(Thanks for all the entries, but now this contest is closed)

Chinese handset maker OPPO has set foot in the Indonesian market recently, bringing in its flagship Oppo Find 5. What’s so special with the phone? Specification wise, the phone is on par with high-end phones like the Sony Xperia Z, and a few will argue the OPPO Find 5 is a better phone than the Samsung Galaxy S4.

As a new player in the Indonesian market, OPPO will need to compete with the other popular brands like Samsung and Sony here. Hermanto, the digital manager of OPPO Phone Indonesia, told us that OPPO’s internationally recognized brand and high-end features would be able to attract quite a number of customers.

While on paper the specifications look really good, there are still concerns about the phone’s performance in comparison with other brands. Hermanto said that the company upgrades the phone’s firmware every two weeks to make sure the phone performs at its best.

In around July and August, OPPO will produce three new phone models and in October the Chinese company will launch another high-end device. These phones will make their way to Indonesia shortly after being available in the Chinese market.

OPPO Find 5 16GB is priced at IDR 5.5 million ($560) in Indonesia. But the best news of all is that in cooperation with online shop Lazada Indonesia, we are going to give away one OPPO Find 5 to one lucky reader in Indonesia!

All you need to do is follow these steps:

• Like Tech in Asia on Facebook .
• Give a wacky tweet on the comment section below about why you really want the free handset, while including your Twitter handle ¹.
• Tweet this post with the hashtag #OPPOFind5TIA.

We will announce who the lucky winner is at 10pm Jakarta time tonight. Be sure to follow @techinasia as we will send you a DM with your Lazada voucher code.

UPDATED at 11:00 Jakarta time: Congratulations to @dewe for getting his hands on a brand new OPPO Find 5! Now he can let his friends admire the phone all day long.

Amid a stream of bad news about an executive brain drain at HTC (TPE:2498), the Taiwanese phone-maker has said today that it has sold “around five million” of its flagship HTC One phones since launch. The HTC One suffered a launch delay due to supply issues, and hit shelves a full two weeks late on March 28th.

The subliminal message from HTC is that sales are strong, despite being dwarfed by that of the Samsung Galaxy S4, which hit 10 million shipments of the S4 in just three weeks after launch. For both HTC’s and Samsung’s figures, it’s not clear how many are shipped to retailers versus actually purchased by consumers.

HTC CEO Peter Chou has vowed to resign if the HTC One doesn’t perform. HTC’s Q1 financials were grim as profit plunged 98 percent. The HTC One, the company hopes, will boost its Q2 earnings.

HTC has been roiled this month by top-level executive departures. HTC Asia CEO Lennard Hoornik is confirmed to have quit, while chief product officer Kouji Kodera is believed to be gone as well. CNET notes that other outgoing executives include global retail marketing manager Rebecca Rowland, digital marketing director John Starkweather, and product strategy manager Eric Lin. Mr. Lin has even urged others to “just quit” and “leave now” via Twitter, implying a grim and unhappy corporate atmosphere at the struggling smartphone maker.

HTC stocks have just closed at TW$282.50 per share in Thursday trading, which is the second-lowest dip taking it to one of the lowest levels for the stock price since 2005 (Updated: Changed wording and added graph below).

(Source: The Verge and WSJ Stream)

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)

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)

Credit: blog.laptopmag.com

I remember a few years ago that there was this constant rumor that Blackberry was going to allow its popular Blackberry Messenger (BBM) service onto the other platforms like Android and iOS. While a lot of people really hoped that it was true, realists were arguing that Blackberry would never do something like that. Why? Because the main thing that keeps people from ditching their Blackberry phones is BBM. But last night, Blackberry dropped a bomb by announcing that BBM will be available on iOS and Android this summer. What does this mean to a lot of Blackberry users in Indonesia? Relief and utter happiness, I believe.

I took some time to ask a few of my friends about what their thoughts were about Blackberry’s latest decision, and none of them said that they’re going to appreciate the Canadian company’s gesture by buying the Blackberry 10 devices. Quite the opposite, they were all very relieved that they will no longer have a reason to shoulder the burden of carrying their Blackberry phones. (From what I can see, people over on Twitter seem to feel this way too).

While CEO Thorsten Heins said this move is a “statement of confidence,” he might need to consult a different analyst. As much as people are using Blackberry phones in Indonesia, a lot of them are hating the handset’s experience. The legacy handsets that they’re using crash and need to be restarted on a regular basis, and the OS is laggy. A lot of Indonesian users are coping by using another handset, often an Android device, at the same time. But using multiple devices every day isn’t a pleasant experience either.

Granted, a lot of my friends haven’t used the Blackberry 10 device. Of those who have, quite a few of them are very happy with it. But now that BBM will no longer be exclusive to Blackberry handsets, why would anyone want to purchase a Z10 over a Samsung Galaxy S4 or an iPhone 5? The three handsets are in the same price range, and when it comes to customers’ confidence, the latter two brands have a better track record for customer satisfaction.

Looking over to see what the rest of Indonesians feel about Blackberry’s latest decision on Twitter, I found a tweet which summarizes an interesting irony quite well. It is written in Indonesian, translated to English it says:

It’s BBM news, but the trending topic [in Indonesia] is iOS and Android.

Multi-platform BBM won’t arrive for a few months, but after hearing this news, many Indonesians will be happier than ever to purchase other devices even before the upcoming Blackberry Q10 and Q5 will be released, because they know that they can soon bring their BBM contacts onto any device.

I have to give credit to Blackberry though for having the guts to go through with this move. I predict that the platform will still be the king when it comes to physical QWERTY keypad devices. But if people are looking to get their hands on phones with big screens, then Blackberry will definitely have a tough time competing.

To give you some idea of the speed of these things, K is capable of ten quadrillion computations per second. So the new computer would be capable of performing one quintillion computations per second. If you want to see what that number looks like, it’s this: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.

It’s not clear yet exactly what the speedy new machine will cost or where it will be built, but developing K cost about $1 billion, and researchers are hoping this new computer will be a bit cheaper.

Supercomputers are sometimes seen as symbols of a global game of one-upsmanship, with countries competing to create the fastest computer and thus prove to the world that they are totally the best at science. But Japan doesn’t plan to use its new supercomputer just to wave in competitors’ faces. The computer will be used to do all kinds of awesome things, such as:

• Develop new medicines and medical formulas
• Run simulations and statistical analyses that predict natural disasters like quakes and tsunamis
• Become self-aware, conquer the world

OK, so I made up that last one, but the computer really is going to be used in disaster prevention and medical research, which is awesome. I’m no computer scientist, but I’m guessing that at one quadrillion calculations per second you can run some pretty goddamn complex simulations, which should be a huge aid in disaster prevention and medical developments.

(via Japan Times)

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)

The Samsung Galaxy S4 officially launched today in Indonesia. Kompas today quotes Febri Rusli, the product marketing manager of Samsung Indonesia, as saying that the 5,000 stocked phones for pre-orders are all sold out. The pre-order period started two weeks ago, but Febri said that the stocks of new Samsung Galaxy S4 phones was effectively snapped up in the first week of that period.

In contrast, around 7,000 Blackberry Z10 and iPhone 5 phones were sold during pre-orders here. But that is because the two companies stocked more phones in the country during the period.

Samsung (005930:KS) claims to be the king of the smartphone market in Indonesia, saying that four out of five Android phones sold in the country are Samsung devices.

Of course, the more Samsung Galaxy S4 models sold here means bad news for makers of cheaper big-screen smartphones, such as the Chinese handset maker Oppo, which expanded its company reach to Indonesia recently. Will they still get a lot of buyers here in Indonesia?

Samsung top in Indonesia?

Research firm IDC gave us an overview about the Indonesian mobile phone market. Here’s what they had to say:

IDC can say Indonesia’s mobile phone market is a very good market with a very healthy year-on-year growth, which we can see already from 2011 to 2012 when we booked 15 percent year-on-year growth. IDC also forecasted that the Indonesian mobile phone market shipments will reach close to 60 million units – and 14 percent of them being smartphones.

We also asked IDC about how popular Samsung handsets really are in Indonesia. An IDC representative explains to us:

As for Samsung, they are definitely one of major players in the Indonesian market. They will be in the top five smartphone players in Indonesia. They have been one of the global vendors that are able to target every market segment in Indonesia, from screen size, and price point. from the recent IDC Indonesia mobile phone tracker data, we can see Samsung has recorded 10 percent drops due to the slower demands in the market and it is expected to bounce back in Q1 2013 with a very strong growth in the smartphone segment.

IDC didn’t verify if Samsung is top in Indonesia. But Andreas Rompis, vice president of Samsung Indonesia told Detik that Samsung is already the number one mobile phone brand in Indonesia. He also mentioned that research firm Gfk backs the claim. The company also claimed to be the biggest vendor based on sales generated from both feature phones and smartphones.

Don’t forget about Blackberry

I’m curious what Blackberry’s next move will be, especially for the middle and lower tier market. The handset’s domination on the lower and middle tier is waning thanks to the existence of affordable Android handsets like the ones Samsung sells. If there are fewer people using Blackberry, then the Blackberry Messenger (BBM) ecosystem which binds people into sticking to that phone becomes weaker too. Don’t forget that chatting apps like WeChat, Line, and KakaoTalk are becoming more popular here too, and they can act as alternatives to using BBM. Those apps now have their own BBM-like data packages from mobile telcos too.

With the Blackberry Z10 already launched, the next move will be its hard keyboard phone, the Q10, which might appeal to the nation’s hardcore messagers. We’re eager to see what will happen then.

(Sources: Kompas and Detik)

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)

SinglePet is a Korean startup that builds pet-care hardware (pictured) which can be controlled through a mobile app. The gadget has cameras installed so pet owners are able to see and talk to their pets on their smartphones. Pet owners are also able to feed their pets, dispensing food from the hardware, via their smartphones.

We spotted the startup at the ongoing beLAUNCH 2013 conference here in Seoul, and saw the demo in action this morning. Pet owners can also purchase pet food within the SinglePet app, a convenience that could be a further revenue stream for the company. The startup hasn’t yet launched and doesn’t have a website we can link to. For more information, you can visit their new site here or watch their product demo video below.

SinglePet claims that the Korean pet industry is worth $1.8 billion and is expected to reach $5.4 billion in 2016. Its gadget will fit in at the high end of that market, but no price has yet been set. It has raised $300,000 of angel funding so far. Plus, it’s one of 20 startups competing for the prize in the beLAUNCH 2013 Startup Battle.

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.

Taipei-based incubator, Taiwan Mobile Innovation (TMI), has launched its hardware acceleration program earlier this month. It hopes to attract mobile and internet-related hardware startups to take part in this inaugural program, and will render support required from prototype to mass production stage.

Hardware acceleration program details

The program will take approximately nine to 12 months, depending on the product development cycle. As for the funding, seed capital will be provided but according to CEO of TMI, Lucas Wang, it is a separate decision process. It will work more like an angel investment decision along with its investors, and typically the investment amount would be around US$100,000.

The incubator does not seek profit from incubating its startups. In exchange for its incubation services, TMI has the option of being entitled to “discounts” when startups raise their next round of funding. They look to seek “profit” via means of capital gain in the near future. Lucas explains more:

[If] we work with a startup by helping them to get the best fit manufacturing or design service, and they charge this whole production for US$30k, TMI will [not charge] for the extra service in managing the whole process. TMI does not charge on the manufacturing side for [the linking-up] fee and does not charge startups for service fee.

TMI is looking to incubate around six to eight startups. It will be providing guidance on how to penetrate into the Asia market, as well as issues pertaining to manufacturing and production. Startups incubated will receive knowledge on the best design for production, material and component adoption, production schedule planning, quality testing and quality control, forecasting, as well as sourcing of manufacturers and partners.

There will be senior project managers hailing from manufacturing backgrounds as well as investors from hardware design and manufacturing companies. Lucas clarifies the difference in mentorship for hardware startups versus software startups:

In hardware innovation, one of the key points is to deliver the real product that can best comply with the original/innovative design within the planned schedule. TMI converts mentorship, which is popular in software innovation, into project management in the manufacturing side. To startups, it is like Apple being served by Foxconn. TMI helps them connect with the right manufacturers for their businesses.

TMI also explains that it is different from other hardware incubator, such as Shenzhen’s HAXLR8R.

To make things clear, Lucas tells us that there are four differences between HAXLR8R and its program:

1. Stage of the startups: TMI serves startups that already have prototypes.
2. Result of incubation: TMI aims to help startups deliver mass production products.
3. Offerings: Instead of mentorship such as introductions or networking, TMI plays the role of a team member that provides guidance on manufacturing. It deals with details such as molding defects, digital board relay, planning, and quality control.
4. Strong network: TMI sits in the heart of IT ODMs, and is connected to manufacturers that used to service large hardware companies, such as Apple, HP, and Dell. Taiwan’s ODMs provides both manufacturing services as well as design support and quality insurance. Lucas highlights that when it comes to manufacturing a consumer product, it is not just about getting a factory but also about the whole manufacturing process.

TMI was founded in 2012 by US venture firm WI Harper Group, Kaifu Lee, and ITRI (pictured right). TMI also draws inspiration from Beijing-based Innovation Works, which is founded by Kaifu Lee, hoping to foster the entrepreneurship scene in Taiwan.

For Kaifu Lee’s involvement in TMI, Lucas elaborates:

[If] a startup is looking to China market [for expansion], Kaifu and the team [will be] ready for them. [There will be] weekly updates on the progress of the projects.

And yes, Kaifu’s team is looking for opportunities generated [from] this program. The investment decision is separated from it, but is made by TMI and Kaifu’s team.

The program came about due to an observation that most hardware startups take to crowdfunding platforms to raise funding, and often failing due to the lack of proof of concept and failure to scale. For more information regarding the program, you can visit the website here.

[Photo credits: Taiwan Mobile Innovation & VentureData.org]

I consider it as a privilege to have my 83-year-old grandmother staying with me. She cooks delicious peranakan dishes and interests me with her childlike curiousness. But she gets a little stubborn sometimes – especially when it comes to climbing on chairs to retrieve items from hard-to-reach places, despite having a helper at home. There were two occasions where she fell, and it was heartbreaking to learn of it after getting back home. Fortunately, there was someone at home who could attend to her immediately. What about those older folks who live alone?

Sydney-based startup, Edisse, makes what it calls an innovative and lightweight watch that aims to minimize the risk of elderly people not being attended to when they fall. The watch has a built-in fall detection system, which works on an algorithm using accelerometer data. So if the wearer falls, it sends a notification to the nominated carer via the Edisse app on his or her phone.

So apart from detecting a fall, it also collates reports with details information such as the areas where elderly are most prone to falling and a general overview of the number of falls. As it works on mobile technology, there will be a SIM card slotted into the watch, which allows a carer to track in real-time via its mobile app and web applications, anytime and anywhere.

The startup is looking to countries out of Australia, such as the United States and China for expansion. I would think it’s feasible for them to enter into the China market, since many children move to cities for work opportunities, leaving their elderly parents back in their rural hometown. Japan is another viable market to look into, since it is experiencing a serious ageing population problem.

Edisse is also part of the inaugural Sydney Incubate program, where the idea came about during a technology venture class that was run at the University of Sydney. The team is looking at charging on a subscription basis of AUD$30 (US$31) to AUS$50 (US$52) per month, but full details will be out when the team lists its product for crowdfunding on Kickstarter in the next couple of months.

“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)

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)

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)

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’ve compiled some of the paper’s survey results into the charts below, but it’s probably worth mentioning how this survey was conducted. According to the paper, the People’s Daily Strong Nation web forum in collaboration with the China Mainland Marketing Research Co. surveyed 2,824 “ordinary people” across 28 Chinese cities using a phone system. With that said, some of the questions seem to have been a bit leading. For example, it appears that respondents were not even given the option of saying that their opinion of Apple had increased when responding to the first question.

(Apologies for the small, non-interactive charts; Google Spreadsheets was not being cooperative this morning).

The survey also found that long repairs and high repair prices were among Chinese consumers’ chief complaints about Apple’s after-sales service.

(People’s Daily via Sinocism List)

Dangdang CEO Li Guoqing

It seems Dangdang is mentioned less and less these days in conversations about China’s major e-commerce players. In fact, the most recent time we mentioned the company here at Tech in Asia was to point out that its stock is one of the all-time worst performers in China’s tech sphere. But Dangdang CEO Li Guoqing hopes to turn things around a bit when the company releases a new touchscreen e-reader for the Chinese market this May.

Li announced the device in an interview with DoNews, and although he wouldn’t disclose the price, he did say that it will cost more than the first generation Doukan e-reader the company produced, which retails at 499 RMB ($79). Most of the extra price will be coming courtesy of the parts and R&D costs for the new device’s hybrid touch/e-ink screen. Li says Dangdang plans to sell the device using the pre-order model to help cut down on warehouse costs and the risks of overstocking.

Li told DoNews that the biggest threat to domestic e-readers is Apple, especially in the wake of the release of the iPad Mini. And the patent Apple just filed for a hybrid LCD/e-ink display certainly sounds like it might pose an even greater threat to Dangdang’s newest e-reader, although the Chinese company should have at least a few months before Apple can get something using its new screen onto the market. Of course, there’s always the question of competition coming from e-reader kings Amazon as well, but despite the recent rumors, the China Kindle remains ghostware at this point.

The road ahead for Dangdang looks rough, but with Apple taking a series of body blows from state media over the past month (including the most recent accusation that its app store is full of porn), perhaps the government will weaken China’s appetite for what Li sees as Dangdang’s biggest competitor. Personally, I wouldn’t bet on it, but I could be wrong.

(DoNews via Sina Tech)

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) launched its e-bookstore and e-reading apps in China last December, but there’s still something missing – sales of the actual Kindle hardware. That’s rumored to be changing tomorrow, April 16th, with Amazon thought to be opening pre-orders for the Kindle Paperwhite in China.

Chinese tech blog Huxiu reckons that the date will see the basic Kindle finally rolls out in mainland China – but with no apparent sign of the Android-powered Kindle Fire tablets.

The Kindle e-reader has been on the rumormill in China for years – just as it was in Japan before Amazon’s hardware eventually launched there last October.

Though Amazon is doing fairly well with e-commerce in China – well, it’s surviving anyway – it will, as a foreign company, struggle with regulatory approval for wireless hardware in China. As Bloomberg notes on that previous link, “Wireless devices require at least three layers of regulatory approval in China, including from the state Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.”

Regardless of whether Amazon brings the hardware to Chinese consumers, the US e-tailer has tons of competition in the e-book sector in China, from newer entrants like retail giant Suning and social network Douban, to older adversaries like Shanda and Dangdang. The last two even have their own e-reader products; Dangdang’s is dubbed Doucan, which launched last summer, while Shanda’s Bambook is a long-standing leader in this sector.

After the kerfuffle between Alibaba and Google last summer over an Acer-made phone for Alibaba’s cloud-oriented mobile OS, it’s clear that China’s top homegrown OS cannot partner up with any handset makers that belong to Google’s not very open ‘Open Handset Alliance’. Today’s unveiling of six new Aliyun-powered phones therefore features an abundance of China-brand phone-makers, none of which will be familiar to the average Chinese shopper.

Alibaba’s newly-appointed CEO Jonathan Lu was on hand for the launch event, according to iFanr. The six new models are all budget handsets, ranging from RMB 799 to 1,399 (US$128 to $224) from five domestic brands: G’Five, Amoi, Yusun, ZOPO, and KOMI (pictured below). Nope, not heard of any of those either.

That’s a big problem for Alibaba’s mobile OS, which is up against the myriad appeals of iOS and Android, including popular big-screen phones from the likes of Samsung and more well-known Chinese brands like ZTE and Huawei. There are an estimated 160 million active Android users in China, and 85 million on iPhones.

Today’s event seems to be something of a reboot for Alibaba’s mobile ambitions. Indeed, the branding seems to have changed as well, with the “Aliyun” name ditched in favor of “Alibaba Mobile Operating System” (UPDATED to correct the new name; the “YunOS” name is just the URL. In addition to the name change, Alibaba’s official blog notes four new strategies to get more people onto Alibaba Mobile Operating System:

• A more focused online sales strategy for the phones, using the company’s own Tmall Taobao site, on yun.taobao.com.

• It will subsidize handset makers by paying them an ongoing fee of RMB 1 ($0.16) a month for every phone they sell, providing the phone’s owner remains an active user of the software.

• Alibaba will encourage software developers to build cloud-based applications for the OS through a RMB 1 billion ($160 million) program that will funnel funds to app makers through revenue sharing and other incentives or rewards. Full details will be revealed later.

• It is working with smartphone makers and telecom operators to give financing options to Alibaba Mobile OS phone buyers who sign up for mobile-phone service plans. New phone owners will be vetted via their purchasing history on Alibaba sites.

Alibaba’s own mobile OS launched in the summer of 2011. Aside from revealing one million sales 10 months after launch, it’s not clear how well it’s going. But with China having about 300 million smartphone owners right now, one million is a drop in the ocean. The e-commerce giant will be hoping that its new strategies and greater spread of handset options – along with their ability to run many Android apps via virtualization, sort of like how Blackberry 10 can do so – will give its mobile platform a much-needed boost.

Great news for Apple lovers in the Philippines: today is the day! Finally premium Apple resellers are offering unlocked iPhone 5, iPhone 4, and iPhone 4s — and they’re all official.

This is a great news here in the Philippines. Before today you could buy unlocked iPhones from unauthorized resellers all of which are “grey market” items. This meant that if you found a dent on your phone after opening it, you couldn’t replace it. That’s because part of the risk of buying grey market units is basically waiving your claim to any Apple warranty. And if your choice was to buy an unlocked phone abroad, that also came with its own pains as you cannot claim Apple warranty locally.

So if we wanted to buy an iPhone with a local warranty in the Philippines, we only had two choices: either buy them from Globe or Smart, the local carriers in the country, and both are locked to their respective networks.

The prices of the new unlocked phones, according to Technoodling, are still a bit steep vs. the prices of the gray market imports. However, they’re still quite tolerable if you want peace of mind.

iPhone 5 16 GB = PHP 33,600 (US$ 816)
iPhone 5 32 GB = Php 38,790 (US$ 942)
iPhone 5 64 GB = Php 43,950 (US$ 1,067)
iPhone 4S 16 GB = Php 28,425 (US$ 690)
iPhone 4 8 GB = Php 19,415 (US$ 472)

Source: Technoodling.net

There’s a Xiaomi fan festival going on right now in Beijing. It turned into a surprise product launch with the startup Chinese phone-maker revealed a revamped flagship phone in two new forms: the Xiaomi Mi2A and the more powerful Xiaomi Mi2S (pictured). The specs bump comes just eight months after the Mi2 first launched, and seems designed to bolster its already beefy hardware up against the newly-unveiled Samsung Galaxy S4 and other rivals.

The biggest bump comes on the Xiaomi Mi2S whose 8-megapixel camera is swapped out for a 13-megapixel snapper. The price remains the same as for last year’s flagship: RMB 1,999 (US$319) for the 16GB model, and RMB 2,299 ($367) for 32GB of storage. The cheaper Xiaomi Mi2A is a new variant for those on a budget, costing RMB 1,499 ($239), which is a good price for a totally unlocked quad-core Android-powered smartphone.

At this afternoon’s event, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun confirmed the upcoming Hong Kong and Taiwan launches by saying that they’ll happen in two weeks’ time. Dedicated sales sites at Xiaomi.hk and Xiaomi.tw have been set up but are currently not online.

Xiaomi sold 7.19 million phones in 2012, which was only its first full year of sales. The aim is to double that to 15 million units this year.

The updated phone models, as well as the Xiaomi Box for streaming media to TV sets, will all go on sale on the Xiaomi site this evening in limited numbers.

According to data released by Tokyo-based game magazine publisher Enterbrain (published in The Nikkei over the weekend), the Japanese market for video games grew 1.2 percent to US$4.6 billion in fiscal year 2012 (which ended on March 31, 2013).

Software sales for gaming consoles and handhelds contracted 1.2 percent to $2.8 billion in that time frame.

But hardware sales increased five percent to about $1.8 billion in Japan, thanks to the introduction of the Wii U (well, OK, if the report says so), a new 3DS, and Sony’s recent price cuts for their consoles.

What’s interesting is that while a 1.2 percent plus sounds pretty modest, the overall market for video games in Japan grew for the first time in five years. Enterbrain’s numbers for the first half of fiscal 2012 were already indicating such a trend.

And what’s even more interesting is that even though different data providers use different methods, it looks like the sizes of the video and social gaming markets in Japan are now very similar.

The latest report of note came from Yano Research in January, estimating the social gaming market in Japan was worth $4.3 billion in 2012. Even though that number is closer to $4 billion using today’s exchange rate, that market grew faster between 2011 and 2012 than the one for video games, making the difference not that big anymore.

Zhang Moujun, a 27-year-old employee at a Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, doesn’t sleep very well, so like many others who suffer insomnia, he takes sleeping pills. He told Southern Metropolis Daily that on the night of April 2, he popped a couple extra ones because the regular dosage wasn’t working. Unfortunately, a friend saw him doing it, and reported to the company that he seemed to attempting suicide. He was taken to the hospital where his stomach was pumped. Then, the next day, he was fired.

The termination notice Zhang says he was given by Foxconn reads:

While at work, [Zhang] exhibited the following behaviors or facts: threatening the company, disturbing the normal management of the company.

When contacted by the Southern Metropolis Daily, a Foxconn representative said that the company could not confirm or deny Zhang’s story because the relevant people are on vacation for the Tomb Sweeping Day holiday.

Foxconn (which manufactures Apple and much of the rest of the tech world’s gadgets) has long been dogged by reports of employee suicide. Back in 2010 the company suffered a rash of suicides that brought the company into the public eye. More recently, last week the company was forced to deny rumors of yet another jumping suicide attempt after a report claimed that a female employee had jumped off the roof following a dispute at the company’s Shenzhen complex.

Given that, a cynic might be inclined to suspect that the company is intentionally firing employees who are thought to be considering or have attempted suicide to save itself the bad press. After all, whether or not Zhang really was trying to kill himself, it’s hard to see how that amounts to “threatening the company.” Moreover, it seems like if the company really believed Zhang was depressed enough to be suicidal, firing him is probably not the best way to improve his state of mind.

It will be interesting to see what Foxconn says about this case once the company is back up and running after the break. But if the cynical interpretation of Zhang’s firing proves true, it could cast doubts about whether or not the company has really improved things for workers at all. Perhaps it has just been firing depressed and disgruntled employees before they get a chance to act. I hope that is not the case.

(Southern Metropolis Daily via Sina Tech)

(Image: China Radio International): Nokia’s Shanghai store is now shut, as shown on that small piece of paper taped to the door.

Back on April 1st, Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) announced that it’d be closing its flagship Nokia store in Shanghai. But it was no April Fool’s joke. It’s the latest in a series of shutdowns of the phone-maker’s failing retail storefronts. The Shanghai store is – well, was – its largest remaining shop.

Unfortunately for Nokia, not many people really noticed or cared that the shop is closing. The ‘Nokia Flagship Store SH’ account on Sina Weibo has had only 938 reposts of its “Goodbye Shanghai” post in the past three days. Trending Weibo posts generally get tens of thousands of interactions. But the account only had 4,251 fans anyway.

The Nokia Shanghai store opened in 2007, one of about 10 worldwide. At that time, Nokia was still China’s top phone-maker with its Symbian platform. Then Android and iOS happened. While Symbian still has a surprisingly large user-base in China, all the traction is behind Android, and there’ll be an estimated 300 million active Android users in China by the end of this year. In contrast, Nokia’s stats for 2012 were disastrous in China, with sales down 79 percent throughout the year. Now Nokia is pinning its hopes on the Windows Phone OS, but it’s growing slowly.

In contrast, Apple has three major stores in Shanghai, and has rapidly expanded to have eight Apple Stores in four cities across mainland China.

Nokia’s flagship store on London’s Regent’s Street closed back in 2009.

(Source: Sina Tech – article in Chinese)

Yesterday, we wrote about the rumors spreading in the Chinese tech media that Baidu was working on a Google Glass-like augmented reality headset called “Baidu Eye.” Today, a Baidu representative confirmed to Tech in Asia that Baidu is indeed working on augmented reality glasses, internally codenamed ‘Baidu Eye’, though he stressed that the project is experimental and may not be released as a commercial product. And although the project may appear similar to Google Glass, our source at Baidu sounded unusually confident that Baidu Eye has some features that will stand out as original and innovative.

The Baidu rep also confirmed that “most” of the details reported about ‘Baidu Eye’ are accurate. Yesterday, we reported that the Baidu Eye is worn like glasses, features an LCD display, can recognize images, and is controlled by voice. Of course, since the project is purely experimental at this point, there’s no guarantee that any commercial product Baidu might release in the future would necessarily have those features. But from what we’ve heard, it sounds like the Baidu Eye might have more up its sleeve than anyone is yet aware of. (We asked for specifics, but Baidu is keeping its lips tightly sealed for now).

It’s hard not to speculate about the Baidu Eye, especially given the wealth of information Baidu has at its disposal across its various services. Unfortunately, it sounds like we may still have a while to wait before we learn if the Baidu Eye is ever going to be a commercial product, and if so, what its unique features will be. However, this is obvious a topic we are extremely interested in, so we’re going to keep a close eye on it (and harass our sources at Baidu about it until we can pry out some more details).

(I do hope that the company considers changing the name if it ever launches the project as a commercial product, though. When I hear “Baidu Eye” the first thing that comes to mind is this).

(UPDATED on April 3rd: A Baidu representative confirms to us that this is a genuine – though early – prototype that does indeed have the internal name “Baidu Eye”).

Where Google goes, so too goes Baidu? It certainly seems the company may have been inspired by Google Glass if Sina Tech’s report that the company is working on a new wearable tech product called Baidu Eye (pictured) is correct.

Baidu representatives were “not available” for comment, according to the China Daily. Tech in Asia has also contacted Baidu for comment, and will update this story if we hear back.

Sina’s report cites knowledgeable-but-anonymous sources as saying that the Baidu Eye is worn like glasses, features an LCD display, can recognize images, and is controlled by voice. These features are reportedly already operating properly, but the style and build of the device is apparently still very much in testing (which is good to hear considering the ugly, bulky look being sported in the image above). The company is also still reportedly working with Qualcomm on getting the battery life to 12 hours or above.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Baidu Eye will also be an application platform that third-party developers will be able to develop apps for. More broadly, Baidu apparently is aiming to create a wearable tech platform that companies could take advantage of to release all sorts of wearable technology products.

Sina Tech’s report speculates that if the device’s image recognition (which includes face recognition) works well enough, it could be used to catch wanted criminals simply by walking around. However, my own immediate reaction is that the device, if it ever became widely used, could create huge problems for China’s censorship apparatus (assuming that like Google Glass, it allows users to record and upload images and videos virtually instantaneously).

Still, wide adoption is still a long way away for the device, which hasn’t even been officially announced yet. My guess is that a commercially-available Baidu Eye is still a year or two away — if it’s ever released at all — but I could certainly be wrong. We’ll be following this closely and pestering our friends at Baidu for more info, so stay tuned!

(via Sina Tech)

You might think that a country needs a homegrown mobile OS like a tiger needs a cage, but that’s not how China sees it. That rumbling sound you hear in the distance is the drums of war, and the noises out of Beijing suggest that Chinese authorities are looking to pick a fight with Google (makers of Android) and Apple (creators of iOS). That’s why China’s MIIT has warned against the nation being too dependent on Android, as Google ultimately writes the code and pulls the strings on its kinda-sorta-open-source platform; the same kind of alarm seems to have been raised recently by Chinese state TV over Apple’s business practices in China.

For the government, it’s about pride, autonomy, and national security. There’s an apparent concern about Chinese consumers – and the Chinese tech industry – being so reliant on the two Californian giants.

China has already tried to create its own mobile OS in the form of China Mobile’s OPhone platform, which was a very divergent fork of Android. But it failed, partly – I think – because it was too carrier-dependent, and partly because it didn’t play nicely with the hundreds of thousands of apps in the global Android catalog.

For the nation to have a platform of its own – regardless of the merits of doing so – it needs to go beyond native apps and escape the politics of mobile telcos. It needs Firefox OS. Based on web apps, largely open source, and not tied to any app stores, it opens the door to China creating a ‘homegrown’ OS of its own. Yes, Firefox OS is created by the US-based Mozilla Foundation, but this time it’s a platform that’s much more malleable, very easily forked onto its own path, and not dependent on native apps as the main selling points – that’s because any web app should work.

In the words of ArsTechnica’s new review of Firefox OS, it turns the web into a world-class platform. But it’s still adaptable enough. As recent history has proved, Chinese authorities like to take the “inter” out of “international” – like with the internet and the Great Firewall – so Firefox OS presents an opportunity to build for local consumers and disregard the world. Well, web standards will have to be maintained so that web apps work nicely with Firefox OS, but there won’t be the restraints felt with Android and the attempt at the divergent OPhone – no native apps to cater to; no issues over which handset makers can ship Firefox OS.

It’s China’s mobile OS. Whether Mozilla likes the end result or not.

When China attacks…

Of course, just because Android and Apple have come under great scrutiny at about the same time, it doesn’t mean there’s a concerted smear campaign going on. Make no mistake, authorities do have the power to pull that off. Even though Chinese state broadcaster CCTV was caught apparently paying off a celebrity to bash Apple the same day as the TV company’s exposé of an allegedly shoddy gadget returns policy, it doesn’t necessarily follow that authorities want to scare Chinese consumers away from Android and iOS and onto Chinese alternatives. Because – here we get back to the central theme – what are the alternatives? Seriously, where are they?

No alternatives

Xiaomi’s MIUI looks great, but it’s basically just an Android skin. Same goes for the country’s top search engine – Baidu’s Cloud OS – which is just an Android skin like Samsung’s or HTC’s. The ludicrously hyped Smartison OS that launched this week is just, beneath the bullshit and faux-Apple keynote presentation, Android with a coat of lipstick.

Authorities must surely realise, as I mentioned to ReadWrite recently, that all China’s major web companies and pretty much every startup is dependent on Android and iOS for their mobile strategy. It can wail and rail against foreign companies all it wants, but it needs a strong homegrown alternative to make astute Chinese buyers splash their cash.

China’s top e-commerce company has tried its own platform, but it’s not working out. Though it’s hotly contested if Aliyun OS uses elements of Android – Google says it does – consumers have nonetheless decided that it’s not something they fancy. It does look good, but Aliyun came too late and its hardware lacks the allure of Apple’s crisp iPhones or Samsung’s inviting, huge screens. Because of its supposed use of some Android code, Google can also block any its handset partners from building for Aliyun – just as it did with Asus last year. With Firefox OS, Google has no influence.

We’ll have to wait and see how Firefox OS gets adapted and picked up in China. With 160 million active Android users right now, in China, and 85 million on iPhones and iPads, no amount of state TV attacks and MIIT reports will dissuade China’s smartphone owners. It’s now in the hands of China’s phone-makers – like ZTE and Huawei, Lenovo and CoolPad – to come up with something convincing on top of Firefox OS.

But what later? If China’s tech industry lacks the innovation and R&D strength to make new consumer-oriented platforms, this national crisis of confidence will occur again. Perhaps very soon with Google Glass. What kind of controversy will that cause in China – not so much over privacy, but over the nation having little control over the new wave of wearable computing? If Firefox OS is China’s mobile OS solution, it’s only a temporary one.

With renewed tension and worries over cyberattacks reportedly emanating from state-sponsored entities in China, the new funding bill that passed the US Congress this week has a lot of provisions that ban government IT spending on Chinese technology. These sanctions effectively allow for the banning of buying federal computer and telecoms equipment from entities “owned, directed, or subsidized by the People’s Republic of China”.

This anti-China tech stance was spotted in the 574-page bill by lawyer Stewart A. Baker. TechCrunch notes that he’s the former assistant secretary in the US Department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush. In two posts by Baker (here and here), he unpacks the ramifications of these provisions and the damage they could do to Chinese firms like Lenovo (HKG:0992), ZTE (HKG:0763; SHE:000063), and Huawei. Indeed, Lenovo has previously been unscathed by recent alarm over potential backdoor surveillance in Chinese technology sold to overseas governments, perhaps because Lenovo’s gadgets are largely based on its IBM PC business acquisition.

Lenovo, notes TC’s Catherine Shu, is a major supplier to the US military, NASA, the Department of State, and the Department of Energy, not to mention Lenovo’s growth being dependent on taking market share from Dell and HP in American classrooms and local government offices.

Baker points out that China has played this protectionist game itself in the interests of national security, but Washington could still face World Trade Organisation (WTO) protests from Beijing:

While the provision doesn’t prohibit purchases of Chinese-government-influenced systems, it makes such purchases politically difficult. How will China react? Not well. China has spent years trying to curtail its own purchases of IT from outside its borders, but that won’t stop it from calling the bill protectionist and claiming a violation of US WTO obligations. Legally, China may have trouble making such a claim stick. China has not signed on to the WTO’s government procurement code; it is just an observer.

This bill could affect Chinese-brand PCs and telecoms equipment regardless of where they’re actually manufactured or developed in the world. Baker explains:

But China may not have to make the claim stick in its own right. That’s because the provision doesn’t hit China directly. Instead, it restricts purchases from Chinese-government-influenced entities, no matter where those entities manufacture their products. This means that the provision could prevent purchases of Lenovo computers manufactured in Germany, or Huawei handsets designed in Britain. Both of these countries have joined the WTO government procurement code, which obliges its members not to discriminate against other member countries in procuring data processing software and hardware. This means the US could see WTO challenges to the provision from its own allies (unless they’re so sick of Chinese hacking that they decide to emulate the new provision rather than attack it).

With Chinese cyberattacks allegedly traceable to a unit of its People’s Liberation Army, the nation might have no plausibly persuasive argument for Lenovo, Huawei, et al being trustworthy partners for sensitive tech equipment.

It’s a complex issue emerging from a massive bill, so Baker’s two posts deserve to be read closely to see how the Obama administration might enforce this – and how it might need to issue waivers for equipment that’s desperately needed. Plus, there’s always the risk of Chinese laws being swiftly crafted in retaliation.

(Via: TechCrunch)

The FPT IV smartphone running Android 4.1.2
Image: tinhte.vn

There are 1.4 mobiles for every person in Vietnam, so there’s obviously a thirst for mobile. And in the status-hungry country, the smartphone market is growing strongly. So it makes sense that one of the country’s biggest technology companies, FPT, has set the goal of manufacturing and selling 600,000 smartphones in Vietnam in 2013.

This will be a shift from what FPT was shipping last year, which was centered on feature phones. It will mean that smartphones make up 70 percent of its mobile output.

The newest phone in FPT’s own-brand lineup is the FPT IV, a smartphone that costs 4.45 million VND (US$212), ships with Android 4.1, and is directed at the lower end of the price spectrum, targeting customers that can’t afford iPhones and big-screen Samsungs. Interestingly, it’s Vietnam’s first-ever homegrown quad-core phone.

FPT is also a telco, and does software outsourcing, education, hardware manufacturing, and more. It’s also closely affiliated with the government. It’s a clear indication that the government views the growth of smartphones as essential to Vietnamese economic growth. Also, given the aggressive nature of Vietnamese telecoms into global markets, it’s foreseeable that this could transition into smartphones built for the global market in 2014.

In other news, in addition to the FPT IV and its homegrown Android smartphones, the company is also planning to sell the premium Vertu TI smartphone, which runs Android 4.0. The phone costs 200 million VND – that’s over $9,500. Why anyone would pay that much for a phone with an outdated mobile operating system beats me. Oh wait, it’s Vietnam, where people buy $1.4 million cars just because they can.

(Sources: Vietnam Investment Review and Tinh Te)

Here’s what the thing looks like plugged in in front of a big HDTV.

A closer shot of the plugged-in Xiaomi TV.

A selection of streaming movie options from iCN TV, including Painted Skin 2 and some older films.

A close-up of the screen during HD streaming from the web. Not bad!

You can also connect a USB thumb drive to the Xiaomi TV box, and even stream content to other devices locally via DLNA.

Setting up local streaming for a dubious digital copy of Django Unchained. Looks like the Xiaomi TV could be a nice way to play pirated films, too.

The settings menu.

There’s not really much here we didn’t already know about, but it’s still interesting to see the box finally in action in the wild. Does this look like the sort of thing you’d buy?

(Sohu Digital via TechWeb)

It’s hard not to be reminded of Xiaomi, given that Xiaomi has been using limited preorders as a sales tactic for years and recently did a round of sales via Weibo, but it’s worth pointing out that LeTV was actually in the set-top box game well before Xiaomi with products like the LeTV T1. In fact, the C1S is quite similar to LeTV’s previous outings: it supports up to 1080p and can do HD, it runs on an Android-based OS, and the technical specs are pretty similar. What isn’t similar is the price. The C1S free.

The reason for the low price is that LeTV is moving towards a paid services model where the hardware is provided to customers for free and then they are charged subscription fees for services. The base service price is 490 RMB ($75) per year and it’s not going to be possible to get a C1S without subscribing to at least a half year of service, but it’s likely that LeTV will also offer additional services for extra fees on top of its basic service as time goes on.

Separately, the company has reportedly signed an agreement with Foxconn that would see the Taiwanese manufacturer producing LeTV’s Super TV in addition to the C1S. The agreement also prevents Foxconn from working with competitors on similar products.

(via Sina Tech)

China’s Shanda has made e-readers for years, and launched an Android-based smartphone last year. Its next hardware venture will be much smaller and actually wearable – a smart watch. According to Chinese media reports this week, it’ll be called the Bambook Smart Watch and will run the open source Firefox OS.

The leaked picture above, spotted via Technode, is said to be the actual Bambook Smart Watch, and it’ll launch in June. Running Mozilla’s Firefox OS – which will also be adopted by a number of Chinese smartphone makers, like Huawei and ZTE – the wearable device will run HTML5 web apps, negating any dependence on things like Android native apps. Though reports suggest the device will also support Android will be available as a separate version for Android (and thanks to Engadget’s Richard Lai for pointing out that detail).

As well as using the Bambook name that’s so familiar to Chinese gadget buyers, Shanda’s smart watch will use the kind of color e-ink display (1) that has been put into service on its e-readers, but there are no hardware specs available yet.

The Bambook Smart Watch looks to be arriving at an opportune time when no other major Chinese hardware makers have entered the space. Shanda, as one of China’s largest software, hardware, and gaming companies, already has the distribution channels to promote and sell this well. Plus, it’ll benefit from the perpetual and very dubious hype surrounding “rumors” (2) of an Apple iWatch. There are other such watches from Sony and Pebble, but they’ll likely never properly support Chinese web services and so will not catch on in China.

Speaking of web services, Shanda has plenty of its own that could make the Bambook Smart Watch a compelling buy – imagine if the watch could read aloud your Bambook-purchased e-books, sync your Shanda MKnote reminders, whilst giving you updates on how your gaming buddies are performing on your favorite Shanda MMO game. We’ll have to wait until June to see just how smart the watch will be.

(Source: Techweb – article in Chinese; hat-tip to Technode for spotting this)

The Xiaomi Box for streaming content to TVs.

After a delay of several months caused by China’s media regulator, the stream-to-TV Xiaomi Box is finally available for pre-order online, costing US$63 in general, or just $48 for previous buyers of its phones. It marks the arrival of the young Chinese company’s second product line after the success of its Android-based Xiaomi phones, of which over seven million were sold in 2012.

Today, an initial batch of 10,000 Xiaomi Box units were available for pre-order. But the device – which is comparable to the Apple TV except that it runs a version of Android – is not available nationwide, and for some reason is shipping only to three Chinese cities: Shanghai, Changsha, and Hangzhou. You’ll need to provide a shipping address in one of those cities in order to snag one. The devices will ship on April 9th.

All 10,000 have been snapped up, so the Xiaomi Box homepage remains inert until the next batch comes up for pre-order on March 26th. Xiaomi founder Lei Jun recently explained that “the supply of Xiaomi phones doesn’t meet the demand,” and it’ll likely be the same with its new set-top box. So you can expect more fitful releases in limited numbers for the Xiaomi Box, even after its proper launch next month.

(Source: IT168 – article in Chinese)

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has just expanded its retail channels in China by opening up a store within Tmall, China’s top B2C e-commerce site. Microsoft already has a standalone online store for China, but the company has joined many other brands in having a virtual storefront on Tmall as well – along with the likes of Pepsi and even Lamborghini.

The new e-shop is at Microsoftstore.tmall.com and sells the Surface tablets, phones, accessories, and boxed software. But the main focus seems to be on mobile. It’s not just Microsoft’s own products that are on show – the Windows Phone-powered Nokia Lumia 920 is being heavily promoted too. Confusingly, Microsoft has a pre-existing store on Tmall (here) that focuses on Windows PCs and software (yes, software again). Surely it would’ve made more sense to consolidate the two.

Daniel Zhang, president of Tmall, said during today’s launch that “Chinese consumers (…) are increasingly making purchase decisions based on experience, value, and service quality.” That apparently makes it important for major brands to go closer to where customers shop rather than relying on a standalone e-store. The new site will also enable consumers to pre-order and place deposits on products new to the market.

Up against iPhones, iPads, and a wide variety of Android devices, Microsoft has struggled to have any impact in the mobile segment. Microsoft’s newest Windows Phone 8 (WP8) platform arrived in China in December, and a few months earlier the Windows 8-powered Surface RT was met with a keen queue of buyers. But a research firm says that the Redmond company saw dismal fourth quarter 2012 Surface RT shipments of just 30,000 units.

We’re even selling Xiaomi brand shoes; everyone thinks we’re being a little crazy. But we mostly sell what the users want; our model is different from other companies, we’re starting an e-commerce company.

Confused yet? Us too, but Xiaomi VP of technology Li Moqiang shed a little more light on Xiaomi’s strategy when he told TechWeb that the company was planning to work on smart shoes in the future. He says the shoes will be able to link up with your Xiaomi phone to measure things like steps taken, the wearers’ heart rate, and more, which could then presumably be fed into any number of health and exercise apps. He also promised the shoes would be up to par with Xiaomi’s traditional price-to-quality ratio.

If that still sounds a little crazy, it shouldn’t — wearable tech and the internet of things seem destined to be the buzzwords of this year and years to come. If Google is about to start selling its cyborg glasses, why shouldn’t Xiaomi make smart shoes? The company seems to be trying to set itself up as an integrated technology brand that might one day integrate with every part of your life from what you watch on TV to what clothes you wear.

Don’t get out your wallets just yet though, because the shoes pictured above are not smart shoes, they’re just regular old canvas ones. The Xiaomi smart shoes Li describes are coming at some undetermined point in the future, so if you’re in the market for wearable tech from Xiaomi, you’ll have to wait at least a little bit longer.

(via TechWeb)

Now that the new Samsung Galaxy S4 is out, let’s take a quick look at what could be the world’s next best-selling smartphone – with some help from this Samsung infographic. According to the Guardian, the Galaxy S4 will eventually reach 327 mobile operators in 125 countries. Here are some feature highlights:

S Translator - Provides instant translation, using text or voice translation on applications including email, text message, and ChatON (Samsung’s answer to Line and KakaoTalk).

‘Smart Pause’ and ‘Smart Scroll’ - Basically it’s an eye control sensor so that a video stops if you look away, or the webpage will shift in sync with your eye movements.

Better photo features - Equipped with a 13 megapixel rear camera, the new Galaxy S4 allows you to add frames in photos, and blend photos (with some built-in design options). You can also record voice and sound within the picture.

Find the full Galaxy S4 specs here or check out the review by The Verge team which suggests that the eye-tracking feature is mostly a gimmick. Here are the specs in infographic form:

Source: Samsung Tomorrow

China’s Xiaomi has proven itself to be pretty great at selling phones, but the company surprised a lot of people when it announced it would be selling a set-top box last fall. Unfortunately, shortly after that announcement came the news that the box wouldn’t be going on sale after all as it had run afoul of China’s rather strict regulations about television. Now, according to a Sina Tech report, the device is finally back in business and is head for its first limited sales on April 9th.

Insiders told Sina Tech that the device had been formally approved for sale, and that it will go on sale for the first time on April 9th, a day Xiaomi has designated “Mi Fans day” and on which it will also be selling its smartphones. That sale is likely to be quite limited, however, and it’s not clear when the box might be available for sale again after that.

The real question, though, is whether or not the service has been weakened as a result of the regulatory intervention. By law, Xiaomi was forced to partner with one of a few state-approved operators for online TV, and the company went with CNTV, CCTV’s online arm. It’s not yet clear what the effect on content has been, but an insider told Sina Tech that Sohu’s video content had disappeared from the platform but other video content like Tencent’s video library was still accessible. Music features like Douban also appeared to still be available, but we’ll probably have to wait until April to be sure of what the final picture looks like.

We have contacted Xiaomi for comment on this story and will update this post when we hear back.

(via Sina Tech)

Nokia Indonesia country manager Martin Chirotarrab winning one of the awards at Selular Awards 2013.
Credit: News.Viva.co.id

Indonesian gadget news site Selular ¹ held its annual gadget prize ceremony, the Selular Awards 2013, on Friday night. Three of Samsung’s four awards that night came from its flagship phone, the Galaxy SIII. It was crowned the best smartphone and the phone of the year.

Although 2012 was mostly a quiet year for Blackberry, the brand’s Bellagio 9790 was still able to secure the best messaging phone title. Local handset manufacturer Cross Mobile wins the local handset brand battleground based on the awards.

Here are a some of the winning awards in the handset category:

• Best entertainment phone: Sony Xperia Acro S
• Best camera phone: Nokia Lumia 920
• Best smartphone: Samsung Galaxy SIII
• Best messaging phone: BlackBerry 9790 Bellagio
• Best design phone: TiPhone T20
• Best tablet: Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
• Best touchscreen phone: HTC One X+
• Best android phone: Samsung Galaxy SIII
• Best local brand: Cross Mobile
• Best valuable phone: Smartfren Andromax-i
• Phone of the year: Samsung Galaxy S III
• Best tablet local: Axioo PicoPad 7 3G
• Best local Android phone: Pixcom Andro Note II

With the Samsung Galaxy SIII winning the hearts and minds of many Indonesian critics, will there still be enough room for the upcoming Blackberry Z10 to regain its dominance? If the answer is no, then surely it’s only a matter of time until BBM falls out of favor as well.

Elsewhere, the largest Indonesian telco Telkomsel dominated the operator category by winning five out of ten of its subcategories. TokoBagus’ app won the online shop app subcategory, and Inspira Solusi Indonesia’s Soccer Ticker app (which also won the Blackberry JamHack Asia event recently) was crowned as the best local mobile app at the ceremony.

For a full list of the Selular Awards 2013 recipients, you can take a look here.

(Source: Detik)

These days on the subway in Shanghai, I seem to see more people stretching their palms around a massive Samsung Galaxy Note 2 or a Galaxy SIII than clutching iPhones. So I’m not too surprised to learn that Samsung (005930:KS) has maintained its domination in China, selling – according to a new report from Strategy Analytics – 30.06 million smartphones in China last year. That’s three-times higher than it managed (10.90 million units) back in 2011.

The report adds – in Yonhap, via TheNextWeb – that Samsung’s market share in China is now up to 17.7 percent, a rise of 5.3 percentage points from the previous year. That’s in a smartphone landscape where about 210 million were sold in 2012.

Strategy Analytics has only bad news for Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK), where its aging Symbian phones and fledgling Windows Phone devices resulted in another huge net loss in users. Nokia is now said to be China’s seventh-largest phone-maker with just 3.7 percent market share (calamitously down from 29.9 percent in 2011).

In the same data, Lenovo is second with 13.2 percent share, a rise of four percentage points. Apple is third (11 percent), then Huawei, and the very uncool Coolpad is in fifth spot.

We’d point out that new rivals emerge all the time. The young phone-maker Xiaomi sold 7.1 million smartphones in 2012 and plans to sell 15 million this year. That could take a sizeable chunk from Samsung.

As we noted last month, Lenovo is gunning to outsell Samsung in China, its home nation, this year. Could this be the end of the Samsung’s Galaxy series’ reign in China?

(Source: Yonhap; via TheNextWeb)

We know that the rookie phone-maker Xiaomi sold 7.19 million smartphones in 2012, so how about 2013? According to founder Lei Jun, Xiaomi will mark its second-ever full year in the phone biz by more than doubling that number to 15 million.

Xiaomi investor Hans Tung – a partner at Qiming Venture Partners, who put funds into the fledgling phone-maker in 2011 – also revealed last week that Xiaomi is working on a 10 percent profit margin. Indeed, the startup company is always aggressive on hardware pricing, and its flagship Android-powered Xiaomi Mi2 sells for just RMB 1,999 (US$318).

The investor’s comment suggests that Xiaomi’s claimed 2012 sales revenues of 12.6 billion RMB ($2 billion) equated to nearly $200 million in net profit for the whole of last year.

Xiaomi’s sales this year will be heading outside of mainland China for the first time, necessitating a greater production volume. Next month, Xiaomi will launch official online sales channels for Android fans in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

(Source: Sohu IT (article in Chinese), via Marbridge Daily)

(UPDATED: We updated the company’s name to S Nexian.)

Indonesian handset manufacturer S Nexian launched six new devices yesterday: three feature phones, two low-end smartphones, and the one I think is most interesting – an 8-inch Android tablet called S Nexian 8Mini. The tablet focuses on bringing nice hardware, strong specifications, and an affordable price to local gadget lovers. The only sacrifice is a very limited camera.

The S Nexian 8Mini comes with a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and 1GB RAM. The device is pre-installed with Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) with 8GB of storage that’s expandable to 32GB. The screen’s resolution is similar to the iPad Mini’s 1,024 x 768. Its dual-camera only shoots at 2MP in the back and VGA in the front.

S Nexian representatives took quite some time to talk about the tablet’s hardware. It’s built as thin as Google’s Nexus 7 – around 10mm. The tablet also uses the same metal material that iPad uses on its back. And I have to admit, people can fall in love with the tablet’s clean design.

The 8Mini also has an interesting internet offer, through a partnership with Indonesian telco Indosat. The tablet will be able to access wi-fi points installed by Indosat which are now at more than 5,000 locations throughout the country and more of them are still to come. Every purchase of an 8Mini will also come with a free OTG cable which enables people to insert USBs, including modem devices.

How much is it? IDR 1.5 million (US$155), which is around 50 percent less than a Nexus 7 in Indonesia. That’s quite affordable and I couldn’t find any other weak points besides its cameras for that price point. And I echo S Nexian director Izak Jenie’s remarks that the tablets can be appealing for parents looking for a secondary tablet device that can be given to their children.

S Nexian has also tied an exclusive cooperation with online shop Lazada Indonesia which grants the Rocket Internet company exclusive sales of the S Nexian 8Mini. Not even S Nexian’s gadget retail stores, Selular Shop, will sell the tablets offline. But I imagine people can still purchase those tablets online through Selular.

You can check more information about the tablet here.

S Nexian is gunning for the top spot

S Nexian also rebranded itself during the press conference. They will no longer use the previous bright green colors, instead it is now choosing grey (pictured right). Izak explained that thanks to Apple the color is now being perceived as a luxury and they are using it as they seek to compete with the top handset makers in the world.

S Nexian CEO Harijadi Prawirotomo hopes that they can claim the number one spot in Indonesia by 2015. One of the game changers might come early this year between Q2 to Q3 when S Nexian launches an affordable quad-core device. Harijadi believes that to appeal to the middle and low budget buyers in the country they will need to push their products’ price points to under IDR 2 million ($207). He did not disclose any more details about the upcoming quad-core device, and did not confirm if it will be priced under the aforementioned $207 point.

They also plan to be more aggressive by launching around four new products every month. This year S Nexian hopes to sell 750,000 smartphones and 250,000 tablets.

Affordable Android phones with specifications and price points attractive enough for middle-class consumers in Indonesia are starting to emerge. Last month we looked at another affordable Android handset from local handset manufacturer and telco, the Smartfren Andromax-u.

Android handsets for the lower-end market also keep on improving with better specifications. And just like what’s happening in China, budget phones will be the ones that dominate the market, not expensive ones like the Samsung Galaxy SIII.

The China division of the market research firm IDC has said that Chinese consumers snapped up a grand total of 213 million smartphones in 2012 as a whole – representing 73.2 percent of all mobiles sold in the country. That smartphone stat is up 112.1 percent on 2011, showing that China’s shift to smartphones like Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone is now moving at top speed.

Though China has over a billion mobile subscriptions – though that doesn’t equate to the same amount of people – mobile sales overall still grew 135 percent from 2011 to 2012, so that 362 million new mobiles were sold last year. That’s a lot of old phones being replaced.

IDC also looked at just the final quarter of 2012 to find that 96 million mobiles were sold in Q4 alone.

Today’s smartphone numbers – these all being estimates – differ somewhat from the recent Digitimes figures stating that 189 million smartphones were sold in China in the past year – with as many as 86 percent of those being Android-powered. Little wonder that China’s tech ministry is worried about Google having undue influence over the nation’s smartphone landscape.

While you’re thinking of Chinese smartphone buyers, you might be wondering which brands they prefer to buy. According to recent Gartner data, Apple has slipped to sixth in China, while Samsung is up top, fending off strong challenges from a host of Chinese-made phones.

(Source: Xinhua, via Sinocism newsletter)

As with recent stats from Animoca for its native Hong Kong, the smartphone landscape in Singapore is dominated by Samsung. The top five Android phones observed in Singapore are all Samsung models, with the lead four all being big-screen models. It’s not a total whitewash, as Sony and HTC get a look-in as well. Here’s the top ten in full:

Good news for all app developers is that this mature market is keen on the latest software as well, with versions of Android 4.0 and 4.1 on 52.8 percent of all those phones. But there are still plenty of older – or budget – phones in use, with 16.5 percent of Singaporeans on Android 2.3.6. However, Hong Kongers are more on the cutting edge, where 58 percent are rocking Android 4.0+.

(Image: saransays.com)

By some estimates, India’s middle class consists of 250 to 300 million people. That’s just a few million below China’s middle-income demographic numbers, so Apple simply cannot neglect India. Having only sold about 500,000 iPhones in India last year (and half of those just in the last quarter), that’s slim pickings compared to Apple’s over two million iPhone 5 sales in China alone. Apple’s shown a strong interest in China with Tim Cook going to Beijing last month.

For 2013, according to mobile research firm Canalys, Apple is looking at ramping up its partnerships with Indian distributors like Ingram Micro and Reddington, playing nice with payment plans, and doing more marketing. The company also opened sales of Apple TV, and started up the India iTunes Store this month. Basically, making it much easier for consumers to know that Apple is accessible. But there’s no Apple Store in Mumbai, the country’s biggest city, in contrast to the two in Beijing.

The problem is, Android is cheap for low-end models. And cheap is where the growth is in India. As we noted last week, Indian Android fans love Samsung handsets, but the smaller and cheaper models are more popular. Realistically, India’s middle class numbers indicate nothing, because the purchasing power parity income is around $3,608. A software engineer in India can barely afford an iPhone, which runs well over $800.

By October 2012, Android owns India with over 50 percent of the smartphone market, whereas iOS is at a low five percent.

With rumors of Apple’s cheap iPhone dying out, it’s pretty clear that Apple needs to capture the hearts and minds of luxury-product buying Indians before it’s too late. With Android having already caught up to iOS in terms of features, apps, and power, it’s not looking good.

So, when are we going to see Tim Cook in Mumbai?

(Source: ZDNet)

The new Huawei Ascend P2 revealed today at MWC 2013 (Image: Engadget)

Chinese phone-maker Huawei unveiled its new Ascend P2 today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Then Huawei revealed some of its 2012 numbers in a press release. Of 52 million handsets shipped in 2012, 32 million were smartphones, an increase of 60 percent on the previous year.

In terms of financials, which also covers the company’s under-scrutiny telecoms business, Huawei saw US$7.5 billion in sales revenue in 2012 as a whole, up 10 percent from the previous year.

The new Ascend P2 runs Android 4.1 (not the latest 4.2) and has a 720p 4.7-inch Gorilla Glass 2 screen. It marks Huawei’s second year using the ‘Ascend’ name for its premium smartphones, which include the 6.1-inch screen of the Ascend Mate which is designed as a challenger to the popular palm-stretcher that is the Samsung Galaxy Note 2.

Earlier this month, Canalys observed that Huawei is now the world’s third-largest phone-maker, behind Samsung and Apple and only just ahead of compatriot rival ZTE.

Huawei’s recent financial report noted that the company sees 66 percent of revenues coming from outside China – mostly from Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Earlier today we looked at statistics from game developer Animoca that show the Samsung Galaxy range of phones totally dominating in India. While that’s not quite the case in Hong Kong, the same research reveals that eight of the top 10 Android phones observed on Animoca’s games in Hong Kong were made by Samsung.

The only two interlopers were smartphones made by Sony, with the Xperia Arc S being the sixth most popular phone in this survey. But on the whole, Samsung’s big-screen phones are performing well in Hong Kong, led by the sizeable Samsung Galaxy Note 2 as the Android market leader. The newest Samsung Galaxy S3 hasn’t quite surpassed its predecessor, the S2 (see table below). As a whole, the Galaxy S series have racked up over 100 million in sales, and Hong Kong is clearly one of the developed markets where consumers want high-end new smartphones.

Hong Kongers’ desire to be on the cutting-edge is shown by the versions of Android OS that are being used. On Animoca’s gaming platform, the developers found that most Hong Kong mobile gamers – a full 21.2 percent – are on Android 4.1.1 (jelly bean) right now; a further 19.3 percent are on Android 4.0.4. The game developer says that these statistics show that companies making apps and mobile services need to look carefully at particular markets and not just think of averages across Asia; that’s because countries where consumers opt for older and cheaper phones (like India or the Philippines) can really skew the data and cause you to underestimate the demands of customers in more developed markets.

Here are the top 10 phones in Hong Kong in this study, which took place from January 15th to February 15th:

(Image: HongKongHustle)

We’ve all seen the big-screen Samsung Galaxy Note 2 or SIII phones being clutched in one uncomfortably stretched palm, but India’s Android market reveals that the smaller and cheaper Samsung Galaxy devices are actually more popular. Indeed, in new statistics released by game developer Animoca, they observed that every single one of India’s top 10 Android phones carry the Samsung Galaxy brand – and that the top one is a budget phone with a mere three-inch screen.

An Animoca representative explains to us that this this is from a sample base of 500,000 Indian gamers on the developer’s many titles, such as Pretty Pet Salon. It’s great news for Samsung (KRX:005930), whose budget Galaxy Y phone (pictured) is far and away the most popular Android phone in India.

Of course, this doesn’t equate with sales in India, but statistics from these kinds of mobile platforms often give a good picture of what folks are using. I asked Animoca’s Matt McAllister if these stats (see the full top 10 below) might be skewed towards younger gamers, and he responded:

Yes, the demographic is mobile gamers, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a younger demographic. Animoca publishes over 300 games that attract many different audiences, so I’d say it’s fairly representative of the overall populations at large.

There are plenty of other budget Android phones in India, such as the fairly powerful Micromax A85, so Samsung might soon find its dominance weakened by telcos shipping cheap phones from such Chinese OEMs.

The game startup says that the most popular Android OS version in India is Android 2.3.6 (gingerbread) with 39.1 percent market share, which proves that cheaper phones – which often come with outdated software – rule the roost. But, more promisingly, Android 4.0.4 (ice-cream sandwich) is next up, with 17.9 percent share.

Here’s the phone list:

Stay tuned for stats later today from Animoca for their native Hong Kong as well.

RiTeng was also found to be responsible for noise pollution and other environmental infractions, and as a result environmental authorities have shut down some aspects of its production in addition to fining the company.

Readers with a sharp memory may recall the name RiTeng from back in 2011, when an explosion at the company injured 57 workers during a trial production run of Apple’s iPad 2. It’s clear that a few years later, RiTeng hasn’t quite worked out the kinks, and the promise on its website to provide “world-class green [environmentally friendly] products” hasn’t exactly been fulfilled yet.

It’s not clear whether the partial shutdown will affect production of any of the devices RiTeng provides supplies for, but the spill comes at a particularly bad time for the company in terms of PR, as Sina Weibo is currently in the midst of a high-profile clean rivers campaign.

(via Xinhua, image via Engadget)

A clip from a TV report about the hidden cameras

Spring Festival is usually a time of celebration, but this year it was also a time of embarrassment for some government officials in Hunan province. According to a Xinhua report, local governments across the province used webcams and other small “pinhole” cameras to secretly record lazy government cadres sleeping, playing browser games, and watching online videos during work hours. The secretly-recorded videos were edited together as part of a new propaganda production on how officials should behave, and there are already calls for some more permanent form of supervision to keep officials from wasting time at work.

The proliferation of the internet in China has made work faster and easier in many ways, but it also provides ample opportunities for time-wasting. Many popular games and videos can be played from any computer with a connection, and at a job I once held working for a state-owned company in China it was not at all unusual to see employees casually watching soaps on Youku or playing browser games in the middle of a work day.

This, of course, is a problem that employers everywhere face, but Hunan’s new movement to stamp out laziness in government workers could prove to be a strong deterrent if the officials caught wasting time are actually punished in a meaningful way. Web cameras and other recording devices are almost everywhere now; in cities, many Chinese people are carrying phones capable of recording HD video. If Hunan’s approach catches on, being a lazy official could become an awful lot harder to get away with.

That’s a good thing, and in fact, I’d like to suggest that Hunan and other provinces take things a step further by setting up web cams with publicly-accessible feeds in government offices so that the people can observe what public servants are doing with their tax dollars. Surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to set up a dedicated site, or perhaps a streaming partnership with a web video company, that users could log on to and watch over government offices. Call it crowdsourced supervision.

In fact, perhaps these web feeds could also be accompanied by a button that, when clicked, would sound a loud klaxon alarm in the office to wake up anyone who was sleeping. I’m sure that internet trolls would abuse that kind of system mercilessly, but you have to admit, it would resolve the problem of officials sleeping on the job!

OK, that’s not a realistic suggestion, and although it would be technically possible, I doubt many local governments would ever make public feeds of their offices available online either. Still, they really should consider it. In addition to cutting down on time-stealing, it would also be a great step forward in the direction of government transparency and it could even help cut down on corruption (although most of that happens outside the office).

The technology is there; all that’s needed is a government with the guts and vision to implement it. Someday, I hope I’ll be able to go online and waste time during my workday by supervising local government officials online.

(Xinhua via QQ Games)

Credit: ibnlive.in.com

While it is now confirmed that the Blackberry Z10 will be widely available in Indonesia at the end of March, there are a few die-hard fans who are not willing to wait that long. So much so that they’re willing to splash out a few more million rupiahs to get their hands on the Z10 about one month earlier than the rest. The technically illegal importation of unreleased, popular handsets is leaving people to wonder if they should wait for one more month or just buy a smuggled Z10 right now.

There have been numerous people selling the Blackberry Z10 illegally through several online marketplaces like Kaskus and TokoBagus. Detik cited a Telkomsel representative last month as saying that the unlocked Z10 will likely be sold via legal channels, upon its launch, at a similar price as the Samsung Galaxy S3, which is about IDR 6.9 million (US$714). But the illegal market is taking a huge chunk of profit by selling the phone at the moment for between IDR 10 million to IDR 15 million ($1,034 to $1,551). That is a 40 percent mark up from the probable retail price open the official launch in the country.

It seems like a handful of the sellers got their Blackberry Z10s from the United Arab Emirates. While some of the vendors disclosed that the merchandises are from UAE, a few of them only mentioned that the phones still have warranties from distributors like Berrindo, Wii, and Qtel. While some other Z10s made their way from Singapore, branding a two year warranty from Immotech.

Another Detik report quoted one of the black market sellers on Friday as saying that the illegal handsets are selling like hot cakes, particularly in Batam city. The illegal pricing might drop this Thursday as Indonesians will have a easier access to smuggle the handsets more openly from next door neighbor Singapore.

(Via Detik)

I’m not gonna lie. When I was in middle school in the States, Tamagotchi was the coolest thing. It was either Pogs or Tamagotchi. My classmates and I would carry the little plastic nuggets in our pockets every day: feeding it, petting it, playing games with it, and making sure it didn’t die like a real pet. Tamagotchi and anime were the biggest things to hit America from Japan in the late 1990s, so hearing it come back in the early 2010s to Android, launching just yesterday, sends waves of nostalgia through my body.

For those not in the know, Tamagotchi was a digital pet that you could fit into your pocket (pictured right) and was sold by Bandai in 1996. It was a huge toy craze in the late 90’s by. At the height of its popularity, schools were banning it because kids had to take care of the pet all day long lest the cyber creature die of starvation. As of 2010, Bandai had sold over 78 million of the little toys. It was one of the most addictive and distracting electronic toys before Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone.

These days, California-based Sync Beatz has licensed the brand from Japan’s Bandai, and newly released it for the smartphone age as Tamagotchi L.I.F.E. (meaning ‘love is fun everywhere’) for Android. Bandai has released a different Android app in the past. Think of it as a sort of 90s throwback and tribute. You would think this has got tons of potential in the age of smartphones that have CPUs more powerful than Apollo 13 and can handle graphics-heavy games like Max Payne. Alas, the little virtual pet isn’t just retro, it’s outdated.

The app opens with a triumphant 8-bit game soundtrack, reminiscent of Pokemon (you’ll want to lower your phone’s volume levels before proceeding). The graphics for the pet are basic pixels like the old version, so how do they expect to compete with all the other graphic-rich games in the Google Play store? Also, the app often notifies users with “Tamagotchi is calling you” but doesn’t say exactly what for. Should I feed it? Should I play with it?

On the other hand, there are a few added features that make the app slightly better than the device of yesteryear. Players don’t have to stick to the old three-button view and can tap on specific activities with the pet to do things like ‘rock paper scissors’ and feeding. There’s also Facebook integration, which allows players to share pictures of their pet to their friends.

Sync Beatz plans to update the app every two months to add features and bringing the app to iOS. The app is free with ads or costs US$0.99 for no ads.

Question is, will this appeal to kids of the 21st century? I don’t think so. The graphics alone, though cute, will be a killer for Tamagotchi L.I.F.E. Also, virtual pets have evolved in leaps and bounds since the late 1990s, not just in graphics. From Zynga’s PetVille where players could decorate a pet’s sophisticated house with furniture and clothing, to this list of Android’s leading virtual pet games where your digital pets can go fishing, maintain crops, and interact with friends. So I don’t think Bandai’s got a chance. Users want geo-location, interacting with friends, more complex puzzle games, and beautiful graphics. Kids these days have a much higher bar for games – so rehashing old games just isn’t enough.

You can download the Tamagotchi L.I.F.E. at the Google Play Store here.

Written in collaboration from my colleague, Youshen Lim.

One iWatch mockup

If you follow tech you’ve probably had a hard time not noticing that the world is presently overflowing with rumors that Apple is working on some kind of smart watch that will probably be called the iWatch because why not. The watch reportedly will feature a curved glass screen, and would probably have FaceTime and Siri so that users get to spend the maximum amount of time talking to their wrists while in public.

Following the New York Times piece that kicked off this madness, there has also been quite a lot of blowback and people suggesting that they’re not interested in such a device and would never buy one (I would count myself among them). And many have also pointed out that Apple is just experimenting with a curved-glass watch — the company likely experiments with a lot of products that never see the light of day.

With that said, I know at least one place where the iWatch could potentially make an awful lot of money: China.

I don’t think that China’s hip, tech-savvy youth would be any more interested in an iWatch than techies are in any other country, but the country’s bureaucrats and businessmen would have a field day with it. Remember “Watch Brother”? Watches are the favorite fashion accessory of corrupt officials nationwide, and an Apple watch — if it’s expensive enough — shows off your money and your “hip” tech attitude like nothing else.

As we’ve said before on this site when writing about iPhones, China’s luxury shoppers like tech products that can double as status symbols, which means people need to be able to see them. That’s one reason iDevices sell better than Apple laptops in China; you can’t really take out your MacBook on the subway. An iWatch, then, is the ultimate Apple status symbol: it’s constantly on display for the public to see, unlike a phone which often hides in your pocket. And just imagine the kind of attention you’ll get when you start talking to your wrist — saying very important-sounding things, of course — in public.

I’m being a bit flip, but there is truth to this. Many of China’s luxury buyers like showing off their wealth, and it’s hard to imagine a tech device that would be more publicly visible than a smart watch. Moreover, even Apple releases that Chinese web users claim not to be interested in (like the iPhone 4S) seem to sell extremely well. The idea of an iWatch may be uncreative and a bit ugly, but I have no doubt that such a device would still sell well in China. And since we know China is hugely important to Apple’s future, it isn’t out of the question that Apple really would be considering releasing such a device.

To be clear, I don’t expect to see an iWatch anytime soon. I think what an iWatch might generate in revenue would be offset in what Apple lost in “cool” factor and brand perception. But just for the record, if Apple really is headed in that direction, expect it to do well in the Middle Kingdom.

Just because Chinese consumers love your smartphones, it doesn’t mean they like your mobile ecosystem. In fact, they more than likely hate it. That’s the conclusion that can be drawn from the fact that about 42 percent of Apple iPhones and iPads in China are jailbroken, allowing users to tweak their gadgets in ways that are not sanctioned by Apple – and to install pirated apps. To serve all those iOS jailbreakers, there are plenty of Chinese sites and tools out there, ranging from iTunes alternatives to forums full of cracked iPhone and iPad apps.

Let’s take a look [1] at five popular jailbreaking sites to see what Chinese consumers are looking to get from their renegade iOS devices.

1. KuaiYong

Most controversial of all is KuaiYong, which is some sort of alternative universe iTunes app where all apps are free. Even more worryingly for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), KuaiYong requires no jailbreak to work. The first beta launched back in June 2012, but it’s only in the last month or two that this piracy-oriented app has gained both local and international attention.

But it doesn’t stop there. As we reported a couple of weeks ago, KuaiYong is planning to expand upon its claimed five million Chinese users by launching an English-language version of its Windows app, which is still in development. With the demise of Hackulous and its Installous app for supporting cracked apps on jailbroken iOS devices, KuaiYong could yet prove even more popular.

2. iTools

If you want to jailbreak your iOS device and find a replacement for Apple’s iTunes, then the Shenzhen-made iTools is what you need. Since we looked at iTools’ range of features back in 2011, the app has added an English interface as well as a Mac app.

We often see Chinese web companies offer their iOS apps as direct ‘.ipa’ file downloads – said to be a factor in Qihoo’s ongoing apps ban by Apple – so something like iTools would be useful for Chinese consumers who prefer to avoid the iTunes ecosystem completely.

While iTools itself could help cheapskates to pirate iOS apps, the service itself isn’t geared towards that, and there’s no dodgy app store within it. Instead, the emphasis is on an alternative back-ups tool to iTunes.

iTools has some major partnerships with the likes of Tencent (China’s biggest web company), China Unicom (Apple’s primary mobile partner in the country), and state broadcaster CNTV, who all support publishing standalone ‘.ipa’ app files for iTools users.

3. Duowan

Duowan, now listed on US markets as part of parent company YY (NASDAQ:YY), used to be a veritable pirate’s bay of cracked iOS apps. But the forum-like site has tidied itself up a lot in the past year, and now most of its listings that we checked head straight to the iTunes App Store.

Although the ‘.ipa’ downloads have gone, we’re listing this here because Duowan still has a dedicated jailbreaking section on the site (here) featuring all the jailbreak resources that Chinese iOS fans could need:

4. 51IPA

51IPA, however, is a site that definitely hasn’t cleaned up its act. Packed full of both genuinely free and totally pirated apps, the site does have optional iTunes links, but the emphasis is on the direct downloads, which are usually stashed in third-party cloud storage services. In the sequenced image below, you can snag Doodle Jump HD from the links at the bottom of the page. Note how 51IPA encourages you to make use of the afore-mentioned iTools for managing your pirated apps:

5. Tongbu

Tongbu, which means “sync” in Chinese, is a forum for cracked apps that has spawned its own tool for downloading pirated apps (pictured below) called Sync Assistant. The Tongbu site has dual links for each app: the left one goes to the actual App Store, while the right-hand one (misleadingly labelled “genuine version”) is a magnet link that fires up an ‘.ipa’ download in its Sync Assistant app. Almost inevitably, Tongbu has a jailbreaking resources center too.

Though the rate of jailbreaking in China is said to be going down – from 51 percent in 2011 to 42 percent by the end of last year, it still looks like a big challenge for Apple. But let’s not forget that Chinese and international developers are the ones getting hurt, being robbed of revenue by the jailbreakers who also go on to steal games.

Apple’s rival mobile OS, Google’s Android, is seeing the same ecosystem battle in China, where consumers are loving the highly customizable Android but don’t want to be tied down to a Gmail address and the Google Play store. Instead, most Android users go to third-party Android app stores where piracy is also a big problem. Despite Apple’s much more guarded approach to iOS, and being able to implement convenient local payments for apps, it hasn’t been immune from the ecosystem snub.

(Image credit: Photoshop contains this sketch from DeviantArt)

The research firm Canalys has unveiled new data for Android shipments in Q4 2012. With Android now powering a third of all mobile phones shipped in that quarter, it’s especially notable that Android has helped China’s Huawei, ZTE (HKG:0763; SHE:000063), and Lenovo (HKG:0992) move into the top five among global smartphone makers.

Canalys tracked smartphone shipments in over 50 countries to conclude that the smartphone market grew 37 percent compared to the same time in 2011. Android is on 34 percent of all such phones around the world, with iOS on 11 percent of them.

There are actually four Chinese brands to look out for, as Canalys notes that Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, and Coolpad (though the researchers used the “Yulong” (HKG:2369) parent company name) “all grew by triple-digit percentages.” As we noted recently, figures from Gartner have already told us that Coolpad (and Lenovo, ZTE, and Huawei) is outselling Apple’s iPhone within China. But that’s just within China. So CoolPad is mostly restricted to domestic sales, and is not in the worldwide top five.

Samsung still grew 78 percent globally according to today’s stats. Samsung was China’s top smartphone brand in 2012 as its Galaxy phone series, particularly the large-screen ones like the Note II, sold well. But Lenovo has plans to topple Samsung’s statue in China, with CEO Yang Yuanqing having recently declared that intention.

While Coolpad’s success is almost exclusively within China, its compatriot brands have successful overseas sales as well. Today’s report notes:

Huawei took third place for the first time in Q4 and ZTE fourth. As well as their home markets, they have been relatively successful in the US, where ZTE was fourth and Huawei fifth, driven by their portfolios of low-cost LTE smart phones. Even so, both vendors took less than 5 percent share each there.

Lenovo pushed out Sony to get into the top five. Here are the Q4 2012 global stats:

(Source: Canalys)

A Foxconn plant in China (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

HP will mandate that Chinese students of age may go onto factory lines for temporary periods so long as the work “must complement the primary area of study” of that individual. Plus, according to HP, the vocational worker must be free “to leave work at any time upon reasonable notice without negative repercussions, and they must have access to reliable and reprisal-free grievance mechanisms.”

These student intern workers are often in demand by factories during peak periods such as summer vacations. This year, HP will also stipulate that student workers make up no more than 20 percent of labor at a plant. Tony Prophet, HP’s senior VP for worldwide supply chain operations, told the paper that the company plans to reduce the ratio to 10 percent at an undecided future point.

Apple has also said that it’s putting pressure on manufacturers on this issue. Student workers from schools and colleges, mixed with corruption and fake IDs, sometimes lead to child labor where the worker is under 16, which is a specific problem that Apple is tackling with its recent joining of the Fair Labor Association. Apple’s most recent supplier report highlighted one Chinese supplier that had a shocking 74 underage workers.

Of course, both corporate rules and labor laws can be bent and broken when corruption comes into play, with some dubious manufacturers bribing school principles to shepherd students onto factory lines for temporary work even though it might be irrelevant to their college course.

Foxconn is one of HP’s final assembly manufacturers, so Foxconn will, in theory, be held to these new rules.

(Source: New York Times)

The relatively new Chinese phone-maker Xiaomi teased a possible expansion into Hong Kong and Taiwan a while back – and now we finally have a date for Xiaomi’s first ‘overseas’ push. Xiaomi team member Li Wanqiang posted to his 1.25 million fans on Sina Weibo over the weekend that the startup company “will begin sales in April in Hong Kong and Taiwan.”

Xiaomi sells a strippd-down line-up of just two Android-based phones, the flagship quad-core Mi2, and its revamped first-ever phone, the dual-core 1S. It’s rumored that the Xiaomi Mi2 will sell for HK$1,999 (US$257) in Hong Kong, but it’s somewhat unrealistic that it would be at such a price-tag, which would make it slightly cheaper than its already barely profitable mainland Chinese price.

Confirmed: An April launch.

Xiaomi revealed last month that it sold 7.19 million phones in mainland China in 2012. After selling in Hong Kong and Taiwan (probably via its preferred e-commerce channels, as well as one or two telco tie-ups), the Beijing company is contemplating launching in North America in 2014 or 2015.

(See: Founder Lei Jun Talks About Xiaomi, China’s Disruptive Phone-Maker)

The young phone-maker already has a Facebook page where it’s posting in traditional Chinese – the script used in Hong Kong and Taiwan – and has garnered 15,000 likes so far.

We contacted Xiaomi, but no further details about the April launch can be revealed.

(Spotted via: BuyBuyChina, Netease Mobile – article in Chinese)

With a view to the “world outside of China,” Chinese chipset maker Spreadtrum (NASDAQ:SPRD) has announced a tie-up today with Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) to embed Facebook in its Android-oriented chipset platform. Spreadtrum then hopes that these low-cost internal gizmos will be bought by Chinese handset makers to form smartphones to go on sale “in overseas markets such as Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa and India.”

One of Spreadtrum’s earlier chipsets proved popular with brands like Huawei, who stuck it into their budget Android phone, the U8110, which typically sold for just over $100.

This Spreadtrum-Facebook tie-up is clearly aimed at emerging markets where many consumers are upgrading from very basic phones to their first ever smartphone. Today’s announcement points out that Spreadtrum will work with the social network “prior to the release of new versions of Facebook software” so that the embedded features will get updates in the future.

Facebook’s VP of mobile partnerships, Vaughan Smith, commented:

We are pleased to work with Spreadtrum to deliver a high quality application experience to many of the consumers around the world who will be buying smartphones for the first time in 2013. Working with Spreadtrum will extend Facebook’s reach in emerging markets, leveraging the rapid shift from feature phones to smartphones that is now taking place globally.

This deal mirrors what we’ve seen happening with basic feature phones for quite some time, like Indonesia’s Telkomsel pre-installing a tiny version of the Facebook app – just 128kb in size, which is roughly the size of a single photo on this blog – on its feature phones.

Spreadtrum expects to ship 80 to 100 million of its 2G/3G smartphone chipsets in 2013.

Opera is working with Taiwanese semiconductor company MediaTek (TPE:2454) to integrate the Opera TV Store (pictured) within its chips. Manufacturers who use MediaTek chipsets — be it TVs, set-top boxes, or media players — will be able to make use of web content provided by the Opera TV Store.

Opera (OSE:OPERA) tells us that so far there are approximately 140 HTML5-based apps on its ‘smart TV’-oriented web marketplace: “The number of apps in the Opera TV Store is continuously growing, and will depend on OEM, launch region, and hardware capabilities.”

Apps that are available on the Opera TV Store include those by the Associate Press News, Facebook, Tunein Radio, Twitter, and Vimeo. Opera couldn’t comment on how many MediaTek-powered smart TVs or boxes it expects to sell this year. But so far, the Opera TV Store is already available on the popular Sony Bravia TVs and blu-ray DVD players.

As we saw last summer, smart TVs were most popular in Japan and China in 2012 among Asian nations.

Lars Boilesen, CEO of Opera, commented in today’s announcement:

Implementing the Opera TV Store in MediaTek’s smart TV solution will help to move smart TVs from being a novelty to the mainstream. Millions of app-hungry users will be able to enjoy a comfortable, ‘leanback’ experience on their TVs.

via article.joinsmsn.com/

I’m not sure if this will be a boost to HTC’s sales or not, but it appears that Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of North Korea, carries a HTC phone. North Korea’s Central News Agency caught a picture of the phone at a national security meeting where Kim Jong-un had the Taiwanese-made handset on the desk.

This isn’t the first time a political leader’s phone has come under public scrutiny. US President Barack Obama has been known to carry a Blackberry and spend hours before sleeping on his iPad. Wen Jiabao, China’s outgoing prime minister, it seems, uses a Nokia slider. World leaders beware, take your choice of gadget seriously.

In North Korea, citizens aren’t allowed to access the internet via mobile phones. In fact, numbers from the South Korean Ministry of Unification indicate that there may be 1.7 million mobile phones in the country by this year. That’s roughly 6 percent of the population. Most of the phones are smuggled in from China and the North Korean government is known to carry sensors that track device usage. Clever citizens often use the phones for a short period, and in crowded areas, so as not to get caught.

Given looser restrictions on foreigners bringing cellphones into the country, a quest for economic growth, and hints of technology opening up under the youngest supreme leader in the land, are we about to see a Korean Spring?

If the picture of the supreme leader sporting an Android-powered HTC phone gets out in Pyongyang, you can be sure that those who can afford it (a particularly small segment of the population) will be grabbing one. But will HTC be opening a store in Pyongyang? Probably not.

UPDATE: HTC has apparently responded to these reports by saying simply: we are thankful for all of our users.

(Source: Taipei Times and Image Source)

Indonesian handset manufacturer and telco Smartfren released an Android handset yesterday called the Andromax-u. Leading up to launch day, it claimed the handset has had 2,000 pre-orders already. Why the strong early reception? It looks to deliver decent specs for an affordable price.

We dropped into the launch event yesterday and saw that the Andromax-u is a 4.5-inch screen phone that comes equipped with a dual core 1.2GHz processor, 768MB of RAM, and 4GB of internal storage (expandable up to 32GB). It runs on Android 4.0 which can be upgraded to Jelly Bean (4.1) in the near future too. I think the feature that Indonesian users will be most intrigued with is its impressive camera, capable of shooting at 8 megapixels, with a 2-megapixel camera on the front for video chats.

The handset is quite affordable at only IDR 1.6 million ($165). Compared with other handsets like the LG Optimus L7 (priced at IDR 2.4 million ($248)), the Andromax-u gives generally better specs for a cheaper price tag. Indonesian gadget news site TeknoUp ¹ scored the handset 9.6 out of a possible 10.

The catch?

From the left: Niels Uffie (Smartfren division head of BlackBerry and smartphone product), Djoko
Tata Ibrahim (deputy CEO of commercial), and Roberto Saputra (head of brand and marketing
communication)

But how can a phone with nice specifications be so cheap? Smartfren earns a lot of its revenue from data packages. Though the phone supports dual SIM cards (for GSM and CDMA cards), users can only use Smartfren’s data package when they want to use their 3G internet connection, and their GSM cards are only good for 2G/GPRS mobile web speeds. So the strategy of making its handsets affordable so they can earn more from data plans makes a lot of sense.

I don’t think that’s a big deal breaker though, because Smartfren’s CDMA internet connection is quite reliable with 3G speeds of up to 3.1 Mbps. And the company offers 1GB of bonus monthly data for a year for a minimum top-up of IDR 50,000 ($5). Plus, you can still use your GSM number. It should be noted that Smartfren’s CDMA number comes loaded inside the handset, and it cannot be changed for other CDMA cards. So all in all, there’s no contract for the low price, but it is rather tied down.

The phone comes in three colors – black, white, and blue. It is going to be widely available in Indonesia starting on February 9th at Kota Kasablanka. The previous Andromax series, the ‘i’ which was launched late last year, has sold more than 100,000 units so far. For more information about the phone, you can check the Smartfren website.

As we’ve seen in China, budget smartphones will be the key to Android success, not pricey devices like Samsung’s Galaxy SIII.

We reported last year that Chinese-brand smartphones make up 60 percent of sales in China, but Samsung remains the top brand. For now. Lenovo (HKG:0992) CEO Yang Yuanqing said this week that it’s “definitely our aspiration” to surpass Samsung (005930:KS) to become China’s top smartphone maker.

Yang put no timeframe on that aim. It could happen soon, as according to Canalys data last summer, Lenovo was China’s fastest growing smartphone brand in Q2 2012, increasing sales by 2,665 percent to stand as China’s third-biggest phone seller. ZTE was second. Samsung was top in China in both 2012 and 2011 thanks to its Galaxy S and SII phones along with a range of cheaper Android-powered options.

More recently, newer figures from Gartner showed that Lenovo had edged into second place in China. At the same time, Apple dropped to sixth position and the relatively unknown CoolPad brand rose to third.

It’s possible that Yang’s aspirations could be realised by the end of 2013.

The Lenovo boss voiced his thoughts during Wednesday’s earnings call with Chinese and international media. Amid all the talk of growing PC sales and doing well in the US, it’s worth remembering that Lenovo has strong mobile ambitions in its home country.

Keeping his options open, Yang also said that Lenovo “will assess whether we should launch [on] the Windows Phone” platform as well, joining rivals such as Samsung, HTC, ZTE, and Huawei in hedging their bets on Microsoft’s WP as well as Google’s Android.

Taiwan’s Digitimes Research believes that 189 million smartphones were sold in China in the final quarter of 2012, with 86 percent of those being Androids. It’s conceivable that 300 million smartphones will be sold in the country in 2013.

(Source: MorningWhistle)

Like any fan of things that are totally awesome, I have been following the process of Google’s self-driving car pretty closely. Yesterday, I came across this article in Forbes about the potential future adoption of the car on a large scale, and in it author Chunka Mui makes a brilliant point: though adopting the car on a wide scale might be legally and logistically tough in the US, the driverless car would be perfect for China.

Why? Mui makes several salient points:

• China has a higher rate of accidents and traffic fatalities than the US, and Google’s cars would reduce this significantly.
• The government could save money building smaller roads, and expenses like traffic lights and some signs would no longer be necessary.
• China sees this kind of technology as being of strategic economic value and is interested in investing in it.

Those are great points, and I think there are even more reasons why the Google self-driving car would be perfect for China, and maybe some other Asian countries, too:

It could cut down on traffic congestion. Traffic congestion is a huge problem in many Chinese cities, and it’s just as much of an issue in parts of Southeast Asia, too. (We saw some gnarly traffic jams in Jakarta last year). Having self-driving cars wouldn’t eliminate traffic jams totally, but it could cut down on them significantly if computers were in control of every car, as they would be able to route themselves efficiently to avoid congestion whenever possible. Driverless cars could also cut down on some of the road rage that comes along with traffic jams, as drivers would be free to tune out and do some work on their laptops or even maybe watch TV while the cars sorted the traffic issues out themselves.

Driver education would no longer be a problem. Part of the reason China has so many traffic fatalities is that many drivers are relatively inexperienced, and drivers education in China can be quite poor. In part because there are so many people who want to learn to drive, many drivers’ ed courses are short, and the practical parts of the course often only include driving at slow speeds on closed courses; nothing like the driving people encounter when they take their cars onto city streets. Having self-driving cars would fix this problem by eliminating the need for drivers’ ed in the first place.

Self-driving cabs? This is admittedly taking things beyond what Google has yet accomplished, but it seems like it would even be possible to deploy self-driving cabs. Potential passengers could hail cabs using a smartphone app that would signal to the closest available cab to come pick them up, and then use NFC or some other location technology to confirm that the smartphone user is the person who gets into the cab. This would eliminate any issues of driver bias or picking and choosing their fares, and it would also eliminate passenger squabbles during rush hour about who hailed the cab first. To increase efficiency, perhaps cabs could even scan passenger destinations and (for a reduced fee) pick up multiple passegers who are all headed to the same general area.

There are, of course, some reasons why this wouldn’t work. The biggest one is that it would be massively expensive, and while China’s government has been quite willing to spend huge amounts of money on high-tech infrastructure projects like its high speed rail system, the massive corruption and deadly accident that have come out of that project so far indicate that at the very least, China would have to be very careful to ensure no corners were cut in the implementation of a driverless car system nationwide.

Even so, though, I think it’s an excellent idea, and the Chinese government should be looking very carefully at Google’s project. Perhaps in a few years’ time when the technology is a little cheaper and a little bit more mature, the government could pick a very small city as a test area and implement driverless cars to see if the project could ever work on a larger scale.

Credit: usefulagenda.blogspot.com

While the Blackberry 10 (BB10) global launch is now less than 12 hours away, it is understood that the handsets could arrive in Indonesia in March. IndoTelko spoke to XL marketing director Joy Wahjudi yesterday, who said that the telco is preparing to launch 20,000 Blackberry 10 handset units in March.

The XL representative then added that there will be three distributors for the handset in the country: Erajaya Swasembada, Trikomsel Oke, and SCM. For now, RIM has not confirmed the launch time in Indonesia, but it has officially set a date for Singapore, where the newest BB10 handsets will hit shelves on February 21st. This will likely prompt a few impatient Indonesians to purchase the phones from neighboring Singapore.

The same report also claimed that Indonesia was originally one of the chosen countries for the BB10 first-wave global launch, but it was cancelled due to new regulations on phone imports into Indonesia which came in effect earlier this year. If you’re keen to watch the global launch live tonight, it is scheduled for 10pm Jakarta time. You can tune in to the live video stream.

(Source: Indotelko via Trenologi)

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) currently has eight official Apple Stores in mainland China, and now the Cupertino company looks set to open a very different kind of facility in the country – a research and development lab. The China Business News claims that this is a done deal, and that an Apple R&D and procurement management facility will open in Shanghai’s Pudong district this summer. It cites the Sina Weibo account of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce as publicly stating that this is all confirmed.

[UPDATED 14 hours after posting: MorningWhistle says that an Apple insider has informed Chinese media: "The source said the new facility is to strengthen Apple’s management over its supply chain in China and has started to recruit high-level talent in the supply chain field in Shanghai." - So it's not actually for R&D].

The new Apple base is said to be three buildings that cost a total of US$8 million to rent each year, and will be at 385-397 Yuanshen Road. That seems to match a cluster of buildings on that street adjacent to Yuanshen stadium. Browsing through jobs listings reveals a lot of Apple jobs posted on third-party HR sites on January 27th for the Shanghai area, including positions such as AppleCare team manager, SPS business analyst, and an admin assistant for the Apple Online Store. So Apple’s Shanghai base could be a new customer service hub too.

Apple has not yet confirmed the move.

It might seem surprising not to set up this kind of base in Beijing, like in the capital’s tech-oriented Zhongguancun. But Apple will actually be following a lot of other big names such as Motorola and Microsoft in heading towards the younger, flashier, and much less terrifyingly polluted Shanghai.

We know that China snaps up 15 percent of Apple’s gadgets, and that iPhone sales in China doubled in 2012, so we can see that Apple’s fate is tied quite strongly to wealthier Chinese consumers. Asia-Pacific will soon firmly surpass Europe as Apple’s second-largest market:

(Sources: AppleInsider and Yicai (article in Chinese))

That’s the most surprising finding in recent figures from Gartner which show that CoolPad’s Android-based phones have soared to third place in terms of the number of smartphones sold in China at the end of the previous year. CoolPad is one of four Chinese brands in the top six, a phenomenon we first noted last year when Canalys pointed out that domestic phone-makers now account for 60 percent of sales in China.

The CoolPad 8060, one of the phones now outselling the iPhone in China. (Image: ZOL.com.cn)

Going back to the Gartner numbers, China’s smartphone top six now looks like this:

• 1st - Samsung

• 2nd - Lenovo

• 3rd - CoolPad

• 4th - ZTE

• 5th - Huawei

• 6th - Apple

So how did CoolPad phones, made by the relatively tiny China Wireless Technologies (HKG:2369) which used to make PDAs and very unimaginative feature phones, manage to leap past the over-hyped and hallowed iPhone? And that’s despite Apple doubling iPhone sales in the country in 2012. As anyone following the progress of Android in China, you’ll have figured out how already. Android is one big reason, and price is the other. Basically, CoolPad is making a lot of serviceable – if not very trendy – phones for a mere 10 percent of the cost of an iPhone 5. The CoolPad 8060, for example, sells for just 500 RMB (US$80) unlocked, and is a highly affordable gateway to the smartphone world [1].

300 million smartphones to be sold in China in 2013

With smartphone sales at an estimated 189 million in China in 2012, and expected to reach 300 million by the end of 2013, Apple can no longer ignore the entry level market. To do so, some might say, would be to replicate the mistake of decades past that made Apple’s Mac OS into a fringe platform, dwarfed by the widely-used Windows. Apple might have an addressable market at the moment of a few hundred million Chinese middle-to-upper income individuals, but the larger potential market is people who can’t afford to pay out one, two, or three months’ salary for the current iPhone.

Although Apple would never go as low as CoolPad’s price points, there are rumors that Apple is pondering a lower-cost iPhone that could better help it battle Android in China and other important developing markets. Even if Apple aimed at half of the cost of the full iPhone, that would create a smaller iPhone priced at 2,500 RMB in China. That would at least put it closer to more well-specced Android devices in China (not CoolPad’s), such as the Xiaomi Mi2. The young phone-maker Xiaomi sold 7.19 million of its Android-powered phones in 2012, mostly to Chinese consumers.

In some ways, Xiaomi is the cool equivalent of CoolPad. While Xiaomi phones seem to be sold mostly to younger people, with 70 percent of them sold online, CoolPads are sold to a wider – and maybe less affluent – range of consumers from electronics retailers such as Gome and Suning.

CoolPad, then, represents the huge amount of people in China who’re ditching Nokia and feature phones, and jumping onto the cheapest thing that lets them play Temple Run 2. Apple needs to decide whether it wants to bring Xiaomi and CoolPad buyers closer to its price range, or forever push them – all half a billion of them – out of its exclusive club.

Xiaomi’s Lei Jun (left) secures a deal that’ll put his much-delayed set-top box on sale.

On Friday evening we suggested that the Apple TV-esque Xiaomi Box had risen from the dead after being given regulatory approval. And that’s exactly what was announced officially today, with the founder and CEO of the Chinese gadget-maker, Lei Jun (pictured above left), unveiling a three-year partnership with state broadcaster CNTV.

The announcement from Xiaomi adds that the set-top box will soon go on sale only in three trial cities: in Shanghai, nearby Hangzhou, and in central China’s Changsha. No date has been set for that yet, and the Xiaomi Box homepage – which has been unchanged since the gadget’s unveiling last November – still isn’t taking orders.

The Xiaomi Box. Click to enlarge.

The Xiaomi Box aggregates streaming video content from partners such as Tencent Video, Sohu TV, and PPS. Although it’s not a standalone video service, China’s media regulator SARFT put the brakes on the launch of the Xiaomi Box a few days after it was unveiled, indicating that Xiaomi’s service didn’t have the requisite media license. That’s now solved with the CNTV tie-up. As an added bonus (though who knows how much all this cost Xiaomi), the set-top box will be permitted to stream some of the state broadcaster’s best content, such as the 2014 World Cup.

After the success of Xiaomi’s Android-based smartphones – selling over seven million of them in 2012 – this is the young company’s first other product.