a share in a property, this is not a sort of timeshare for the 21st century and so you won’t be staying in the apartment or villa in which you have a stake. This is purely for the profit. So you can spread the risk, Crowdbaron lets you take as little as a one percent stake.

Crowdbaron is aiming its platform at users across Asia, with an initial focus on customers based in Hong Kong, China, and Indonesia. Founder and CEO Saeed Hassan explains to us that the startup is “targeting a less wealthy target group” than would normally take a 100 percent stake in properties – a phenomenon seen recently with wealthy Chinese snapping up properties (and potential escape routes) in Australia, the UK, the US, and many other nations. Instead, Saeed says the site is good for “middle income families who are saving for the future, and who have been burned by the stock market and are frustrated by low interest rates”. He adds:

For these individuals, there is little chance they can purchase in Hong Kong or elsewhere. This group is very large and are willing to enter shared purchase arrangements – because it opens the door to potentially higher and stable returns they otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford. It’s about lowering the entry barriers and getting more people involved.

Aside from making a profit from rising property prices, Crowdbaron investors can also earn revenues from renting out their properties, which will be unfurnished to save hassle for the crowdfunded landlords. Saeed points out that these properties will remain managed by Crowdbaron through its network of property agents, and is also responsible for finding tenants. In the event of a property being empty, Crowdbaron promises to pay investors their share of rental revenue anyway.

Crowdbaron is split between a team of four in Hong Kong, and a further four in Jakarta, Indonesia. More sales staffers are being added this month, and a Madrid office is being prepared. While its investors are mostly in this region, it’s open to global investors aside from, for tax reasons, the UK and the US. Crowdbaron’s properties are currently spread across London and Jakarta, with more in Madrid and perhaps some US cities being added soon.

Real estate crowdfunding could turn out to be one of 2013’s hottest startup – and investment – trends. I notice that US-based RealtyMogul also looks promising, and recently won a bunch of awards and plaudits.

Despite a lack of regulatory approval yet, the world’s biggest mobile telco by user-base, China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) is said to be ready to make a massive final push to get the infrastructure in place to launch China’s first national 4G network later this year. According to informed sources cited by QQ Tech, China Mobile will invest RMB 41.7 billion (US$6.7 billion) to build 200,000 base stations that will cover 344 Chinese cities this year.

Regulatory approval is said to be announced on May 17th, with China Mobile hoping to switch on its nationwide 4G network this August.

China Mobile has been conducting extensive city-area 4G trials for over a year, most recently in the cities of Hangzhou and Wenzhou on the outskirts of Shanghai.

Whereas China Mobile will use the TD-LTE system for 4G (also known as TDD-LTE), rivals China Unicom and China Telecom will have FDD-LTE networks. But that means China Mobile’s network doesn’t work with any of Apple’s mobile devices, initially leaving the new service – as with the company’s homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G variant – devoid of support for iPhones or iPads (except basic calling, texting, and 2G of course).

China Mobile is rumored to have already selected eight companies to serve as initial network equipment partners, including Huawei, ZTE, Ericsson, and Nokia Siemens (Update: Corrected that they’re not providing handsets).

With relatively small numbers coming from 4G networks in nations like Japan and Singapore, one research group estimates there’ll only be about 72 million people on LTE networks in Asia by the end of this year. But China, pushing ahead faster than the previously anticipated 2014 launch, could bring a big bump to that number.

Across China’s three telcos, there are over 230 million subscribers on 3G (Update: Corrected this figure).

(Source: QQ Tech – article in Chinese)

All of China was on holiday for half the week, yet it still managed to be a particularly eventful few days in terms of tech news.

1. Alibaba Gets More Social, Takes Stake in Sina Weibo for $586 Million

The week started with a bang as China’s top e-commerce company took a sizable stake in the nation’s hottest social network.

2. Why Did Alibaba Invest $586 Million in Sina Weibo?

Now that the long-rumored deal was a reality, we also pondered some of the social commerce strategies behind the Alibaba-Weibo tie-up.

3. Amazon Appstore Opens in China, Leaps Final Hurdle Before Kindle Fire Launch

The week ended with some big news as well, with Amazon launching its Android-oriented Appstore in China yesterday. In theory, everything’s now in place for all of Amazon’s hardware to hit the Chinese market.

4. ‘China’s Silicon Valley’ Has More Startups Now Than Ever Before

Beijing’s tech district is still growing fast – both in terms of the number of startups and the scope of angel funding available in the capital.

5. China’s Top Video Sites Reveal Hundreds of Millions of Mobile Users, Start Race to Monetize Them

The top two video sites in the country revealed some very interesting mobile viewership stats this week. Inevitably, the numbers are huge – and so is the urgency to monetize these mobile users.

6. Sina Weibo Has Already Added Taobao Ads in Wake of Alibaba Investment

Getting back to the subject of the Sina Weibo and Alibaba deal, the social network already has some e-commerce adverts. Perhaps this is the start of targeted ads on Weibo.

7. SnapWeibo: This Weibo Post Will Self-Destruct in 10 Seconds

One last Weibo story this week. This one’s on a much lighter and more ephemeral note.

8. Get Lost, GPS: China Invests $810 Million to Create Products for Homegrown Navigation System

China’s self-developed navigation system has been in development since 2000, but this week’s major investment will lead to Beidou-equipped devices finally getting into the hands of consumers.

That’s all for this week, folks! For our full spread of China coverage, you might like to subscribe to our China RSS feed.

In a surprise move, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has opened its Android-oriented Appstore in China today. That’s despite the fact that China wasn’t listed on Amazon’s Appstore expansion roadmap last month, in which the company took its service into 200 new countries, including over a dozen major Asian markets.

The Amazon Appstore launch in China means that the American e-tailer has leapt the final hurdle in its long pursuit of selling its own hardware in China. Though the Amazon Appstore can be used with any Android device (and is now available in Chinese here), it features as the main store on Amazon’s own Kindle Fire tablets. It’s now likely that these tablets will launch in China soon, perhaps accompanied by the Kindle e-reader.

Amazon is promising Chinese users that there’ll be a host of locally made and overseas gaming titles on the store, including ones from Tencent (HKG:0700) and Sina (NASDAQ:SINA).

This comes just a few weeks after Amazon rolled out its Cloud Drive storage service in China, and over four months after its e-bookstore launched in the nation. In theory, everything’s in place for all of Amazon’s hardware to hit the Chinese market.

While Amazon’s Appstore isn’t the first third-party Android app store to accept payments in China, it should boost revenues for app developers by placing a stronger emphasis on paying for digital content. The Google Play store only supports free apps in China.

(Hat-tip to 36Kr for spotting this)

This was a week dominated by big money, big user numbers, and major monetization moves. And those are the six hottest Asia tech stories that have been chosen by seven of our bloggers:

Minh’s pick: ‘China’s Silicon Valley’ Has More Startups Now Than Ever Before

What can I say? Being from Silicon Valley, I love news that compares Silicon Valley with Asia. And if any one country is going to contend with the Valley, it’s going to be China. And more specifically, the Zhongguancun district of Beijing. That’s where, as Charlie notes, a report has cited that at “the end of 2011 there were 4,243 startups in the area”. That’s huge. I did some preliminary searching and I can’t find Silicon Valley numbers, but 4,000 is well over the number of startups in my database for Vietnam, which doesn’t even break one thousand. Suffice it to say, it’s evidence of China’s bullish startup growth and a highly competitive atmosphere.

Wills’ and Charlie’s pick: Alibaba Gets More Social, Takes Stake in Sina Weibo for $586 Million

Willis: This week’s biggest news in Asia has to be Alibaba’s investment in Sina Weibo. Alibaba’s $586 million investment values Weibo at more than $3.2 billion and it is just so exciting to see how the two companies can give birth to a win-win partnership. It didn’t take too long for Sina Weibo and Alibaba to start working together, though. I look forward to see how Weibo/social commerce will flourish under Alibaba’s guidance.

Charlie: I have to agree with Willis, this is the biggest story of the week by far. Alibaba’s valuation is very generous, but there is a lot of potential there for Alibaba and the company has plenty of money to throw around anyway. Expect to see more targeted ads and more unique integrations as the companies get more time to work together on monetization of Weibo. That’s something Sina has struggled with, and Alibaba could just be its savior.

Steven’s pick: China’s Top Video Sites Reveal Hundreds of Millions of Mobile Users, Start Race to Monetize Them

Yes, that Weibo-Alibaba news was massive, but for the sake of diversity I’ll choose a different story. This week, both of China’s top two video sites revealed precisely how many mobile users they have – and it’s a lot. With state-controlled TV being so butt-achingly dull, video sites like Youku and iQiyi are great places for Chinese netizens to view things that they actually want to see – like recent movies and the latest dramas – in a legal way. Of course, a shift to mobile viewership presents new monetization challenges.

Minghao’s pick: KakaoTalk’s Growth Chart: Hitting 90 Million Users Soon

I’m a fan of the chat apps battle in Asia. Since 2012, we have seen messaging apps from China, Japan, and Korea expanding across the continent to acquire users. Now we have glimpses of how the battle is going so far. It is disclosed that Kakao has 89 million users, Line 150 million and Wechat over 300 million, 40 million of whom are overseas. These numbers are small compared to Asia’s population, and with the smartphone penetration rate still low in most Southeast Asia countries, this battle for users will continue for the next few years – and it will just get more fiery.

Andrew’s pick: Line is Growing Faster Than Ever, Now Up to 150 Million Users

It’s an amazing feat to grow from 50 million users to 100 millions users in just ten months – and then see growth accelerate even faster to this new number. What really impresses me is Line’s international influence and how fast it’s growing outside of Japan. While the rivals are still heavily dependent on each of their domestic markets, LINE’s global strategy might have just granted them a slight advantage in this chat app battle.

Youshen’s pick: Hanoi vs Saigon: Weighing Up Vietnam’s Two Biggest Startup Cities

With Vietnam’s increasingly vibrant tech scene, my teammate Minh has provided a cultural roadmap on the market nuances between Ho Chi Minh city and Hanoi. Geographies aside, it reminds me of the synergy between Jakarta and Bandung in Indonesia. Minh’s demonstration of success stories like VNG helped me understand the cities’ influence on both corporate cultures and business makeup.

For other ways of reading us, perhaps try our tailored RSS feeds, or find us within Flipboard.

If you’re a fan of Sina Weibo but don’t like the idea of your posts swirling around the web for all of eternity, you might like to try out a tiny little tool called SnapWeibo. Inspired by the time-limited messages on Snapchat, SnapWeibo lets you vanish your Weibo post after a set time.

It’s really simple to use: just sign into SnapWeibo with your Weibo account details, and then any post you make (in the usual way, via any Weibo supporting app) that contains a certain time-related hashtag – #10m# would indicate 10 minutes, for example – will self-destruct after that time period.

Its flexible hashtags allow you to set times by minutes, hours, or even days. If anyone retweets your Weibo before it gets deleted, your missive will later appear blank – in the normal way that it does on Sina Weibo anyway.

You can set self-destruct hashtags in either English or Chinese: like, #2m# #5h# #1d# or #2分钟# #5小时# #1天#.

Yes, it’s a bit silly, but someone might find it useful.

Of course, there is a simpler way to make your Sina Weibo posts disappear quickly – say something controversial.

(Source: 36Kr – article in Chinese)

We know that Tencent (HKG:0700) is working on a social gaming platform for WeChat, its popular social messaging app, but what else is in the pipeline? According to industry analyst Guan Peng, the next major version of WeChat app, which will be v5.0 for iPhone and Android, will come with support for three major new features.

Anticipating that WeChat v5.0 will appear later this month, he reckons we’ll see:

• Paid publishing or subscriptions for accounts on the WeChat public platform – ie: those run by celebrities, media outlets, and brands.

• Mobile payments with users able to scan QR codes to make payments within WeChat.

• Social gaming integration will arrive as promised.

In addition to all that, Guan Peng expects the WeChat brand/celebrity accounts to be given more emphasis and prominence.

Of course, none of that is officially coming in WeChat v5.0. We know there is a social gaming platform coming for sure – similar to those from rival apps Line and Kakaotalk – but it might not be ready to go live this month. E-payments are far from a certainty as well; indeed, when we listened in on Tencent’s most recent earnings call in March – revealing $7 billion in revenue in 2012 – Tencent president Marin Lau had this to say of mobile payments:

We take a long-term view – there are so many hurdles and a lack of standardization [for payments]. So it’s an experiment that we take a lot of interest in, but it takes a long time to see what needs to be done to build a business model on it.

As for paid publishing or subscriptions for content, that’s also an area covered by Line and KakaoTalk. Just a few weeks ago, KakaoTalk rolled out its KakaoPage platform for selling digital content, while Line recently started selling e-books. Neither of those will impact WeChat in China, we suspect, where most of its users actually are, but it’s interesting to see these similar patterns.

It’s conceivable that WeChat will pursue many other channels in the future as well, such as a rumored mobile wallet capability.

My own feature request for WeChat is a badly needed makeover – especially for its slow and clunky Android app with its dated, pre-Android 4.0 stylings.

(Source: Techweb – article in Chinese)

We know that Chinese netizens watch billions of hours worth of online videos each month, but how many of them are doing so from a mobile device? Now we have the answer. China’s top two mobile sites (in terms of time spent viewing) have recently revealed their mobile user-base. The leading company, Youku Tudou (NYSE:YOKU) says it has 150 million million daily mobile users, while Baidu’s (NASDAQ:BIDU) iQiyi has 200 million monthly mobile viewers.

Youku Tudou, whose data covers both of its standalone sites after the corporate merger last year, says it sees 50 percent quarter-to-quarter growth in mobile users. iQiyi, meanwhile, explains that mobile traffic now accounts for 37 percent of its total.

With such fast-growing mobile engagement, both companies are rushing to implement mobile-based ads so as to monetize all those views. To that end, iQiyi has a new cross-platform ad service that was launched last week, covering its website and apps for Windows, iOS, and Android. Youku Tudou is also offering mobile ads starting from this month.

Though the figures don’t give a perfectly analogous picture – daily views vs monthly, etc. – it stresses that these companies need to translate their desktop advertising prowess to smaller screens without ruining the viewing experience – especially for the big draw, which is their licensed (but mostly free) TV series and movies.

Baidu is rumored to be acquiring another video site, PPS, for a substantial sum so as to bolster its Hulu-like iQiyi site even further.

IDC says that smartphones represent 73.2 percent of all mobiles sold in China right now, but feature phones are still more numerous in the country as a whole. So mobile viewership of video-streaming sites has a lot more growth to come.

(Source: Technode (1) and (2))

After months of testing it out in South Korea and Japan, the messaging app KakaoTalk is today launching its social gaming platform for users in Indonesia and Vietnam. Along with this, a number of third-party game developers have created Indonesian and Vietnamese language versions of their social gaming titles that integrate with KakaoTalk.

Five games are ready today for the messaging app’s users in Indonesia and Vietnam: HotDogStudio’s Everyone’s Game for Kakao, Com2uS’s Tiny Pang for Kakao, LIVEZEN’s Astrowings for Kakao, GameZen’s BirdPang for Kakao, and CraveMob’s Hunter Cat for Kakao (pictured).

KakaoTalk has been pushing hard into both those Southeast Asian markets in the past few months, even spending on a big budget TV ad campaign for Indonesians that fused K-pop with one Indo pop star.

Korea-based KakaoTalk has just over 80 million users, and the startup made $7 million in profit last year, despite being up against web giant rivals like NHN (makers of Line), Tencent (WeChat), and Facebook Messenger.

The KakaoTalk Game Platform launched in its home market last August and soon showed its worth by propelling a number of its supported games to the top of Korea’s gaming charts. It then rolled out in February in Japan (Update: Also in the US since last November).

Always concerned about being reliant on foreign technology, China has been developing a homegrown satellite navigation system for the past decade that it hopes will replace GPS in the hands of consumers. That’s one step closer to reality today with a massive investment worth RMB 5 billion (US$810 million) to build an industrial park to make products that support Beidou.

Authorities are hoping that the Beidou-focused industrial zone will become a sort of mini Silicon Valley, home to 30 to 50 companies once it’s completed in the city of Tianjin, just outside Beijing, by 2015. It’s hoped that all these in the park will be worth RMB 10 billion ($1.61 billion) in revenue by 2017.

Today’s China Daily says (via TechCrunch) that the Beidou Strategic Emerging Industrial Park will cover an area of 270,000 square meters. 20 companies will be opening there this June. It’s not clear if any major Chinese web companies are being encouraged – or coerced – into opening up facilities in this new area.

Beidou is currently made up of a network of 10 satellites, but will eventually comprise 35 of them in orbit. Beidou is available for use, much like GPS, to Chinese and Asia-region users already, and will open up to the world by 2020.

Like GPS, Beidou has two modes: civilian and military. But it’s not known how accurate it will be for military purposes. The total cost of implementing Beidou is $25 billion.

It’s anticipated that Beidou will account for 70 to 80 percent of the Chinese market for navigation systems by 2020. It’s plausible that GPS could be strongly discouraged in years to come, with makers of things like smartphones possibly forced to support Beidou for location-based services. Currently, nearly all such phones and gadgets rely on GPS.

(Source: China Daily)

We know that Mumbai-based game studio Reliance Entertainment Digital makes a lot of titles, but it usually focuses on mobile. That’s why it has only just made its debut on Mac OS X. The game in question is Real Steel HD, based on the robot fighter movie Real Steel that starred Hugh Jackman.

While Jackman is nowhere to be seen in Real Steel HD, the game gives you plenty of choices for a monstrous metallic melée with the option of a tournament or survival mode.

Reliance Games first released Real Steel back in 2011 and has seen millions of downloads across versions for Android and iOS.

As for the studio itself, Reliance Games expanded its operations in Japan and South Korea last month by acquiring Funnel Japan and taking a 51 percent stake in Seoul’s Bluesom. With those scoops, the Indian studio seems set to launch a turn-based card battle game in those East Asian markets to challenge the phenomenally successful Puzzle and Dragons.

Reliance Entertainment Digital subsidiary Zapak Mobile Games recently recorded a whopping 100 million downloads from the Nokia Ovi Store for its very many feature phone titles.

Real Steel HD is priced at US$6.99 in the Mac App Store.

Far from nearing a saturation point, the messaging app Line is actually growing faster than ever. Having previously taken nearly seven months to go from the 50 million to 100 million milestones, Line then rocketed up to its current 150 million in a little over three months.

As noted by our buddies at Startup-Dating, that’s remarkable hockey stick growth. Line even made a cute graph (a line graph, naturally) to show this acceleration.

With just over half of its users being outside of Japan (where Line is made by NHN), it means Line is doing enormously well on the world stage. Admitedly, it’s way behind Whatsapp’s 200 million monthly active users (as opposed to registered users), but it’s doing a lot better globally than its key Asia-made rivals. KakaoTalk’s user-base is largely in South Korea, while WeChat’s vast 300-million cohort is mostly in China, and only 40 million of them are scattered around the world.

As I’m under a self-imposed ban to not use any numbers larger than those taught to me by Sesame Street, I can’t figure out when Line will hit 200 million. But if you’re some kind of numbers wizard ¹, you could probably pin-point, based on the accelerating growth rate this year, precisely when Line will reach 200 million users. It’s plausible it’ll be just two months later.

(Source: Startup-Dating)

Silicon Valley-based BootstrapLabs has announced today that it’s bringing the 12-month BootstrapAccelerator program to Southeast Asia. After hooking up with Malaysia’s MAD Incubator, the new scheme is promising mentoring, funding, and a US-oriented fast-track to its chosen Southeast Asian startups.

Enrollment is already under way, with an application deadline of May 30th for a July 2nd start. The year-long program takes its batch through three stages – “Ideation, Incubation and Acceleration” – and can actually drop or pick up new startups on a monthly basis during that process.

The new BootstrapAccelerator Asia will “focus on early-stage capital efficient startups” with seed funding, and could result in the startup relocating to Silicon Valley – presumably if that makes sense for their market.

BootStrapLabs founder Nicolai Wadstrom hails Southeast Asia as a “thrilling” market with one billion consumers and a general market potential of US$30 trillion by 2020.

MAD Incubator founder and CEO Andrew Wong says in today’s announcement:

Our partnership with BootstrapLabs creates a different offering than other Silicon Valley accelerators operating in Southeast Asia. By combining aspects of the local culture and disposition with Silicon Valley execution we are creating the accelerator model of the future.

Of course, the Southeast Asia region already has some strong accelerators such as Singapore-based JFDI, which has already selected its eight bootcamp startups for 2013.

BootstrapLabs started up in 2009 and has already helped some non-US startups to grow, such as Audiodraft and Zerply. Judging by those and other incubatees, Southeast Asian startups might want to think less about simple, consumer-oriented apps, and focus on more complex and perhaps enterprise-oriented business visions.

Interested startups can apply here before May 30th.

South Korea’s biggest tech conference, beLAUNCH 2013, opened today in the Gangnam district of Seoul.

A couple of my workmates are there, meeting startups and networking. While they’re doing that, let’s check out all the competing startups at the event. All but one are Korea-based, but many are globally minded, which is very encouraging. We’ve dug up a link where we can find one. Here’s the list of all 20 contenders at the beLAUNCH Startup Battle:

ChattingCat

ChattingCat is a platform that connects English tutors or helpers with non-native learners of that language. When the connection is made, English learners get instant correction of their written English.

SinglePet

Sadly this is not a dating/hook-up app for your pets. We can’t find a link for this, but we’ve seen the SinglePet crew and been told that it enables pet owners, after buying the hardware, to monitor and communicate with their pets via the upcoming SinglePet smartphone app. The hardware can even feed pets by dispensing food pellets.

KNOWCK CloudVision

CloudVision provides cloud storage and streaming across devices, with an emphasis on home entertainment and smart TVs. The startup has some Android apps for this service too.

Corping

This product is a task management application for manual laborers and blue-collar workers.

Conyac

Conyac is a familiar name to us – and it’s actually a Japanese startup. Conyac is a crowdsourced translation service and a pretty established business that’s actually planning series A funding. It’s the winner of the beLAUNCH Tokyo edition.

Shakr

Shakr is a web-based video creation and editing app, making it easy to add lighting, cuts, music, sound effects, narration, and more. It got funding from 500 Startups back in December.

Lookpage

Lookpage is a “social co-op communicating platform” meant for work and collaboration.

Tripvi

Tripvi is a social travel site for both sharing photos and planning trips. It sorts out your travel photos automatically by location, and can turn your journey into a beautiful movie.

DGMIT

DGMIT’s B2 is a platform and engine that lets developers build upon a way to connect smartphones and other devices, like smart TVs or tablets.

A business profile for mobiles on Profeel.me. Click to enlarge.

Profeel.me

Profeel.me (pictured) is a mobile marketing center for small businesses and freelancers. The idea is that users can create and manage a home page with ease, and thereby post links or content (e.g. brochures, videos) and deliver these to customers/clients via Kakaotalk, SMS, or email.

Twinword

Twinword is compiling a database about word associations crowdsourced from online usage around the world. This makes it possible to analyze trends and different thought patterns at particular times or in certain places. The startup is able to apply all this to produce more pertinent search engine results and target ads more accurately.

Phonegle

Phonegle is a smartphone application that helps people see a caller’s information before he/she decides to answer the phone. Many such anti-spam call apps have been created, but have failed to stop spam calls because most of them are based on an outdated spam phone number database. Instead, Phonegle is a real-time database.

500vidoes

500videos allows you to create an explainer animation in minutes for free. Choose from hundreds of free explainer animation templates, then customize the content, images, voiceover, and look and feel. This could be super useful for other startups seeking to make a demo video. Here’s the startup’s video that’s presumably made using its own tech:

Wishket

Wishket is an online workplace for freelancers and companies.

JDLab

Here’s one for web and software developers, promising an Integrated Unified Markup Language (IUML) for coding in a simple interface with drag-and-drop elements.

Ideabove

Ideabove is a social music startup . At the beLaunch 2013 event, Ideabove unveils its new music service called Musicloud which is for meeting new, local friends based on users’ taste in music. Sounds like musical dating, which could be fun.

Martmoa

Claiming to be an intelligent grocery marketplace, Martmoa compares nearby prices for your virtual shopping basket so that you can get the best prices.

TGENS

This startup has made MessageSong, a mobile messaging application that converts a text message into a song automatically. I hope it’s not auto-tuned.

WePlanet

These guys make a personal smart journal service. The team has previously created the photo sharing app PocketShare.

LifeSemantics:

Fine Chart’s product is a translation service for medical records written in English, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, and Korean.

That’s the lot. Based on the introductions, which ones are you most keen to see pitching?

Delhi-based Zomato seems to be expanding its restaurant reviews platform at a fair speed. After launching in London in January, the startup then went to Manila in March and most recently down to Johannesburg earlier this month. At that kind of pace, it’s probably time for the startup to be thinking about its next move. Speaking over the phone with CEO and co-founder Deepinder Goyal, he confirms that there’s already a target in sight – Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia.

Zomato plans to launch its Jakarta restaurant listings in late July. There are already two staffers in the city of 10 million people and the plan is to hire a mostly local team, oriented around content and sales. Having already done their homework, Deepinder reckons that Jakarta has about 18,000 eateries of all kinds – including the city’s many excellent coffee shops. Of course, Zomato wants them all to be listed, but it’s not yet clear how many will be on the site by the time of launch.

Learning Indonesian

With such a large base to cover, Deepinder says that Jakarta is Zomato’s biggest ever single city to tackle. Another new challenge to face is that it’ll be Zomato’s first ever launch in a language other than English. While the company is internally testing Hindi for the 13 cities it covers in its home nation of India, the Jakarta launch will be the first public unveiling of a new language on the site. That means getting Bahasa Indonesia right (linguistically and culturally), and that puts even more of an emphasis on finding the right local staff.

As nice as Jakarta is, why choose that place? After all, there are a lot of world-renowned foodie cities in the region that make more obvious choices for a listings and review service. Deepinder tells us:

We love going into markets where there’s not much smartphone penetration or web usage so we can build the market around us – and help build up the market.

That’s how Zomato grew to a claimed 70 to 80 percent of the eatery online listings market in India – and why its first two targets in Asia (outside of native India) were Colombo (Sri Lanka) and Manila. It’s no coincidence that they’re also markets with little in the way of solid competition. Deepinder freely admits this too; apart from London, he says, the competition has been “fairly simple and easy.”

In addition, Zomato’s CEO guides the startup to new cities where he feels restauranteurs or corporations are most willing to pay for ads, which is the main monetization channel. Thus the Zomato team doesn’t fret over the rate of smartphone usage in a particular area, and instead follows the money into a relatively immature metropolis where the lifestyle food sector is lacking in online resources.

25% of restaurants shut down each quarter!

Check out the menu before even arriving – click to enlarge.

After a month in Manila, how’s Zomato faring there? Deepinder says that the Metro Manila site now gets 10,000 pageviews per day, and that’s rising 25 percent per week. “It’s the fastest growing market for us,” he observes. After launching with 9,000 listings, the site now has 10,000 establishments on file.

Interestingly, about 25 percent of all restaurants on the site shut down each quarter – but more are opening up, resulting in a net gain. “It’s a lot of effort,” Deepinder admits, “But we have processes in place to deal with it.” Indeed, he concedes it can be a scaling issue for the Indian startup, as the content side of the business is labor intensive, and the ad sales are mostly done offline.

But the Manila team seems to be on top of things: it’s able to add 60 to 80 new locations each day, and processes 1,000 menus (scanned menus are a particularly useful feature on the site) per week, which are a mix of brand-new menus or updates.

Right now, the Manila team is made up of 12 people, though it’s not the final country team, as five of those are Indian staffers, and most of them will inevitably want to return home. So the goal, we’re told, is for Manila to have a fully-fledged local team there, and that takes about six to 12 months to form. “We’re building a pipeline of country managers,” Deepinder points out, but that takes years of personal growth and experience within the company, and then final training for each new country manager takes three months. That’s the same process that’ll happen in Jakarta.

Singapore? The US?

With Zomato preferring emerging markets, it doesn’t seem very likely that Singapore will be added to its roster anytime soon. There’s already Yelp in the Lion City, and local startup Burpple made an interesting move into this area earlier this month.

But one very mature market is being eyed up by Deepinder and the Delhi crew: the US. While not a definite green light, the co-founder says that, in the event of venturing into the States, they’ll use their experience in London to help shape their approach to another western market. One deciding factor is the success of the London site. After launching that at the very start of this year, it already has 250,000 visits per month. If that can rise to be the top foodie reviews site in that city, it could well signal that they’re ready for a push into the US. “We’ll know in four to six months time.”

Zomato has 260 employees around the world right now, with just over 200 of those being in India. A further 200 will be added in that nation this summer in an apparent push to speed up the processing of both its content and ad sales teams.

So, Jakarta readers, are you keen for the launch of Zomato in the city this summer?

China’s top e-commerce company has secured what could be the biggest web deal of the year in the country. Alibaba, which has been a lot more keen to venture into social media recently, has taken an 18 percent stake in Sina Weibo, the Twitter-like microblogging service run by Sina (NASDAQ:SINA).

Sina Weibo has over 500 million registered users, and has been China’s most talked about social network in the past couple of years. Despite all that enthusiasm, only 46.3 million are daily active users of Weibo, and the service has been a headache for Sina in terms of real-time censorship and great difficulty in monetizing it.

Alibaba’s stake in Sina Weibo comes with an option to increase that, notes the New York Times’ Dealbook blog, to 30 percent in the future. The deal also involves cooperation between these two Chinese web giants that will fuse social media and e-commerce. Sina and Alibaba expect such projects to bring in about $380 million in revenue from Weibo in the next three years.

What forms could such social commerce take? Last year, the startup phone-maker Xiaomi made use of Sina Weibo to sell some of its phones. This little experiment – it was not a long-term sales channel – yielded amazing results, with 1.3 million reservations for the phones made in just five minutes. We’ll likely see Sina Weibo do more like that – but on a more permanent basis, and with Alibaba’s consumer-oriented e-commerce sites, Taobao and Tmall.

Alibaba has invested in a few social media startups in the past few months, such as a funding round put into a flirting app, and the acquisition of one music streaming site.

In a statement this evening, Alibaba founder and chairman Jack Ma said:

We believe that the cooperation of our two robust platforms will bring unique and valuable services to Weibo users, as well as making the mobile internet a core part of Alibaba’s strategy.

China-Axlr8r – which used to be known as Chinaccelerator – is seeking startups for its summer 2013 intake. The application deadline is May 1st (Wednesday), so interested parties better hurry. There are 10 spots available in the incubator, but two will be reserved for startups building for Leap Motion, the 3D gesture controller that’s expected to launch this summer.

Why Leap Motion? That’s because, as explained to us by Todd Embley, the program manager at China’s funkiest incubator, China-Axlr8r founder Cyril Ebersweiler is an investor in Leap Motion through his role in SOS Ventures (Update: Corrected that relationship). The gesture-based controller has a full SDK for developers to build upon, and will launch with a dedicated app store called AirSpace. I guess the 2013 intake up in Dalian will get plenty of access to the Leap Motion hardware (actually just a tiny box that augments the computer or gadget you’re already using), and will be able to build any kind of app or game for that platform. It’d be fun to see some that integrate with Chinese web services.

As for the change of name (I guess “Axlr8r” is pronounced “accelerator”, so it actually sounds the same as before), Todd says:

We’ve slightly rebranded due to our growing family of accelerators backed by Cyril Ebersweiler and Sean O’Sullivan from SOS Ventures. We now have China-Axlr8r, Haxlr8r, and Selr8r, with a fourth in the works for the end of this year in the US.

That latter one hasn’t been revealed, but it’s quite likely it’ll be devoted to Leap Motion developers.

To see what has emerged from this incubator before, check out our list of its 2012 batch of startups.

China-Axlr8r’s application form is here, and it’s available in both Chinese and English. If you want to see Leap Motion in action, check out this demo video:

Beijing-based car rental startup Yongche has been diversifying recently, launching a taxi finding app in the form of “DaChe Xiaomi”. Investors seem to be appreciating this move into a hot new niche in China – Yongche has secured a massive new round of funding this weekend, with its taxi app being a major focus of the investment.

Yongche’s investor this time round is China Broadband Capital Partners. The funding amount hasn’t been revealed, but it’s believed to involve tens of millions of dollars. Yongche’s series A round came in August 2011, and was in a similar range.

The taxi-oriented DaChe Xiaomi is up against a lot of similar – and similarly named – competition, such as Yaoyao ZhaoChe, Didi DaChe, and Kuaidi DaChe. That latter one secured seed funding earlier this month.

Yongche’s new baby is a totally mobile-only app, unlike the company’s car rental service which also has an Uber-like limo/car-booking feature. DaChe Xiaomi’s homepage is just its official Sina Weibo account (see here).

All the taxi finding and booking apps and services in China are facing an uncertain future, however. As noted recently by Marbridge Daily, it’s rumored that Beijing municipal authorities are seeking to regulate these services because of a confusing array of surplus charges made to consumers. That could even involve the city of Beijing creating its own taxi booking platform, which would devastate these startups. About 30 percent of Beijing taxi drivers are using one or more of such apps.

It’s not unfeasible that an entire city could build its own platform – after all, we’ve already seen that happen in Chongqing, a massive municipality of 28 million people.

(Source: CSDN – article in Chinese)

Chinese web company Qihoo has lost its second lawsuit and legal tussle this week. This time, Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU) was up against search engine rival Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) in the Beijing High People’s Court, where a judge ruled in favor of Baidu’s unfair competition suit and ordered Qihoo to pay a fine and publish an apology.

Just two days earlier, another court ruled that Qihoo should pay damages to Tencent in a separate case – and say it’s very sorry.

The Baidu lawsuit against Qihoo dates back to the events of last fall, shortly after Qihoo – initially a web portal and software maker – launched its own search engine. While the Beijing court only imposed a fine of RMB 450,000 (US$72,000), smaller than the damages that must be paid to Tencent, Baidu’s legal claims were quite significant, accusing Qihoo of things like violating industry practices by circumventing Baidu’s block on Qihoo indexing Baidu’s content on sites such as Baike, which is a sort of Wikipedia clone. The court ruling today also accused Qihoo of utilizing Baidu’s search results in its own new search engine.

The leading search engine had earlier accused the newcomer of illegal seizure of Baidu’s intellectual property, and was seeking RMB 100 million ($15 million) in damages. Clearly the judges had a different idea of the value of that content.

Qihoo’s apology to Baidu must be displayed for 15 days [1] – coincidentally the same period of time as its apology to Tencent. But, as noted by Rihanna, I’m guessing that the perpetrator is not very sorry.

(Source: NBD – article in Chinese)

(Source: NBD – article in Chinese)

One Chinese e-commerce site that recently branched out into global sales has added what could be its hottest item yet – the newest Xiaomi phone. JD Global, the international version of China’s Jingdong, has stocked up on the latest Xiaomi Mi2 phone, which is now available in the 35 countries to which it ships.

Xiaomi’s phones are probably best known to overseas gadget fans for running MIUI, a popular Android skin that can also be flashed onto a number of other Android phones. Since MIUI has a strong global user-base with over 10 million users, the China-made Xiaomi phone actually works well in English. It’s not clear if this version will come equipped with Google apps like the Google Play store.

Only the 16GB version of the recently revamped Xiaomi Mi2S is available on JD Global right now. But, priced at $355 for overseas customers for the WCDMA version – and a further $30 more for the CDMA one – JD Global’s price tags (see here) are not quite so tempting as the RMB 1,999 ($320) price that it sells for in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Pretty much every time we write about Xiaomi, we get commenters from around the globe asking how they can grab hold of one of the devices. However, there previously wasn’t an easy answer to that. While this global launch is not backed by Xiaomi itself, I get the feeling the phone will get a warm reception from Android fans around the world.

Chinese authorities have shut down two notorious movie pirating websites today in a strengthening clampdown on both online and offline piracy. YYeTs.com suddenly closed itself down at 12 noon today, but a notice on the site’s official Sina Weibo account says that it’s only temporary. The other site, Siluhd.com (Silu HD) suffered a harsher blow, with the site forcibly taken down and CEO Zhou Mou and eight other employees reportedly arrested.

Silu HD is said to be China’s biggest piracy site of high-definition movies, and has been online in plain sight for a decade. It claims to have 1.4 million registered users (Update: Corrected that number), making it larger than some social networks in the country, like dating website Jiayuan (73 million registered members). Chinese media reports today that the Silu HD site was very subtle, hiding its movies behind a paywall.

But “subtle” certainly isn’t a word that could be used to decribe YYeTs (pictured below), which has also been online for quite a while. A blatant movie download site, the service hasn’t gone down without a fight, and its semi-deactivated homepage today directs users towards some other, fully working URLs where they can download pirated content.

Click to enlarge

YYeTs’ Weibo page, I notice, also continues to link to pirated movies and TV shows, and just posted a link to the newest episode of The Vampire Diaries which it has uploaded to Baidu’s Dropbox-like cloud storage service.

Today is World Intellectual Property Day, so there might be an element of authorities wanting to be seen doing something. Given YYeTs’ claim of being down temporarily, there’s a chance it will be back soon. And it has its other URLs anyway.

A reader tells me that Beijing authorities also held an anti-piracy roadshow on the streets of the capital earlier today, starting in the Zhongguancun tech district. Plus, earlier this week, the country’s biggest e-commerce company, Alibaba, was called upon to use its ‘big data’ abilities to help law enforcement crack down on both online and offline piracy.

It’s relatively easy for Chinese web users to view legal and licensed movies and TV shows online, using sites like Youku, iQiyi (owned by Baidu), Tencent Video, Sohu TV, and many more. In fact, it’s easier to do so legally and for free in China than it is in countries like the US.

(Sources: Techweb (1) and (2) – articles in Chinese)

The new statistic comes from KoryoLink CEO Ezz Heikal, who’s based in Pyongyang. The telco is a joint venture between Egyptian company Orascom and the state-owned Korea Post and Telecommunications Corporation (KPTC). KoryoLink was started up in late 2008, but usage seems to have only taken off since Kim Jong-un took over as the newest (but not dearest) leader in December 2011.

But, as always with North Korea, there are complications.

North Korean authorities permitted KoryoLink to sell uncensored 3G data packages to foreign businesspeople and longer-term visitors in February of this year. But that was halted a few weeks later. And so you have to wonder how many of KoryoLink’s subscribers are active users – or visitors who now find their service partially cut off.

Note that North Koreans who use KoryoLink’s 3G cannot access the proper internet, and are restricted to the national intranet – plus voice calls and SMS.

Tensions between North Korea and the west remain high, with no sign of a sustained opening up policy that would give North Koreans greater access to things like smartphones. Or food.

(Source: NorthKoreaTech)

China’s top search engine, Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), posted its Q1 2013 earnings after the close of Thursday’s trading in the US. A major milestone was reached as daily mobile search users hit 100 million in number for the first time ever. That’s in addition to over 80 million collective users of its mobile apps, such as the Google Maps-beating Baidu Maps app.

Q1 2013 financials

• Quarterly revenues of US$961 million (up 40 percent from the same period in 2012)
• Operating profits of $355.9 million (up 5.7 percent from Q1 2012)
• Net income rose to $328.9 million

Following a good day for Baidu in Thursday’s trading, rising nearly five percent to $92.34 per share, after-hours trading took on a darker mood after seeing the latest earnings report. It’s currently down eight percent to $84.83 in after-hours trading.

Why is it down? According to Investors.com, markets are being spooked by two main factors. Firstly, Baidu saw rising expenditure this quarter in the form of greater traffic acquisition, bandwidth, and content costs. Indeed, content costs more than doubled in the past year to reach $15.4 million, representing 1.6 percent of total revenues. That was attributed in Baidu’s report to “the full quarter impact of iQiyi’s consolidation” – a reference to Baidu pumping money into its Hulu-like video streaming site.

Speaking of iQiyi, there are rumors circulating that Baidu will acquire rival video site PPS in order to bolster iQiyi further, but Baidu hasn’t commented on those reports.

Secondly, after-hours trading was also hit by Baidu’s earnings and sales missing Wall Street forecasts. Plus there’s the recurring concern over new search engine rival Qihoo, which entered the sector last summer and quickly rose to 10 percent market share.

See the full Baidu Q1 2013 results here.

A web-based battle between two Chinese internet giants that dates back to 2010 is finally being put to rest today. Sort of. The Guangdong Higher People’s Court has this afternoon ruled partially in favor of Tencent (HKG:0700), and against Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU), in a legal wrangle over desktop antivirus software. While the judge dismissed Tencent’s claim to RMB 125 million (US$20 million) in compensation for supposed economic loss, Qihoo is now ordered to pay RMB 5 million ($800,000).

In addition, Qihoo must display a prominent apology to Tencent on one of its portal homepages for a period of 15 days. We’ve reached out to Qihoo for comment, and also to find out where the apology will be placed.

Tencent’s lawsuit alleged anti-competitive practices by Qihoo in the heat of a very ugly and public spat in late 2010 between the two companies over antivirus software. It centered around Qihoo’s ‘360 Safe’ antivirus software for Windows PCs and Tencent’s newer QQ antivirus product. The tit-for-tat battle at that time astonished Chinese web users as the rival companies used their software to launch pop-up notifications accusing the other of misdeeds such as blocking their rival app from operating on the computers of people who had rival software installed. At one point, Tencent accused Qihoo of configuring its antivirus software to prevent people from using Tencent’s QQ instant messaging app – and that was a central point of this lawsuit. China’s long-suffering netizens dubbed it the “3Q War” (as in: QQ vs Qihoo).

Back in 2010: Qihoo’s Privacy Protector app accuses the Tencent QQ free antivirus app of scanning and reading sensitive computer files.

Qihoo, for its part, maintained that it was preventing Tencent’s software from accessing excessive personal information.

Qihoo’s own lawsuit against Tencent was rejected last month by the same court, resulting in Qihoo being ordered to pay RMB 790,000 ($125,000) in legal damages. Qihoo lost another verdict in a Beijing court in 2011 over the same affair, and was fined $62,530 for “slander and unfair competition.”

We’ll update when/if we hear back from Qihoo. Perhaps the 3Q War is finally over. The biggest losers in the whole thing, however, are the Chinese software users who got screwed over by both companies.

(Source: Donews – article in Chinese)

The Tokyo-based startup that makes Gengo, the enterprise-oriented crowdsourced translation service, has wrapped up $12 million in series B funding, led by Intel Capital. Aptly for such a globally-minded business, other investors in this newest round are from all across the globe: Infocomm Investments (Singapore), STCV (Saudi Arabia), NTT-IP (Japan), Iris Capital (France), and previous investor Atomico (UK).

Gengo is a platform for human translation for 33 languages, with over 7,500 experienced translators providing their linguistic services to small- and medium-sized business and major corporations alike. The idea is that machine translation – using things like Google Translate – is not reliable or accurate enough for doing business.

Founded in 2009, Gengo got series A funding worth $5.25 million in 2011 to help with its initial expansion.

The new financing will be used to accelerate global expansion and speed up its translation process (see the demo video below). Gengo already has a deal with YouTube to improve its multi-lingual video captioning feature.

Hiro Tamura, a partner at Atomico, points out in today’s announcement that since their original investment, “Gengo has proven it can scale its business across the world whilst growing its revenue four-fold.” Meanwhile, Kuo-Yi Lim, CEO of Infocomm Investments, says that Singapore’s “multicultural and multilingual environment, and diverse talent pool” make for an ideal “base for Gengo’s growth into the rest of Asia.”

Quite a few startups are trying the crowdsourced human translation niche, such as Japan’s Conyac or the new project by the guy who created Captchas.

See how Gengo works in this short demo video:

China’s leading search engine, Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), is said to have acquired a rival social video site for $300 million to $400 million. This rumored acquisition of PPS.tv would bolster Baidu’s own Hulu-esque video-streaming site iQiyi.

The buy-out will reportedly merge PPS into Baidu’s iQiyi. PPS is an old favorite with Chinese netizens from when it used to be packed with pirated TV shows and movies – that’s before PPS cleaned up with licensed content in the past couple of years.

We reached out to Baidu this afternoon, but a Baidu spokesperson declined to comment.

The Baidu-PPS rumors have actually rumbled on for about a month, but today’s reports suggest that it’s a done deal that will be announced soon.

Interestingly – and somewhat bizarrely – the company behind China’s top social video site, Youku Tudou (NYSE:YOKU), issued a statement about the Baidu-PPS rumors. Youku president Dele Liu says:

After the success and synergy created by the Youku Tudou merger, increasing consolidation was inevitable throughout the video industry. We are happy to see this purchase go forward, we expect this acquisition will further rationalize the industry and help reduce piracy in the sector.

But Dele Liu was just responding to the rumors, not insinuating that the news is true.

However, it is true that consolidation is inevitable in this pricey and heated sector where it costs millions of dollars to secure the exclusive rights to Chinese, Korean, or western TV dramas and movies. China’s biggest web company Tencent (HKG:0700) has also been bolstering its video site in the past year.

According to ComScore, China’s netizens watch upwards of four billion hours of web videos each month, making social video portals and licensed content an increasingly important part of the Chinese web scene.

(Source: Techweb – article in Chinese)

We’ve been following the progress of Singapore-based Dropmysite pretty closely in the past year. In that time, the website and email cloud backup service has acquired a US rival and expanded into numerous countries. Today the startup has announced an investment from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups. The funding amount hasn’t been revealed, but will be in the usual 500 Startups seed funding range, which is US$25,000 to $250,000.

Aside from the cash, it gives the Dropmysite crew – who also run Dropmyemail, which has received funding in the past and expanded into the US market – access to the entire roster of 500 Startups mentors. Dropmysite says that it currently backs up a quarter of a billion emails and websites a day for nearly a million users.

Singapore’s Payroll Hero and video-streaming site Viki are two other local ventures that have attracted funds from 500 Startups.

Explaining the appeal of Dropmysite to small business owners, 500 Startups venture partner George Kellerman said in today’s announcement:

Very few people think about backing up their e-mail, voicemail, or SMS until
it’s too late, and most carriers and ISP’s can’t help you if they lose your data.
Dropmysite, however, solves that problem and allows any SMB to backup
their e-mail or whatever else they need simply and cost-efficiently. It’s a great
cloud-based business that has the potential to go global.

The Dropmysite crew also revealed today that there are “acquisitions under way” to help the business expand and will be announced in due course. Plus it’s finalizing a reseller program for its software-as-a-service offerings.

Japanese companies seem to be doing well in terms of social marketing, with drink-maker Ichitan coming out on top in Thailand, and bike-maker Yamaha revs up the most social media fans in Indonesia. But in Malaysia and the Philippines, two homegrown brands (Air Asia and Smart, respectively) are at the top of this ranking.

This combined count can be a bit unfair in some ways, as it punishes brands who opt to, say, avoid Instagram but have good numbers on other networks. An example is BlackBerry Indonesia, which is not in the ranking despite being one of the nation’s top Facebook brand pages with 26.7 million followers.

With all that in mind, here’s the full infographic, which also has some fun snippets about user behavior on brand pages on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram:

(Source: ZocialInc blog)

For more fun graphics like this one, check out previous entries in our infographic series.

Surround App is free and allows one-click machine translation of any Weibo post from someone you follow. In addition, it gives you a full English UI for the most common Weibo functions, like making retweets and comments. The Hong Kong startup admits that many features are omitted in this beta, with things like translation of comments, slang translation, image uploading, and paid-for human translations all coming at a later date. Here’s the current beta that I’ve been playing with:

There are a few confusing aspects to the new beta. What looks like the retweet/repost button (pictured above) is actually for comments, and what’s apparently a refresh icon actually serves to repost the content. It’s not made very clear how to activate the translation – it turns out you need to hit that arrow button in the bottom-left of the app. Hopefully the icons will be rethought. If it sounds like I’m being too tough on a free app, that’s just because I’m keen for it to be good as it could prove so useful for many people.

Surround App is now in Google Play for Android users, but the iPhone version hasn’t yet shown up in iTunes.

“We had our best quarter ever in China,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier today. In its post-earnings conference call for Q2 of fiscal 2013, Cook revealed that Apple sales to Chinese consumers (in the Greater China area, not just the mainland) amounted to $8.8 billion in that period of time, which was up 11 percent year-on-year. In response to a question from a call participant, he denied that Apple had hit a wall in China with the iPhone and iPad. The company also revealed that it plans to double its count of official Apple Stores in Greater China (currently 11).

The Greater China stats cover Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao, and mainland China. Looking only at the mainland, sales were up eight percent. That’s not so hot when compared to slow growth in the US at a rate of seven percent.

Earlier data from IDC has made clear that 73.2 percent of all mobiles sold in China are smartphones, but the on-the-ground market is far from saturated.

56 percent of Apple’s revenue now comes from non-US markets – representing $24.3 billion in sales. Apple’s total revenues for Q2 hit $43.6 billion, beating analysts’ estimates. But profit nonetheless slipped 18 percent.

Cook inevitably dodged insinuations, notes TechCrunch, about building a budget iPhone, and instead stressed that Apple is selling the older iPhone 4 and 4S in markets like China as a more affordable option for lower-income folks who are trashing their feature phones.

The positive numbers from China come as a relief for Apple after a rough month of public attacks by state media, accusing the company of treating Chinese consumers unfairly when it comes to customer service and repairing devices. Also remember that Android is China’s top smartphone OS, with an estimated 160 million active Android owners right now.

(Source: TechCrunch)

You’ve created a popular Mac app that has a strong cult following, but you fancy a new revenue stream. What to do? One of the less obvious answers (unless you’re Rovio) is to sell some merchandise. That’s what the Chinese creator of Mou, the writing app for OS X that supports Markdown, has done. The developer has recently launched such products as a tablet stand, beer bottle openers, badges, and stickers. All the merchandise features the distinctive “M” logo that forms Mou’s icon.

The flagship new physical product is MouStand (pictured below), a funky and minimalist tablet stand made of magnesium alloy. The man behind the startup, Chen Luo, explains to us that this particular product is half handmade, involving a CNC cutting machine he has rented, then a whole lot of polishing and bending, followed by a bit of sandblasting to create the matte effect, then they’re anodized and colored.

Chen admits with candor that the item is not perfect due to it being largely crafted by hand – and by Chen himself. That’s a lot of elbow grease involved. You can either buy the color pack containing four of these iPad stands for US$116, or the black-and-white pack for $58:

Developing on a need-to-have basis

Chen says that he first (and unintentionally) prototyped MouStand last year as a mini comb shelf made of pure silver. It was only when he bought an iPad in January this year that he felt the need for a solid stand. That’s when the previous creation became enlarged to support anything from a smartphone to any brand of tablet.

Indeed, Chen says he often develops things on a need-to-have basis – either in terms of the skills required or a particular resource needed. That happened with this merchandise. He explains:

I’ve learned everything needed to make this happen, CAD mechanical drawing, packaging design, cutting machine operation, the necessary knowledge of kinds of metal processing techniques, woodworking, and printing. I feel lucky that I’m already skilled in photography and web coding, as they are useful for building the online store. It’s not easy, but finally, I accomplished all the stuff and brought MouStand into reality.

Prior to making Mou app, he also made apps when he encountered things he needed for his web and software development work, such as Smaller app and the Resize extension for Safari.

Mou for iPad?

Mou for Mac is a great-looking and very stable writing app considering that it’s still in beta – and therefore free. Chen says that he’s still not sure when Mou will mature to the point, as he sees it, that it’s ready to hit the Mac App Store with a price-tag. Other Markdown-oriented Mac apps like iWriter and Byword cost $2.99 in the store, though they don’t have as many features as Mou, such as the latter’s live HTML preview.

But he says that he’s now focusing on the Mac app – which is proving most popular in the US, China, and Japan – with only a little thought given to a Mou for iPad version:

Currently I don’t have the need of writing things on iPad. I use the iPad mainly for playing games, watching movies, and browsing websites. People’s needs will change. Once I feel the need of writing things on iPad someday in the future, I think I’ll try to make an iOS version of Mou – that’s possible.

He admits that iOS development is new to him, but it could be a fun, new learning challenge. And not so messy and dangerous as metalwork.

Mou app is currently free and supports OS X 10.7 and 10.8, though an older version still supports those on 10.6. Oh, and these are the beer bottle openers:

The Vizio VP700 (pictured) is now on sale in China – with dual SIM slots!

A few days into the new year, American TV maker Vizio revealed its first ever venture outside of the North American market with a made-for-China Android-powered smartphone. That was a pretty long time ago. But this week the phone, which some might have been thinking was vaporware, finally appeared in China and is now on sale.

Two models have appeared, both sporting pretty big screens and fairly similar bodies. The pricier Vizio VP800 has a five-inch HD screen that crams in, says PCpop, a resolution of 1920×1280 to give pixel density of 443ppi. The new Samsung Galaxy S4 can lay claim to 441ppi. The Vizio VP800 also offers 32G of storage. But the product’s official online sales page on Tmall says that it packs only a dual-core 1.5GHz chip, short of the quad-core you might expect in a flagship, big-screen device. It’s selling for RMB 2,999 (US$480).

The Vizio VP700 (pictured above) is cheaper at RMB 1,999 ($320) and has a 4.7-inch non-retina-searing screen atop a 1.2GHz dual-core chip. It uniquely has dual SIM card slots, which most foreign brands don’t offer despite it being a popular choice in many Asian nations. So that’s one thing in its favor. But, at that price, it’s smack up against the new Xiaomi Mi2S, which has a slightly smaller screen (4.3-inch), but packs a lot more punch – and a nicer Android skin.

Both Vizio’s China-only models have their Android 4.1 set-up modified with a fairly light and non-invasive custom UI, and features tweaks like Baidu being set as the default search engine.

There are an estimated 160 million active Android users in China right now, with that number likely to double by the end of the year.

(Source: PCpop – article in Chinese)

Once hailed as “China’s Facebook”, Renren (NYSE:RENN) has had a rough few years. First overtaken by microblogging (with new rivals Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo) and then by group messaging (like WeChat), Renren hasn’t been able to grow its user-base that much. But it is diversifying. The latest spin-off for Renren is a messaging app to challenge the mighty WeChat, and it’s called TongXueShuo – literally meaning “classmates say”.

But it’s not restricted to campus buddies – and it’s not just confined to messaging. Renren’s TongXueShuo seems to throw in a lot of things in the hope that the mix will attract new users. There are elements of Path, Google+, regular social messaging apps, plus the find-and-flirt capabilities of apps like Momo.

The mobile-only TongXueShuo – with apps for iPhone and Android – came out quietly last month. Perhaps too quietly, as there has been no buzz surrounding it yet.

TongXueShuo is not only up against the 300 million users on WeChat, but also incoming rivals like NHN Japan’s Line, which launched in China in December.

Last month, Renren also had a go at making a Snapchat-like app where the messages and images vanish after 10 seconds.

Renren’s main social network remains China’s seventh largest social network with about 170 million registered users.

(Thanks to reader Ken for pointing this out)

(Photo: Associated Press)

Shortly after this weekend’s earthquake near the Chinese city of Ya’an in Sichuan province, which has so far claimed nearly 200 lives with many more still missing, a number of leading web companies rushed to help with the disaster response by setting up online ‘people finder’ message boards.

Here are the five main online resources:

Google’s Person Finder

This is a well-known site in such an emergency, with buttons for “I’m looking for someone” and “I have information about someone”. Google’s dedicated Sichuan quake boards currently have 1,100 records, though it’s not clear how many of those are made up of people looking for missing folks, or actual bits of information about a lost/found individual. The Google site is also nice enough to link to several resources from other web companies, such as the ones listed here.

Baidu Zhidao for Ya’an

Baidu’s Wikipedia-esque Zhidao site now has a dedicated messaging board for the quake-hit area. In contrast to Google’s more closed-off (privacy-oriented?) Person Finder, the Baidu boards are open to anyone to read through.

360 Search for Ya’an

Qihoo’s board emphasizes the names of missing folks in very large type, making it easy to browse through.

Sohu Public Service for Ya’an

Major web portal Sohu has a Google Person Finder-like site (pictured above) split into “want to find” and “want to help” buttons. It also features an open board with Pinterest-style notes for each person being sought. So far, over 7,600 ‘missing’ posts have been made, but many could be duplicate names.

Panguso Post-Quake People Finder

State-run search engine Panguso has had the sense to make this site mobile-friendly, as many people will be turning to their smartphones or feature phones and using 2G or 3G in an area where many buildings and internet lines have been destroyed, or where electricity has not yet been restored.

Earlier today we saw smartphone rivals Apple and Samsung both make sizable donations to post-quake relief efforts. Social sites like Sina Weibo and the messaging app WeChat (known as Weixin in China) are also playing a part as people in the affected area use lots of web and mobile resources to communicate or find information.

Follow the updates on the China Daily live blog.

Back in October last year, China’s second-biggest B2C e-commerce site launched a global version of its store that ships items from China. Now, after half a year of operations and a rebrand for the entire company from 360Buy to Jingdong, I was curious how the overseas sales were going, and asked the company for an update.

We’re told that the international site (see here) is handling the rebranding by focusing on the acronym JD, though the frontpage URL of the revamped site hasn’t been updated yet. In its early stages, the Amazon-esque JD Global, which sells everything from iPad cases to wedding dresses, shoes to CDs, is proving popular with overseas Chinese. Jingdong VP of retail and overseas markets, Shi Tao, explains to TechinAsia:

We are getting great early traction selling Chinese language books overseas. Given the number of Chinese living abroad, the challenges of carrying books internationally and the desire of people internationally to keep in touch with Chinese culture, books were a logical early target product. The JD.com Global site has a catalogue of more than half a million Chinese language books for consumers abroad, which is something you just can’t find in foreign markets.

It seems like a good niche market to cater to, as the China-only Jingdong business effectively gives JD Global a larger collection than Amazon’s line-up of Chinese language books in the US or the UK. Plus, there’s an element of trust and brand recognition among this audience and the well-established Jingdong site. Plus, books are generally not a time-sensitive product – which is just as well when global shipping from JD’s China warehouses can take a couple of weeks.

“A bite of China”

Jingdong explains that most of its book buyers are in the US, and that buyers tend to be individuals, not small businesses. The current best-seller on the site is A Bite of China, the DVD and book combo version of the popular cookery program by state broadcaster CCTV. Second is a book on the programming language Java. It’s an odd mix, but it’s apparently what overseas Chinese want. Plus, they get free shipping on purchases over $29, which includes those two popular titles.

Aside from that early traction, Jingdong representatives point out to us that the JD Global site is still at a very early stage, and they’re exploring different demands in different markets and trying to remain flexible.

While JD is unique in shipping to overseas customers from its own warehouses in China, it’s not the only option for consumers looking to buy stuff from China. Jingdong would not compare itself with ‘source from China’ platforms like Alibaba-owned AliExpress or smaller rival LightIntheBox, but there is some overlap in terms of products available on all three, such as things people overseas might really want to buy from China (knowing how much cheaper they are to make in mainland China) such as smartphone accessories or wedding dresses. But JD Global is the only one shipping books, movies, and music to an international audience. Plus, JD would argue that it’s safer to buy direct from them, rather than from other sites that are a conduit for Chinese factory suppliers.

Presumably Jingdong wants a broader audience for its JD Global site eventually, but the Chinese diaspora seems like a good kickstarter.

Jingdong is second only to Alibaba’s Tmall in China’s massive B2C e-commerce market. Jingdong wrapped up a funding round worth $700 million in February, and is said by some analysts to be preparing a US IPO later this year.

A powerful earthquake struck the city of Ya’an in Sichuan province over the weekend, not too far from the site of the larger and even more catastrophic quake in 2008. Now, with rescue teams already on site, it’s time for donations to flood in to help sustain survivors and rebuild the area. Tech companies are keen to be philanthropic too. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has pledged RMB 50 million (US$8 million) this morning for the Chinese victims; and rival gadget-maker Samsung (005930:KS) had earlier vowed to donate RMB 60 million ($9.63 million).

Apple pledged its quake relief funds via public relations channels, while Samsung rather more effectively posted its offering on the Samsung China official Sina Weibo page. The Weibo post came with a statement from Samsung China president Zhang Yuanji who said, “Samsung China is always with the Chinese people through thick and thin, to tide over the difficulties.” Plus, local media reports that Samsung has set up ad-hoc free phone repair centers in the affected quake zone.

Apple has a memorial image for the quake victims on its homepage right now (pictured above). According to Sina Tech, the Cupertino company released a statement that also pledged new gadgets for quake-hit schools:

At this difficult time, our hearts are with the victims of the Sichuan earthquake. Aside from the cash donation to help the affected people to tide over their difficulties, we are committed to providing new Apple devices to schools in the disaster area, and Apple employees in the locality are on stand-by at any time to help.

With Apple under pressure in China in the past couple of months – state-run media last week claimed that 60 percent of Chinese consumers now think less of Apple than they did previously – the company will be privately hoping to make no mis-steps with this pledge.

China has about 85 million active iOS users, and 160 million on Android. Since Samsung is the preferred brand of Chinese Android buyers, the Korean company and Apple are quite closely matched in terms of smartphone sales in the country. Samsung sold 30 million smartphones in China alone in 2012. The great rivalry between the two – in stores as well as courtrooms – will inevitably lead to comparisons of the amount donated by each. But, hey, they made sizable charitable donations, and there are biggers issues in Sichuan right now – such as the nearly 200 dead and the very many still missing.

(Sources: Sina Tech (1) and (2); Hat-tip to reader @Geoffrey_Wu for tipping us)

Yahoo China has announced today that its email service in the country will be shut next month. The Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) email homepage has already ceased new registrations and is now informing current users that, from now to August 19, they’ll be transferred over to Alibaba’s ‘Aliyun’ email service instead.

Yahoo owns a 20 percent stake in Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce titan that was first handed behind-the-scenes control of all Yahoo China operations backs in 2005, covering things like Yahoo email, search, and the news portal.

This Yahoo Mail shutdown could well signal the start of a total withdrawal from the country. While that hasn’t been confirmed, new CEO Marissa Mayer looks to be shaking up the (very many) failing parts of Yahoo, so the lackluster performance in China could well put the entire operation up for the chop.

Yahoo is China’s seventh largest search engine, with 0.28 percent market share of pageviews at the end of February of this year. That’s a fraction behind Microsoft’s struggling Bing, which has only 0.52 percent share. Baidu is the clear market leader. Aside from its woes in the search sector, Yahoo is also struggling up against the weight of local news and entertainment portals like Netease, Sina, Tencent, and even MSN.

Last December, Yahoo shut its rather dodgy music service in China, and also closed its blogging platform in Vietnam.

A few months before all that, Alibaba paid $7.6 billion to buy back about half of Yahoo’s previous stake in the e-commerce company.

UPDATE: The official statement from Yahoo! China:

As part of the agreement to buy back the Yahoo! stake, technological support for China Yahoo! Mail service will be suspended and we will begin the China Yahoo! Mail account migration process beginning April 18 (April 17 PST), 2013; we will offer several options to our users to make this transition as smooth as possible, and China Yahoo! users will have four months time to migrate their accounts to the Aliyun mail service, the Yahoo! Mail service in the United States, or another 3rd party e-mail provider of the user’s choice.

(Hat-tip to WantChinaTimes for spotting this)

So it turns out that Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Kindle hardware didn’t launch in China on the 16th as rumors said it would. But there is a concrete development today with the rollout to Chinese consumers of Amazon’s Cloud Drive feature.

Amazon’s personal cloud storage service launched last year in many countries, and was finally imbued with file syncing capabilities earlier this month. The Amazon Cloud Drive apps for Windows and Mac are also now available in Chinese from the Amazon China site.

The business-oriented Amazon Web Services launched in China last December.

The availability of Amazon’s Cloud Drive in China might suggest that Kindle hardware is a step closer. Or not. Amazon’s Kindle e-bookstore opened in China a few months ago, but readers must view the purchased e-books within the company’s smartphone apps. But with China not getting the Amazon Appstore anytime soon – no love for Indonesia or Singapore either – it’s safe to say that the Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD tablets won’t be going on sale here for a long time.

Amazon Cloud Drive is up against a lot of local rivals, such as Baidu’s Netdrive, a Dropbox clone that the search engine giant says has over 30 million users in the country. There are also startup cloud services like Kanbox.

(Kudos to @foxmachia for spotting this)

The very minimal UI of the new Baidu Antivirus app for PC users in China.

After months of testing it in on users in Southeast Asia and then around the world, Chinese search engine Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) has now launched its antivirus PC software in China.

It’s a major challenge to arch-rival Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU), which muscled into China’s search engine market last summer but is perhaps best known for its antivirus software.

The Baidu Antivirus app is co-produced with security experts Kapersky. It’s not clear if it’s essentially the same as the earlier Windows app that was marketed overseas as “Baidu PC Faster”. But Baidu’s newest product for its home audience is labeled v1.0 beta 1, and is currently only taking on a limited number of beta testers. Currently, it can’t be downloaded from the new Baidu Antivirus Chinese homepage until it opens up to a new batch of early adopters.

Qihoo’s security credentials have been in the spotlight a lot this year, with numerous allegations of improper data collection and exploitation of users of its PC apps, like its antivirus offerings and its popular 360 Browser for Windows. Not only has a respected Chinese newspaper blasted Qihoo as a “cancer” of the internet, but Apple has banned all of Qihoo’s iOS apps with no explanation. Baidu might be privately seeing this as a good opportunity to win over users to its new app.

To fully challenge Qihoo, Baidu will surely need to create antivirus apps for Android as well.

(Sources: ZOL and Marbridge Daily)

China’s newcomer phone-maker Xiaomi said a while back that it would make its first ever venture outside mainland China. And now Xiaomi has set dates and prices for upcoming launches in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

According to the now-online Xiaomi HK and TW sites, the recently launched Xiaomi Mi2S model (pictured) will launch in Hong Kong on April 23rd for HK$2,499 (US$322), which works out as the same price in mainland China. Over in Taiwan, the price will be a comparative TW$9,499 with a more vague sometime-in-May date set.

Xiaomi sells most of its Android-powered devices online, so the startup gadget-maker needs to tweak its e-commerce site for the new markets. The solution is accepting Paypal in both of the new territories. There’s no word yet on whether any Hong Kong or Taiwan telcos will carry the device in the same way that China Unicom and China Telecom has done on the mainland.

Xiaomi is aiming to sell 15 million phones in 2013, double its tally in 2012.

We saw the India-made messaging app Hike launch last summer and then go global in December. In the fast-moving world of social media, that means it’s time for another update. This week, the New Delhi-based startup has rolled out Hike v2.0 – across iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, and Symbian – that aims to connect you more directly with what your friends are feeling.

The updated Hike app now has status updates and moods, so you can tell your buddies how you’re feeling with a fairly big emoticon. We’ve seen virtual sticker packs and large emoticons to be an integral part of the success of rival Asia-made messaging apps, like Line and KakaoTalk, so they’re clearly popular. Hike emoticons can also serve to reflect your status update, and you can even view your circle of friends by their mood within the app:

That latter feature is also a new one, dubbed ‘circle of friends’. Other useful new additions include a mute option for notifications. Plus, the new status updates now show up in WP8 homescreen tiles and on iOS they’ll appear as a number in the counter; Android users will have to wait for a further update to see how status updates get pushed to them.

It’s a pretty fun update while still keeping the app simple. Kavin Bharti Mittal says of this new aspect, “Now you can share what you’re thinking about or what you’re up to in real-time with your close friends. You can still message anyone on your address book, yet at the same time share those intimate and personal moments with your close friends.”

Just the other day, Whatsapp revealed that it has 200 million active users – yes, active – which is mightily impressive for a service that we often mock on this blog for being dull and not very innovative. But that huge number shows that not everyone wants social games and all the bells and whistles of some newer messaging apps, so Hike still has a chance to win over such users to its elegant and fairly minimal app. And the market is far from saturated yet.

Get the app download links via the Hike homepage.