Microsoft’s Bing search engine has never been a major player in China. The company itself conceded that last fall when it all but abandoned Chinese language search, opting instead to focus on what it then said was the 5 percent of searches in China that use English rather than Chinese. But six months later, it appears Bing’s strategy hasn’t worked. In an interview with Sina Tech, Microsoft VP Shen Xiangyang said that the company’s shrinking China market share — now barely above half of one percent, according to research firm CNZZ — put it in a seriously tough spot:

If you can’t see users’ search questions and choices, if you don’t have enough data to work with, then there is no way to make improvements [to the search engine].

And in this market, a search engine that isn’t improving is going to get left behind. Bing already appears to be most of the way there, but the further behind it falls, the less data it has to work with, making a comeback increasingly less likely.

Even so, Shen suggests the company will continue with its focus on English-language search:

Differentiating yourself in web search is extremely difficult. Today, if Chinese users want to search in English, Baidu doesn’t work, and a certain overseas company’s search [Google] doesn’t necessarily work well either. If we can get half of the China market for English search, Bing will have three percent of the overall China search market.

Another possible approach to the market might be pushing Bing to Chinese users through a browser — especially since many Chinese users still surf with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. But Shen doesn’t seem particularly optimistic about that happening anytime soon:

If Bing could use a browser the way Qihoo 360 or Sogou do, our market share would definitely go up. But Microsoft makes changes very cautiously, and it needs to further understand users’ usage habits [before making any changes to Internet Explorer].

Does Bing really have any chance in China? It hasn’t yet managed to capture even the tiny English-language search market, and more and more Chinese users are moving away from Internet Explorer and onto domestically-designed browsers, so any browser advantage Microsoft hoped to capitalize on would need to be exploited fast. Personally, I don’t see it happening. But China’s search market is pretty crazy. You never know what could happen.

(via Sina Tech)

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.

Chinese consumers love your gadgets – that’s great news. But the bad news for Apple, Amazon, Google, and many more companies is that Chinese netizens hate your ecosystems. They really don’t want to be trapped in your walled garden. In an age of platforms and extended web services, that’s a huge monetization problem for tech companies entering the world’s biggest market.

Android, without the Google bits

This aversion to tech ecosystems in China is seen most starkly with Google’s mobile OS, Android. An estimated 189 million smartphones were sold in China in 2012, and as many as 86 percent of those were Android devices. But that huge user-base hasn’t translated into popularity for Google’s other apps and services.

Why not? Google has long had a rough ride in China, starting with the Great Firewall blocking YouTube back in 2007 – never to become accessible again. Many more Google services were later turned off by Net Nanny, as some scandal or spread of information made it more convenient for authorities to shut down these channels. Later the GFW blocked Picasa, Blogger, the AppSpot engine. More recently, some apps that are much more central to Android, like G+ and Google Drive, got blocked as well. That certainly hasn’t helped Google’s ecosystem, but I don’t believe it’s the leading cause of Chinese consumers being keen to remove the Google bits from Android.

Love the phones, hate the ecosystem.

Far more crucial to this ecosystem aversion is something indicative of a healthier side of the Chinese web – lots of quality competition. Regardless of the Great Firewall or anything else, Chinese consumers love to pick and choose and mix and match – and get the best deal. We’re talking about consumers who’ll haggle for an hour to save a dollar. And so if there are better apps and services out there, then screw your ecosystem. For cloud storage, Chinese smartphone users could install apps from Baidu, or Shanda, or numerous startups. Over 30 million users have opted for Baidu NetDrive already.

Same for email. Same for web video.

It even applies to sourcing Android apps, with Chinese Android fans choosing to scour a wide range of third-party app stores for games and apps rather than using Google Play.

All that freedom of choice reinforces the general dislike among Chinese netizens of being locked in a walled garden. Using Android generally demands having a Google account and having a Gmail address – but not every user wants to be coralled into this.

Apples are not the only fruit

Apple might have been pushed down to an ignominious sixth place in terms of smartphone sales in China recently – well below Android handset makers like Samsung and Lenovo – but the iPhone and iPad are still examples of an astonishing gadget success in the country. Yet the whole Apple ecosystem hasn’t been so warmly embraced.

iTools is an alternative to iTunes (and helps you jailbreak) if you prefer to opt out of Apple’s ecosystem.

This is despite Apple having built up the most rigid ecosystem (probably an oxymoron, as ecosystems are fluid and adaptive in nature) that mandates having an Apple ID, syncing via iTunes, and not customizing your phone’s UI in any meaningful way. Almost inevitably, a lot of Chinese iOS owners have flipped the bird at all these restrictions and – as is the case on Android – have been greeted with plenty of locally-made resources that can be used as alternatives.

For example, those who dislike iTunes as a domineering music player and App Store combo can instead try out iTools, which is made by a Shenzhen-based startup.

Admitedly, piracy is also an issue, and for some people it’s a motivation in opting out of Apple’s restrictive environment. As we explored recently, there are lots of piracy and jailbreaking resources in China for iPhone and iPad owners.

But ultimately, as with Android, the Apple ecosystem aversion is mostly down to Chinese consumers being keen on using things from local competitors, even if – in avoiding iTunes, iCloud, etc – it makes their experience more fragmented and involves signing up for a bunch of different apps.

Who cares about the Kindle?

All of this bodes very badly for Amazon. Just because Amazon is a huge name and runs China’s fifth-largest e-commerce site, it doesn’t mean that Chinese netizens want to jump aboard its broader hardware and web platform. In fact, all available evidence suggests a strategic nightmare ahead.

Amazon has launched its Kindle e-bookstore and apps in China but it has not yet launched other cloud services or any hardware here. Since Amazon makes some of the most locked-down hardware, and its Kindle Fire tablet is a parallel-universe version of Android, it sounds like a potential disaster as a raw example of a product that’s totally unsuited to the Chinese market. Yes, China loves Android, but only in its own image. The Amazon AppStore sounds like a no-go here as well.

The hardware, too, will be coming into a market dominated by well-established local rivals who already have e-bookstores linked to their e-readers, such as with Shanda’s Bambook or Dangdang’s Doucon.

Be water, my friend

Be formless, shapeless, like water. (And be flexible towards your ecosystem users).

Yes, it’s a tough market. But openness seems to be massively important – both to Chinese consumers, and to a company’s chance of success in this market. While the Android situation might sound bad, it’s still great for Google. The search giant can still say to developers: “Hey, come develop for Android, because Chinese smartphone buyers love it. Yes, there’s piracy and they refuse to use Google Play, but you can still monetize from ads – yes, our own ad platform – and you still get access to the world’s biggest smartphone market.” I believe it’s only a flexible and adaptive ecosystem – like Android – that can perform such a feat. Plus, Android is responsive on hardware price-points, and adaptable and customizable at a software level.

It’s rougher for Apple in China, where the company’s you’re either with us or against us approach to their users often forces many to jailbreak, where they’re then more likely to become app pirates. From that point onward, Apple has no more means of monetizing those users on its platform.

It’s also a cautionary tale for Microsoft in China as it starts afresh with Windows Phone. As established as Microsoft is in China, it’s still in no position to enforce Hotmail/Outlook as a starting point for WP users, and its Marketplace for apps risks being as restrictive as Apple’s.

Of course, local web companies are not immune to all this. China’s biggest e-commerce company, Alibaba, has been met with a frosty reception with its attempt at a mobile OS of its own – and that’s despite having hundreds of millions of local users on its online stores. The nation’s top search engine, Baidu, is also finding it tough to persuade its search users to try out its apps ecosystem – like Baidu Maps, which lags behind local mapping experts Autonavi in terms of users – in the face of strong competition in every single sector. That leaves China’s numerous web giants scrapping over users for every single app and service – it’s unrelentingly rough, but it’s the only way.

So my advice on pushing your tech ecosystem in China is, essentially, to listen to Bruce Lee: Be water, my friend.

(Lead image credit: Our photoshop contains this sketch from DeviantArt)

Microsoft Singapore recently introduced the BizSpark Launch Academy, a Windows developer competition aimed at startups and individual developers. The top three winners of this competition will be awarded  Founder Institute scholarships that will give them the opportunity to receive mentorship to launch their startup companies with the Founder Institute starting April 2013.

According to Jeffrey Paine, head of the Founder Institute’s Singapore Chapter:

We are keen to help individual developers take their prototypes to the next level and equip them with the right knowledge and network to know what it takes to build enduring technology companies.

Apps built on Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, or Windows Azure are accepted in the competition. Entries are judged based on “user experience design, innovativeness, and startup viability.” The Microsoft Singapore ‘developer and platform evangelism team’ will also be providing devs with the Windows Apps Lab development tools, personal consultations, and even loan devices.

Participants of the BizSpark Launch Academy can also join the Windows Startup Challenge, which could give them a chance to launch their app at DEMO mobile, a global launchpad to be held in April 2013 in San Francisco, California.

To qualify for the BizSpark Launch Academy, interested applicants will have to submit their prototype image to this email address, along with a brief overview of the app and the developers’s personal particulars by this Friday, February 8th.

Successful applicants will be notified within 24 to 48 hours. For more details, please head to the official website.

Yesterday morning, Microsoft Singapore officially launched its newest Office consumer product line, Office 365 Home Premium. It is a subscription-based cloud service that can be accessed across various devices such as Windows tablet, PCs, Windows Phone, and Mac, with a renewed emphasis on online collaboration.

To further entice consumers into opting for the subscription-based model, Office 365 offers 20GB of SkyDrive storage for the main subscriber a year, as well as 60 minutes of Skype world calling per month. Microsoft has also partnered with local Singapore telco Starhub to provide a bundle discount with an internet broadband service plan sign-up as well as launching several other promotions with local retailers.

Office 365 Home Premium currently retails at SGD$138 (USD$112) per year and provides licenses for up to five devices which also encompass a complete set of Office applications – that’s Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access. That includes support for ‘Office on Demand’ which lets you access Office apps from any online PC or laptop.

In order to cater to different consumer groups, Microsoft also introduced Office 365 University at SGD$108 (USD$88) per four years, for a single user – though you’ll need to prove that you’re a student or teacher – for two PC installations.

Those who are not keen on paying a subscription fee are still able to purchase the traditional suites, such as ‘Home and Business 2013’, but they’ll only get a single device installation. For that, buyers will still be able to save their documents online.

Though Microsoft Office 365 Home Premium might have several added features, we can’t help but wonder, with many other free alternatives available such as Google Documents and OpenOffice, will consumers be willing to pay for either the software or the subscription fee?

There are so many things wrong with this, it’s hard to even know where to begin. I could, of course, begin with how the Ministry of Culture has already denied considering lifting the ban. But these rumors are sure to pop up again sooner or later, so instead let’s begin with the stupidest thing I have read so far this year, which comes to us courtesy of the Forbes article linked above:

If the ban is lifted, however, sales of new game consoles could skyrocket. Console manufacturers would be free to promote their items and sell them in every store. And since consumers would no longer have to pay black market prices, consoles would become even more desirable to own.

The assertion that gamers are currently paying “black market prices” for consoles and thus would relish the opportunity to buy legitimate versions is shockingly ignorant, and leads me to wonder if the author of this article has even bothered to look into the console market at all. First of all, game consoles are sold on the gray market in China, meaning they’re sold openly in retail stores and online. Secondly, they don’t cost much more than they do in the US or elsewhere, and the extra cost is often because they’re hacked, so it’s immediately offset by the far lower price of buying cheap pirated games for the system.

In fact, let’s do a little experiment. In the US, you can get a plain Xbox 360 console for $200, while in China it’s closer to $250. But the gray-market console in China is generally hacked to play pirated games, so when you want to add on one new game to play, the US price rises to $260, and the Chinese price rises to $251. Add another new game, and the American Xbox now costs over $300, while the Chinese one now costs $252. You get the idea: the consoles themselves cost slightly more, but Chinese console gamers actually pay far less overall than Western gamers who are buying legitimate games for their systems.

Moreover, legitimizing console sales in China would actually make them more expensive than they are in the US, because — like all other imported electronics — their prices would need to be raised to cover China’s import duties. Gray market imports, since they’re technically illegal and enter under the radar, are not taxed, but official imports would be, and thus China’s gamers would get a taste of what China’s Apple fans already know: everything electronic is more expensive in China. At the end of the day, Chinese gamers would see something like a 10 percent reduction in the cost of consoles themselves, but that’s not nearly enough to offset the 7500 percent rise in the price of a new game for the system. At the end of the day, most Chinese gamers who want to actually play games on their console would end up paying significantly more than what they’re paying now if console imports were legalized.

One of China’s many shops that sells game consoles. Look at all those customers demanding Western game consoles. Oh wait, there aren’t any customers. The guys in red work there.

Now that we’ve torn apart the section of that article that’s blatantly incorrect, let’s turn to the part of it that’s just logically flawed. Why would sales of new game consoles skyrocket? Although they are technically illegal, western game consoles are widely available in China right now, sold openly in thousands upon thousands of electronics stores across the country. Any Chinese gamer who wants a console probably already has one. And since the consoles available now are for the most part hacked, gamers have access to thousands of games for extremely low prices. Legitimizing console sales might lower the prices of consoles slightly (as discussed above), but that would be nothing compared to the price of games, which would jump from at most 5 RMB ($0.79) for a pirated game to at least 370 RMB ($60) for a new, legitimately imported game.

As much fun as it is to beat up Forbes, let me stop and break this thing down for you list-style:

Why No One Should Be Excited About the Console Ban Being Lifted

1. It probably won’t happen. The Ministry of Culture has already officially denied that it’s considering dropping the ban. But even if that’s a smokescreen and the China Daily’s tip is legit (which is by no means guaranteed), I am certain the Ministry of Culture considers lots of things it doesn’t ultimately do. And no one I have seen yet has been able to adequately answer the question of why China would choose to un-ban game consoles right now, when there’s still no domestic competitor to benefit from the move. (No, the CT510 doesn’t count).

2. Consoles and console games are already widely available. Anyone who wants to can buy a game console in China for more or less the same price as anywhere else. And, as an added bonus, the games are usually extremely cheap. Chinese gamers who are interested in console gaming already own consoles. If there is a demand for consoles in China, it does not seem to have outpaced the supply available on the gray market, so legalizing consoles isn’t likely to cause any kind of sales spike.

3. Legalizing consoles just makes them more expensive. China’s import duties would almost certainly raise the price of legitimate consoles to close to what they currently cost on the gray market. And the price of legitimately imported games for consoles would be much, much higher than what gamers currently pay for widely-available pirated game discs, so the overall cost of playing games on a game console would skyrocket.

4. Chinese gamers are not dying to get their hands on Western and Japanese consoles. In some circles, people seem to be under the impression that the only thing stopping Chinese gamers from buying XBoxes in droves is the tyrannical policies of the Chinese government. This is complete bullshit. Unlike my generation in the West, most Chinese gamers did not grow up with consoles in their homes. Their first introduction to the world of games was through a PC, not a Nintendo, and most Chinese gamers continue to prefer the PC platform. That’s not because they don’t have consoles, it’s because they actually prefer playing games on a PC. And, as I mentioned above, those who do want consoles likely already have them.

5. Chinese gamers prefer game genres that don’t really work on consoles. Look at the genres of games that are popular in China: MMORPGs, RTSs, and twitchy, highly-competitive multiplayer FPS games. These are all genres that don’t work very well on consoles. There is a reason there are no console versions of games like World of Warcraft, DOTA, and Starcraft (both hugely popular in China); they both play much better with a mouse and keyboard. And while there are some twitchy FPS games on consoles, Chinese gamers seem to prefer games like Counter-Strike, where the precision of a mouse and keyboard is virtually a requirement. This is not to say, of course, that there aren’t fans of more console-friendly game genres in China, but it’s important to remember that in general, the tastes of Chinese and Western gamers are often quite different.

6. The console game sales model doesn’t work in China. Most popular Chinese games are free-to-play or very cheap, instead relying on subscription tiers and in-game transactions to generate revenue. That’s because in general, game publishers have had a very hard time getting Chinese gamers to pay large up-front sums for games. But there are almost no console games out there that generate most of their revenue with subscriptions or in-game sales right now, and it’s very difficult to do free-to-play when most games require a disc. On-demand gaming may open the door to new sales models in the next generation of consoles, but right now the vast majority of console games (even the on-demand downloadable ones) require one big up-front payment, and that’s just not something many Chinese gamers are into. (If you look at the top ten tech companies in China by revenue, many of them are game publishers that operate primarily online subscription and in-game transaction-based games.)

7. Piracy is still a big problem. Even if legalized console imports somehow generated a huge sales spike (which they won’t), Microsoft and Nintendo couldn’t expect to make a whole lot of money on games. Sony’s Playstation 3 has been more difficult to hack, but the Xbox 360 and the Wii are thoroughly compromised, and getting your console hacked to play pirated games is easy. Sure, it might cost a few extra dollars if you don’t want to do it yourself, but it pays for itself instantly when you’re buying brand new games for less than one dollar per game.

8. Eedoo’s eBox iSec CT-510 may be a warning sign. Eedoo has done a lot of things wrong in the marketing of its not-a-game-console game console, but the strange and sudden pivot from an emphasis on games to an emphasis on health, apps, and other kinds of entertainment might have been a response to weak consumer demand for a traditional, gamer-demographic-focused game console. (The console was originally called the iSec and was targeted squarely at gamers, but just before release it was renamed the CT-510 and re-targeted at more of a family crowd). This shift could also have been the result of pushback from regulators, of course, but since this happened less than a year ago, if regulators wouldn’t let a Chinese company release a game console in China it seems unlikely they’re really about to let Western and Japanese companies have a go.

I could probably keep going, but I think my point is clear. China’s console market is not as big or as ready to explode with profit as some people seem to think. Time will tell whether or not any of this even matters, but if you’re the kind of person who buys stock in a console company on the basis of an anonymously-sourced report in the China Daily, well, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

My gaming fanatic colleague Charlie just sent me an email at midnight in his timezone (he’s in the US), so either it’s a drunken missive or it’s big news. Turns out it’s the latter. That’s because Chinese government sources have told the China Daily that “authorities are reviewing a decade-long ban on game consoles and considering the possibility of opening up the country’s video game hardware market.”

Banned since 2000 on the grounds of “the potential harm” to children, gaming consoles like the PS3, PSP, Wii, and XBox have nonetheless long been available in China via the so-called gray import market (along with a huge range of pirated games). But they cannot be sold in major electronics stores, and are instead sold by random vendors in large gadget malls all over the country.

An end to the gaming console ban would be a boost, in theory, to manufacturers such as Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. But that’s presuming Chinese consumers would be willing to pay around US$40 for games, which is a hefty amount equivalent to more than a day’s wages even for some of China’s urban middle classes. Plus, the pirated console games generally cost just 10 RMB ($1.60). Without a viable market for genuine games, the console industry might not even be sustainable in China, especially not at a time when iPads and Android tablets bring access to quality games on a fairly big screen for prices ranging from $1 to $10.

Recent estimates suggest that about 1.7 million grey-market consoles are sold in China each year.

An anonymous source within China’s Ministry of Culture told the paper:

We are reviewing the policy and have conducted some surveys and held discussions with other ministries on the possibility of opening up the game console market. However, since the ban was issued by seven ministries more than a decade ago, we will need approval from all parties to lift it.

China has a homegrown contender in this market in the shape of the don’t-call-it-a-games-console Eedoo CT-510, which has had a muted reception due to its $600 price tag.

Earlier signs of the ban ending emerged a few months ago when Sony’s Playstation 3 received its China safety certificate.

(Source: China Daily)

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is under fire from dozens of rights advocates today in the form of an open letter to Skype which calls on the new owner of the VoIP service to clarify just how secure Skype is. Signed by the likes of Global Voices, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the China-oriented Great Fire blog, the letter demands Microsoft to also reveal any “surveillance and censorship capabilities” in the Chinese version of Skype.

Alleging that Skype might be the subject of intercepts by both US and Chinese governments, the open letter requests clarifications and some transparency from Microsoft regarding its TOM Online joint-venture version of Skype, which is foisted upon all Chinese visitors to Skype.com who get persistently redirected to skype.tom.com instead, and thereby download a different version of the Skype PC app. In a further sign that Chinese authorities would rather its netizens avoid the international version of Skype, the Skype Android and iPhone apps are apparently banned from the China iTunes and Google Play stores.

Watching you Skype

It’s a tricky deputation for Microsoft to handle, as it risks Skype becoming shunned by journalists and activists around the world. Talking about the TOM Online partnership could also take Microsoft into controversial areas. Indeed, we’ve already seen TOM-Skype censoring Chinese users in the notorious case of sensitive keywords related to the 2008 unrest and riots in Tibet. Shortly after that, Canadian researchers told CNET:

TOM-Skype is censoring and logging text chat messages that contain specific, sensitive keywords and may be engaged in more targeted surveillance. What is clear is that TOM-Skype is engaging in extensive surveillance with seemingly little regard for the security and privacy of Skype users. This is in direct contradiction of Skype’s public statements regarding their policies in China.

We spotted Tencent’s WeChat app refusing to send certain sensitive keywords a few weeks back, albeit just for a period of about 48 hours, and Tencent later said it was a technical error.

With free speech online so under threat by nearly all governments, it would be a small but positive step for Microsoft, as the open letter demands, release Google- or Twitter-style transparency reports on information or surveillance requests that Skype complies with.

Nokia’s Lumia phones weren’t enough to stop Nokia’s most disastrous China numbers ever. (Images: Techinasia.com)

If you thought Nokia’s (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) China figures for 2011 were a disaster, you should see what just emerged today. Nokia’s China nightmare is clearly not yet over as the country’s growing middle-class continues to pick up iPhones and Android smartphones. That’s the picture painted by Nokia’s full-year 2012 report that came out today. It shows Nokia sales revenue down 79 percent in China from the previous year, and phone units plummeted 69 percent to a mere 4.6 million sold in the final quarter of last year.

The Nokia report details how Symbian is dying, causing dramatic drops in its Greater China numbers, and Windows Phone (WP) Lumia shipments are far from filling the gap:

In contrast, North America net sales and volumes were up quite substantively (phone units up 40 percent) mostly thanks to Nokia’s Windows Phone devices. While WP7 launched in China in March of 2012, and then WP8 last month, it appears not to have stopped Nokia from experiencing its worst ever annual report in China.

When we looked at Nokia’s end-of-2011 stats, the volume of phones sold was down 33 percent year-on-year, with 14.7 million units shipped into customers’ hands in 2011 Q4.

Nokia’s WP offerings look great physically, so there’s a chance that Chinese consumers will fall in love with Nokia all over again. But Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone is still not an easy sell. Yesterday, Apple boasted of doubling iPhone sales in China in the past year, and the wide variety of Android smartphone price-points – boosted by lots of homegrown handset brands – is powering Google’s OS to what analysts say is 86 percent of 2012 Q4 smartphone sales in China.

With Nokia’s Lumia lineup up against all this, the Finnish company’s 2013 might be even more grim.

Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) brought the first Windows Phone 8 (WP8) device to China today with the launch of its Lumia 920T on the nation’s biggest telco, China Mobile. It becomes the first Microsoft WP device on China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941), whose unique TD-SCDMA 3G network initially proved a turn-off for handset makers.

The Nokia Lumia 920T ships before the end of the year, and will cost 4,599 RMB (US$733) off-contract. The iconic phone – with a choice of black, white, yellow or red – should prove to be a boost for the WP platform in China, where smartphone owners overwhelmingly opt for Android or iOS.

In September of this year, China Mobile had nearly 40 percent of the country’s 202.18 million 3G subscribers, making it the leader by a not-too-great margin from China Unicom. But China Mobile has long struggled to get the hottest handsets due to its TD-SCDMA network, and is the only one of the nation’s three mobile telcos that can’t support the iPhone on 3G. But China Mobile president Li Yue was up to the task of polishing that turd:

Our close cooperation with Nokia is a key contributor to the success of China’s TD [ie: TD-SCDMA 3G] industry, and will further enhance the rapidly growing TD ecosystem. We are excited about this important next step in our partnership, and we look forward to creating an even more vibrant TD industry together.

In rough translation: We need more decent phones, so this is a huge relief.

The new Nokia Lumia 920T will come with some China Mobile crapware apps pre-installed, such as its service center app, and Fetion for group messaging.

Nokia president and CEO Stephen Elop was in Guangzhou for the event in partnership with China Mobile. The Lumia 920 in its more conventional WCDMA trim is expected to come to China Unicom soon as well.

As for rivals, HTC will unveil the 8X and 8S tomorrow at an event in Beijing, taking the two WP8 phones to China Unicom and China Telecom.

[Source: TheNextWeb, and Nokia]

According to Internet World Stats, the growth of internet users in the Asia Pacific region rose from 418 million in 2007 to over one billion in 2012. It also translates to the huge rising trend in the use of social networks, with statistics showing a remarkable 204.9 million Facebook users in Asia.

During the media briefing yesterday, Claus Mortensen, IDC Asia-Pacific’s director for emerging technology research, mentioned that the major driving forces of such visible trends includes the prevalence of a younger workforce in the region, where there is wide acceptance of social media and gadgets – and not forgetting cultural norms such as relationship-focused business dealings. All nations showed similar trends, with a dramatic shift in priorities as most organisations are turning to integrating enterprise social technologies to gain competitive advantage, placing them above well above investments in core networks, cloud computing and business intelligence.

Shaping Good Corporate Netizens

According to the survey ^[1], which is embedded below as an infographic, the top enterprise social tools (which might also be used internally, not just with customers) according to preference are instant messaging, emailing, and company social networks. They’re used for tasks such as internal training and learning management, internal collaboration, and internal knowledge sharing.

One interesting trend to note is that, based on current statistics, countries such as Singapore and Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) are seen to be less proactive to the adoption of such social tools. For instance, 47.1 percent of organisations in the ASEAN region (excluding Singapore) are currently using or planning to integrate enterprise social tools into their organisations, but Singapore and ANZ have only 25 percent each respectively, which is almost half the amount of ASEAN’s figures. However, within the next six months, 25 percent of organisations in both Singapore and ANZ respectively have expressed interest in adopting social tools or services, with ASEAN only having 3.9 percent with plans.

Though there’s broad acceptance of the benefits of implementing enterprise social in the organisation, certain challenges still prevail. Claus Mortensen explains:

Security, compliance, governance and lack of control are cited as the most important inhibitors to implement enterprise social but it is not viable for companies to resist adoption as end-users may turn to internet-based, consumer grade, and potentially less secure options.

He added that the main concern of the implementation should be considered more of a change management issue, rather than the costs incurred or security risks – which is more prevalent in traditional and rigid organisations. It is essential for them to educate their own employees on how to become good IT citizens and also use this as an opportunity to trust and engage their employees. Here’s the infographic:

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

A week ago, we wrote that Microsoft wouldn’t be merging MSN and Skype in China, primarily because Skype isn’t particularly popular there and the company wanted time to associate Skype with the more-popular MSN in users’ minds before attempting any merger or switch. According to an Investor China report today, though, MSN may have a larger userbase than Skype but it is hemorrhaging users at an alarming rate.

Research firm iResearch’s iUserTracker feature reports that MSN now has just over 6 million daily users in China (compare that to QQ’s 190 million), accounting for little more than two percent of China’s web users. Just two years ago, in December 2010, the service had more than 15 million daily users, meaning that it has dropped nearly ten million users over the past couple of years. That’s a pretty rough slide, and it calls into question whether delaying the MSN-Skype merger is likely to be all that effective. If MSN is really this weak and getting weaker in China, Microsoft might actually be better off folding MSN into Skype and trying to start over with a new brand name.

That’s not likely to happen, and since Skype’s numbers have dropped over the past two years too, the takeaway lesson from all of this is probably just that Microsoft has lost the instant messaging game in China already. Up against services like QQ, YY, and Wechat, the company is going to have a tough time gaining ground no matter which brand it ultimately opts to go with. Personally, I think the game is pretty much over at this point, but anything is possible I suppose. Can Microsoft pull a rabbit out of its hat here? Or is it finally going down for the good at the hands of Tencent’s near-total domination?

[Investor China via Sina Tech, Image Source]

According to MSN China GM Liu Zhenyu, MSN will continue to operate as usual in China with no plans for rolling it into Skype in the foreseeable future. There are a few probable reasons for this. One is that Skype’s name recognition is not great in China, and its negative user growth over the past two years suggests it’s not about to overtake the more popular MSN anytime soon. Another is that in China, Skype is partnered with TOM, and TOM would need to be included in any kind of integration program. Industry insiders also say that Microsoft wants time to promote the cooperation between MSN and Skype to Chinese users, essentially hitching Skype’s wagon to MSN’s star and hoping that some of the MSN magic rubs off on Skype.

Skype and TOM haven’t publicized China-specific data, but iResearch data consulted by a reporter from Investor China showed that Skype users in China had dropped by as much as twenty percent over the course of the past two years as new threats like YY, Weixin and even Sina Weibo’s chat features emerged and snatched up some of Skype’s users.

Given that, it makes sense Microsoft doesn’t plan to merge Skype and MSN in China just yet; the result could be that Skype’s low brand recognition could drive MSN users away and into the arms of competitors. So if you’re in China and were looking forward to MSN/Windows Live Messenger and Skype finally getting on the same page, you’re just going to have to keep waiting.

[Investor China via Sina Tech]

Have you ever wanted to speak and hear what you said played back instantly in another language in your own voice? Now you can, according to Microsoft, which has just introduced technology purporting to do just that with English and Chinese. Microsoft says that the technology has a better correct-to-incorrect words ratio than previous attempts at automated translation. Plus, it talks in your own voice, or at least a synthesized simulation of it.

The tech is very impressive, and it was quite accurate in its translation of simpler sentences, but we’re afraid that the translation aspect is still not quite ready for primetime yet. Microsoft is well aware of this, but just for fun, I thought I’d point out a couple of the more blatant examples of areas where the translation robot went awry:

Original English sentence: “So now we’re taking the things that I’m saying and we’re converting them into Chinese text.”
Meaning of translated Chinese sentence: “So now the things we want I shouldn’t be saying, we put them in China.”

Original English sentence: “I’m speaking in English, and hopefully you’ll hear me speak in Chinese in my own voice”
Meaning of translated Chinese sentence: “I am am [sic] speaking in English, hope you can hear me speaking in a Chinese person’s voice.”

So, simultaneous interpreters aren’t out of a job just yet. With that said, the technology is still very impressive. I wasn’t totally sold on the hearing-your-own-voice thing — it still just sounded like robot speech to me — but I have to admit that the software got some sentences right that I wasn’t sure it would. Moreover, some of the errors in translation were really the result of errors in transcription, which means that the tech will get even better at translating when Microsoft can teach it to better understand the original English input. With a few more years of development, the technology could be ready for practical uses, although I don’t think I’d want to use it for anything to important until it has been quite thoroughly tested.

If you’re interested, we’ve embedded the video of Microsoft’s presentation below. The translation discussion begins around 6 minutes in, and the speech-to-speech translation occurs in the last minute and a half, for those who’d like to skip to the highlights:

L-R: The HTC 8X, the Huawei Ascend W1, and the Nokia 920.

An industry source in China, cited by Sohu IT and Marbridge Daily, says that six new Windows Phone 8 (WP8) smartphones are lauching in the country in December. The rollout will mark the debut of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) revamped mobile OS in China, a mere eight months after the initial WP7 found its way onto the local market.

Three phone-makers will be spear-heading the WP8 launch here: Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK), HTC (TPE:2498), and Huawei. These are the six colorful contenders that they have lined up:

• Nokia will unveil the China-bound, WP8-powered Lumia 920, Lumia 920T, and Lumia 820 at an event in Guangzhou on December 5th. The model with the ‘T’ suffix is destined for China Mobile, and supports the requisite TD-SCDMA protocol for 3G.
• HTC will do a local launch for the 8X and 8S the next day in Beijing. The source claims that the models will go to both China Unicom and China Telecom. The 8X is expected to cost just over 4,000 RMB (US$636).
• Huawei will show its Ascend W1 phone sometime in mid-December. It’s not known which telco’s 3G network it will support. With a lowly 480×800 pixels screen, it’ll be the cheapest of the bunch at just 2,500 RMB ($400).

In June of this year we heard that the uptake of WP7 in China has been fairly brisk, and that the country is already the second-biggest market in the world for WP devices – with the US out front.

[Source: Marbridge Daily]

Docomo at CEATEC 2012

As we mentioned yesterday, Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows 8 got off to a bit of a rocky start in Japan recently. A few unfortunate consumers didn’t quite understand that installing the new operating system on their PCs would not magically give their displays touchscreen functionality.

But thankfully, the new operating system will be available on a number of tablets in Japan (ones that do have touchscreens!). And today it was announced that a partnership between Microsoft and NTT Docomo (NYSE:DCM) will make Windows 8 tablets available, targeting corporate users in the country.

The two companies have agreed to cooperate to put Windows 8 tablets on Docomo’s Xi LTE network. The agreement will also include joint marketing and sales efforts targeting corporations.

Speaking of marketing, Microsoft has included an interesting twist to Windows 8 in Japan, with a limited edition version featuring cute anime mascots that has been selling well so far. Been dreaming of a leopard print version of Windows? Microsoft has you covered (see below). This actually isn’t a new tactic for Microsoft, as they rolled out an anime mascot for Windows 7 a few years back as well.

Photo: rocketnews24.com

An NHK news report warns that installing Windows 8 will not turn your PC display intro a touchscreen. I love that they used the yellow alert graphic! And the host doesn’t look condescending at all!

Here’s a fun story going around the Japanese interwebs, courtesy the good folks over on Reddit. There are Japanese media reports saying that many consumers are misunderstanding what happens to your PC when you install the new Windows 8.

After Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) new operating system became available on October 26, many Japanese consumers installed it with the expectation their PC would suddenly have touchscreen capabilities. Of course, if your device doesn’t have touchscreen capabilities already, Windows 8 won’t magically bestow that functionality upon your display.

This misunderstanding might strike most of us as pretty funny. But the sad reality is that for many consumers who aren’t that knowledgable about computer hardware and software, it really isn’t that surprising that some are confused about what they are getting with Windows 8, given that most of the focus these days is on the new touch features.

Microsoft is spending over a billion dollars to market the launch of its new operating system. And while I think the vast majority of users will be just fine with OS, I do hope the folks in Redmond set aside some cash for support calls too.

Playing around with Windows 8 at yesterday’s launch event (see the demo video below) in Singapore’s Esplanade Mall, the whole OS looks impressive. It’ll take any tech-oriented early adopter and a minimal amount of time and effort to understand the new tiles UI – even on a conventional laptop with no touchscreen. Of course, Windows 8 also blurs the line between a laptop and a tablet. Speaking at the launch event, Tracey Fellows, president of Microsoft Asia Pacific, emphasizes that with Windows 8, it is unveiling a reimagined Windows to the world:

Whether you want to consume or create, whether you want to work or play, Windows 8 delivers a no-compromise computing experience. You no longer need to choose between the fun and convenience of a tablet and the power and productivity of a PC.

But not all early reviews have been positive, and some charge the new OS with being clumsy and confusing.

Being someone who is constantly on-the-go but prefers to type on a keyboard for serious work, I appreciate the flexibility that Windows 8 offers. The UX is pretty fast and fluid. On the ‘start’ screen, one can have easy access to apps that can be customized to your own preference. We also had the privilege of Barrie Ooi, product manager of Windows 8 for Microsoft Asia Pacific, giving us all a run through in the video below.

Also in attendance was Todd Cione, chief marketing and operating officer for Microsoft Asia Pacific, who revealed that there are 600 million Windows 7 users globally. A total of 16 million people were selected to test Windows 8, going back to one year ago. Todd claims there are a total of 185 million Windows users in Asia Pacific out of 1.4 billion Windows worldwide, and he firmly believes that there is a lot of room for Windows 8 in terms of adoption in the region.

For users who currently have Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 installed on their PCs, they’re able to download Windows 8 Pro at $39.99 (if their computer meets the minimum requirement) through the end of January 2013. As for those Windows 7 PCs purchased between June 2, 2012 and January 31, 2013, those users can download Windows 8 at $14.99 via the Windows upgrade offer available here.

All photos from @chassit in Beijing.

Enthusiast queues of gadget buyers in Beijing are greeting the launch of Microsoft’s Surface RT tablet. Scheduled for launch as the clock turns midnight and heralds in October 26th, the Chinese electronics chain Suning (SHE:002024), Microsoft’s official launch partner, instead started its sales a few hours earlier, selling Surface RTs to a small but steady stream of queuers this evening.

Twitter user @chassit is on the scene, and he took the images you see here. The man first in line (pictured below) had been waiting since the afternoon, holding the “1” sign that Suning staff gave him to ensure no queue-jumping. By 8:30pm local time, Suning was already swapping cash for gadgets, with the first stream of buyers showing off the Windows 8 machines to the assembled crowds. One odd detail is that Suning was giving away free box-sets of cartons of milk with some purchases – although that’s actually a fairly standard thing in China. Here are some photos of the scene in Beijing this evening:

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) seems keen for Windows 8 to really take off in China, hoping to cut down on the significant rates of piracy in the country which has robbed them of revenue from Windows updates and the Office suite of apps. Windows 8 natively supports Sina Weibo, China hottest Twitter-like service, and has many big-name apps ready for the radical new Windows 8 interface.

[Thanks to Kane Gao, aka @chassit for the images; he’s also a contributor at Chinese blog WPdang.com]

Autonavi’s “AMAP” app for Windows 8 inaction (Click to enlarge)

Microsoft’s most radical new OS, Windows 8, is set to launch tomorrow, and lots of Chinese web companies are ready with apps that make use of the new user interface. China’s Autonavi (NASDAQ:AMAP) reckons it’s the first to make a Windows 8 maps app for use on either a tablet, laptop, or desktop.

The Autonavi app is called AMAP, perhaps borrowed from the company’s stock ticker, which is also the URL it goes by for its China-only maps website (see here). It’s rolling out to the Windows App Store (or whatever Microsoft calls it) right now, awaiting the first installers of the gold-master Windows 8 this weekend.

AMAP for Windows 8 brings all the usual online mapping tools from the company, such as 3D view and location sharing – plus some Windows 8 special features like split-screen support so that other apps can be used with it side by side. Autonavi says it now has apps for all major OSes: iPhone and iPad, Android (phones and tablets, WP, and now Windows 8 too. Though that leaves out Mac.

Autonavi is China’s top mobile maps app, ahead of local rival Baidu Maps by a fraction; Google Maps is sinking slowly in China, now down to third in terms of market share. While it’s harder to discern which maps most Chinese netizens use on their Windows machines, the new AMAP app might endear itself to some new users who are among the Windows 8 early adopters.

Microsoft noted earlier this week that a welcome wave of Chinese apps for Windows 8 make China the “number two market worldwide for all [Windows 8] apps available at launch.” Lots of them have been in beta for months, alongside Microsoft’s public beta version, such as apps for QQ, Sina Weibo, PPTV, and Ctrip.

Autonavi provides the China-specific maps for the much-mocked Apple Maps app, while TomTom covers the rest of the globe.

The AMAP app tile on the Windows 8 homescreen (Click to enlarge)

China is not short of online shopping options – and now there’s one more, with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) today unveiling an official online store for Chinese fans of Windows products. The Microsoft Store for China is now live (see here) and has also put an official local price on the upcoming Surface tablet line-up, which can be booked right now.

The 32GB Windows RT Surface tablet with no smart keyboard cover starts at 3688 RMB (US$586), goes up to 4488 RMB ($713) with the cover, or the 64GB model is 5,288 RMB ($841). There’s no 16GB version because, as Daring Fireball points out, Windows RT is still a lot heftier than iOS.

The new Microsoft Store for China also sells a bunch of Microsoft Office packages – but, for the moment, nothing else. Yes, there’s no sign yet of pre-ordering Windows 8. That’s in contrast to most other official MS stores around the world, which also sell versions of Windows, Xboxes, and various accessories.

The Chinese tech blog WPDang points out that the new China online store brings brings Microsoft’s total of such e-commerce sites up to 230 markets around the world.

[Source: WPDang - article in Chinese]

But Windows is a platform that’s as ubiquitous as water in China, and Kinect for Windows stands a much better chance of widepsread acceptance there. Recongnizing this, Microsoft will launch Kinect for Windows in China this month. If you’re a Chinese consumer, though, you can’t run out and buy a Kinect just yet; this release is really only for developers and comes with the Kinect SDK so that devs can create new applications for the Kinect on the Windows platform. That may be disappointing news to gamers who were hoping to play Kinect games on their Windows PCs, but it should be good news to everyone in the long run, as creative devs with the hardware and the official SDK should be able to create cool applications Microsoft couldn’t even dream of so that when the Kinect is made available for consumer purchase, it’ll be useful for a lot more than just dancing games.

It’s not clear when China can expect a consumer launch of Kinect for Windows, but it certainly seems to be quite a ways down the road. That’s good news for the folks behind the CT-510, China’s motion-sensing entertainment system that has been described by some as being a bit of a Kinect ripoff. The CT-510′s hardware doesn’t work with Windows and costs $600, so the launch of a consumer-facing Kinect that would almost certainly cost a fraction of the CT-510′s price and would work on Windows could be very bad news for CT-510 developers Eedoo.

[Sina Tech via Tech in Asia Chinese]

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) says it has settled a legal case against China’s 3322.org (recently rebranded as PubYun), which was identified as a major malware hub – and even a host for the Nitol botnet. No financial damages seem to have been involved, according to the short piece that the AP put together from a Microsoft source. The crux of the deal is that 3322 and its owner, Peng Yong, have agreed to work together with Microsoft and Chinese authorities to weed out the cybercriminals who are using the hosting service.

This diversion of illegal activity on 3322 forms an effective sinkhole, filtering the malware-oriented activity towards Chinese authorities who can use it to piece together criminal evidence.

Malware is a headache for Microsoft, creating a viral effect whereby infected computers can themselves serve unwittingly as botnets, distributing yet more viruses or being harnessed for DDoS attacks on various websites.

The legal action was instigated by Microsoft last month in the US – though 3322 appears to be based in Shanghai, China. In its initial court filings, a Microsoft representative detailed how the 3322-powered malware was even being found on some low-end brand-new computers, such as several made by fakesters Hedy. Microsoft explained last month:

In short, 3322.org is a major hub of illegal internet activity, used by criminals every minute of every day to pump malware and instructions to the computers of innocent people worldwide.

Microsoft will be hoping that 3322 is no longer such a criminal underworld, leaving the computer giant to go play whack-a-mole wherever the malware peddlers turn up next.

[Source: AP via HuffPo]

The newest web browser stats from CNZZ show a surprising development: Apple’s Safari web browser – which is preinstalled on all its Macs and is also available for Windows – has a greater desktop browsing market share than either Chrome or Firefox in China. It makes Safari into China’s fourth most popular web browser with 2.79 percent of all observed usage on the web.

In contrast, in the latest CNZZ stats for August 2012, Chrome is sixth with 2.41 percent share, while Firefox languishes in eighth with a mere 1.42 percent. Indeed, despite all the campus outreach in China that Mozilla, makers of Firefox, has told us about, Firefox has lost market share in the country in the past year (see stats below).

Safari’s progress shows that Chinese consumers might be using their beloved, shiny Macbooks in OS X, rather than sticking a pirated copy of Windows XP on Parallels – as so many people do. Or – gasp! – some folks are actually using Safari for Windows. Here’s August 2012 contrasted with the same point last year:

Of course, China still loves Internet Explorer (IE). And yes, that’s IE6, the decades-old virus-magnet, that’s the most popular version. It seems Microsoft’s decision to push browser auto-updates can’t kill it off. China still has epidemic-level usage of IE6. Even Microsoft wants rid of it, as infected PCs can become malware botnets. Microsoft’s own ‘death to IE6’ website (not the official name) says that China has 21.3 percent of all the world’s users of the old browser. That’s still way too high, as all other nation’s have updated and moved on.

As for the other rivals, the anti-virus vendor Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU), which recently burst into the search engine market in China, is in a very strong second place. Its web browser is a key part of its traffic-channeling strategy, and its 360 Safe Browser now uses the company’s own 360 Search by default. That’s gotta be a painful switcheroo for Baidu and Google. The only other desktop browser ahead of Safari is Sogou (run by Sohu (NASDAQ:SOHU)), which has a search engine of its own as well.

Yesterday, Microsoft senior VP Shen Xiangyang announced Bing’s new short-term strategy for China’s search market: differentiate itself by going after the 5 percent of searches that happen in English rather than trying to compete with Baidu in Chinese. The Chinese language search also just launched a few new features, including a developers’ page, but apparently Bing is looking to English, not Chinese, to crack the China search market.

Shen says five percent of China’s search market belongs to English searches, and most of those are from high-end (i.e., monied and therefore valuable) users. Bing’s plan is to offer then better English search, translation, and dictionary services.

On the one hand, this makes total sense. Baidu’s English language search is terrible, and Google.com.hk isn’t always reliable. When my VPN was broken, I’ll admit I did find myself using Bing from time to time to find things.

But therein lies the rub: what percent of those 5 percent of English searches come over VPNs, where Bing will have to compete with Google on even footing? Certainly, nearly every expatriate in China has a VPN. And many high-end Chinese users –the sorts of people who would be searching in English — have VPNs too. Is there really a market there big enough to make any money off? I’m skeptical, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Whatever the result, China’s search market seems to be experiencing quite the shakeup between this and the ongoing Baidu-Qihoo spat. That’s probably a good thing for users no matter who ends up in the chairs when the music stops. It seems pretty obvious Baidu will be one of them. Is there really room for Bing to squeeze in too?

[Sina Tech via Techweb]

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has decided to tackle some online fraudsters in China head on. It’s filing a lawsuit against a Chinese site which the US company says is a hub for a new kind of malware that’s being found on some brand-new Microsoft Windows machines sold in the country.

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, an undercover Microsoft employee, bought a Windows computer in southern China, only to find, in his own words:

As soon as we powered on this particular computer, of its own accord without any instruction from us, it began reaching out across the internet, attempting to contact a computer unfamiliar to us.

The malware was identified as Nitol, and traced back to servers belonging to the hosting service 3322.org (which now redirects to PubYun.com, which seems to be its new branding), which is owned by Chinese businessman Peng Yong. Microsoft alleges that the hosting service is home to Nitol and a huge amount of other kinds of online viruses – over 500 strains in all. Apparently, 3322.org is notorious and has been for some time. Back in 2008, the Russian anti-virus maker Kaspersky Lab claimed that 40 percent of all malware programs made partial use of 3322.org. So it’d be a huge victory for Microsoft if it can bring down 3322/PubYun once and for all. But with the lawsuit filed in the US, and the rogue hosting service apparently being Shanghai-based, it’s not clear how it’s going to help.

Malware menace

Clearly, malware on a brand-new machine – which should only come pre-loaded with the finest bloatware – is hugely alarming to Microsoft. The offending Windows laptop was made by Hedy, a shanzhai and shady maker of HTC phone rip-offs and other random shit that it churns out.

Microsoft explains in its court filings:

In short, 3322.org is a major hub of illegal internet activity, used by criminals every minute of every day to pump malware and instructions to the computers of innocent people worldwide.

An infographic made by Norton anti-virus last year showed that 85 percent of Chinese adults had been the victim of cybercrime – if that stat can be believed. But there’s no doubt that malware and other viruses can lead to things like stolen identities or hacked passwords, which then leads to other kinds of cyber crimes that can end up costing people real money.

[Source: Bloomberg Businessweek]

If you’re an Asian developer looking to get your apps onto the Windows store, today is your lucky day. Microsoft announced today that in anticipation of the October launch of Windows 8, the windows store is now open to app developers from 82 new app submission markets, for a total of more than 120. The company promises devs that once Windows 8 is out, the store will serve customers in over 200 countries and regions and offer apps in more than 100 languages.

Although this may not have been the most opportune moment for an announcement like this — everyone is thinking about iPhone apps right now for obvious reasons — it’s still good news for the many Asian devs eager to get their apps on the Windows platform. We expect to see Windows 8 devices perform decently in the mobile space in Asia, but there’s no reason to count desktop apps out of the mix either when so many in Asia are using PCs at home and at work. We look forward to seeing what APAC’s creative app developers can come up with!

[via Windows Store Developer Blog]

Yes, it’s Zhou Hongyi again. But there isn’t any war of words this time round. Earlier today at the China Internet Conference, the Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU) CEO was talking about the future – and a possible collaboration – of its 360 Search engine. As Sina Tech reported, 360 Search will launch an open platform and they will also pick up Google’s advertising system on its search engine.

Zhou mentioned that 360 Search has plenty to learn from Google, especially in the aspect of advertising on a search engine platform. He also shared that 360 will adopt the categorization of paid and unpaid search results, which is mainly adopted by Google. At the same time, 360 will launch an open platform to allow more quality vertical searches on its search engine.

Zhou commented (translations are mine):

Search engines should be an open platform, where distributions are spread across to many other sites. […] Search engines should not just contain data and fail to put it to better use.

Zhou also reflected that there are plenty of high quality vertical searches out in the market that no one gives a damn about. He is open to the idea of working with smaller web companies, so as to give its users a more professional set of search results. Earlier this week, 360 Search focused on its users’ experience with the launch of the “like Project” allowing social search recommendations – like with Google and G+ – in its own 360 Browser for Windows.

Oh well, it’s tough to exactly figure out what’s on Zhou Hongyi’s mind. We never seem to be able to predict his next move. However, be it a gimmick or a strategy, Zhou is clearly trying to make more friends now rather than creating yet more enemies. The Qihoo CEO also hinted at possible collaborations with Google, Microsoft and local rival Sogou; the plans will be revealed in the near future, he added.

[Source: Sina Tech, Image]

PPTV is one of China’s leading internet video players, but it has always been less web-based and more client-based than most of its competitors. In Microsoft, PPTV is getting a partner that could help it expand internationally and also one that offers a robust, reliable, and mature platform in Azure. In PPTV, Microsoft gets local expertise and an entry point into China’s internet video market.

It’s not entirely clear exactly what ATN is going to offer for users — the strategic agreement between the two companies was just signed today (pictured) and the service hasn’t launched yet. But it’s quite clear that Microsoft is working to make further inroads in China. Zhang Yaqin, Microsoft’s corporate VP and chairman of the company’s Asia-Pacific R&D, is quoted in the press release as saying:

Microsoft is making solid progress of bringing Windows Azure to China through collaboration with local partners. We are very pleased to see that Windows Azure enables PPTV to deliver a global online TV service platform. It’s a great example of how Microsoft supports China internet companies’ innovation, efficiency and sustainable growth in the global market.

But will ATN bring users to Microsoft’s Azure? We’ll have to wait and see. There doesn’t seem to be much ATN-related discussion on Sina Weibo just yet, but it’s definitely a bit early for users to be getting excited about something like this, so PPTV and Microsoft will be looking to build buzz as the platform moves toward an actual launch.

There are rumors in the tech industry in China that Microsoft-owned Skype and its China partner, TOM (HKG:2383), have already effectively ended their relationship after not renewing their partnership. Marbridge Daily has a good account of the rumors that it sourced from local news portal Tencent Tech, saying that the working agreement ended last year and that TOM is now running its TOM-Skype service out-of-contract and on a skeleton staff after reportedly firing a great number of staffers thought to be involved in the joint-venture.

We’ve reached out to Microsoft China, and will update if we find someone who can comment.

[UPDATE five hours after publishing: Peter Schloss, former CFO and CLO at TOM Online, informs me via Twitter that: "The TOM-Skype partnership has no specific term length. I'd question the accuracy of these reports"].

Marbridge writes:

When Tencent Tech called Wang Zhiyong, Tom Online’s employee in charge of Skype operations, Wang said he was away on business, adding that as Microsoft keeps a tight rein on discussions, he was unable to comment. Li Xiuli, Tom Online’s marketing director for online value-added services, said she had not been informed about the matter. […]

When speaking to several former Tom employees who recently left the company, Tencent Tech was told that the company has begun “transformative” layoffs of employees working on Skype, gaming, and the original online literature site Huangjian Shumeng, among other services. Layoffs have affected more than 100 people so far, with Skype employees accounting for such a large proportion of laid-off individuals that technical staff are reportedly almost all gone.

Word is that TOM Group execs are not seeing eye-to-eye with Skype over the China business, with Tom CEO Yang Guomeng thought to be in favor of dispensing with Skype altogether.

In addition to its Skype partnership, TOM Group runs news portals, online videos, and e-commerce sites, among other things. Its TOM-Skype partnership made worldwide headlines in 2008 when it was exposed how TOM was using keyword surveillance to censor some political or frowned-upon words, such as any references to Tibet during the racially-motivated unrest and violence in the region that was going on at that time.

[Source: Marbridge Daily]

Nokia pushing its new WP7 devices, like the Lumia 800, in China. (Images: Techinasia.com)

The mobile ad platform AdDuplex has released new stats that suggest that China is now the second-largest nation of Windows Phone (WP) users in the world – despite Microsoft’s new mobile OS only launching officially in the nation in March of this year. The figures show that China appears to be home to 14 percent of all WP enthusiasts, according to collated ad impressions, behind only America’s 26 percent share:

Though this is no measure of sales, it’s interesting that China’s share of hits on the WP-exclusive AdDuplex platform has more than doubled since the same stats were looked at for January 2012. Even at that time, a couple of months before WP7 even rolled out in China, the country was still in joint fifth place with six percent:

Microsoft is boasting that its WP OS has over 2,000 Chinese-made apps ready for users, so they won’t miss out on one ounce of QQ-ing, Weibo-ing, or Taobao-ing. Plus, Nokia’s good-looking Lumia 800 and 900 models are piquing the interest of local phone buyers – but we’ll have to wait a while to see some hard and official sales figures.

AdDuplex was founded by Lithuanian-born geek Alan Mendelevich, and is an in-app cross-promotion and ad platform.

[Source: AdDuplex blog]

A Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) employee has confirmed in a company blog that Sina Weibo, the popular Twitter-like social network, will be fully integrated into the upcoming Windows 8 final release. The Weibo tie-ins will come in the People app (pictured above), which is being described as a “modern, social address book.” It means that Weibo will likely become integral to WP8, the next version of Microsoft’s mobile OS.

The confirmation comes from Jeff Kunins, who works on the Windows Live team. He mentioned Sina Weibo while at the same time getting a dig in at Google for its lack of an API for G+:

As you can see in the screenshots we continue to add partners such as China’s Sina Weibo, and we would be happy to see Google provide the equivalent APIs for Google+ like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn do.

It means that Weibo’s 300 million strong social network can sync up their microblogging contacts in Windows 8, as well as quickly tweet to Weibo from within the People app and elsewhere in the desktop and tablet OS, such as in SkyDrive. The other main contact sync and mail options will be for Hotmail (of course), Exchange email, and Google accounts (excluding G+).

Weibo will also be integrated into the next version of Apple’s desktop OS, Mountain Lion, when it launched next month.

If you want to see the new People app in Windows 8 being given a run-through by Jeff himself, here’s a video – high quality mp4 | low quality mp4 – that also shows a fleeting glimpse of the Sina Weibo option.

[Sources: MS’ Jeff Kunins; via LiveSide]

App engines, cloud power, server architecture. All familiar – and expensive – challenges facing startups. To give advice, and debate how Indonesian entrepreneurs best approach the cloud for the apps or websites, we’ve assembled three experts in this area for a discussion, called “Cloud and Entrepreneurship in Indonesia,” moderated by Eric Meyer, the CEO and founder of Nubefy. The panelists are (from left to right in above photo):

• Norman Sasono, architect advisor at Microsoft Indonesia
• Chua Sher Vin, APAC director at RightScale
• Adi Kusma, president director at Biznet Networks

#15:12: Norman starts off with the announcement that, starting today, Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform is now available in Indonesia. Chau notes that his company, RightScale, partners with Amazon’s AWS, Softlayer, and MS’ Azure as well, to give startups a choice.

#15:14: “Cost is the most important,” says Adi, who works at Indonesia’s biggest homegrown cloud company, before then conceding that a startups resources and needs are the next factors.

#15:15: “IT is being democratized,” says the Microsoft “technology evangelist,” in that huge computing power is now available to any developer with these cloud platforms. Plus, they can be scaled easily, and paid for on a usage basis to save costs.

#15:17: Chau agrees that the barriers/hurdles have been lowered, and now IT becomes more of a business factor and not a huge technical challenge.

#15:18: Adi believes that companies are now coming around to the idea of the cloud, with, for example, airline companies now willing to put their ticketing systems on such platforms. Then they add more infrastructure resources as they need them and feel comfortable with it. And so they have faith in its security.

Norman emphasizes the security and privacy aspect: at MS, not even Azure employees can access the data, and if any government makes a request to view something, then the subscriber’s permission will be sought.

But, of course, there’s still a huge responsibility on developers to build their apps well, as no cloud platform can prevent you from, Norman gives as an example, a SQL injection hack attack in a buggy app.

#15:22: In terms of trends, Norman sees many games, e-commerce sites, and SaaS elements being put onto the public cloud, as well as smartphone apps. Some startups also tend to use a hybrid system, using some power from their private servers.

#15:26: Being able to scale, and get better speeds, are two more key reasons for making this leap to the cloud, says Biznet’s Adi.

#15:29: Another option is ‘Infrastructure as a Service’ (IaaS) as opposed to ‘Platform as a Service’ (PaaS), which gives you, says the MS Azure man, an “empty box solution” minus the OS. But if you choose PaaS, you can automate a lot of lower demand times to save a lot of money, which works especially well for app developers who can chart when users might be using less cloud power.

#15:31: “We own one of the largest data centres in Indonesia,” says Adi, and so its infrastructure supports a world-class app even if you’re based in, say, Malang or any other further-flung place in the country.

#15:33: “People want choice,” says Chau, thereby recommending his company’s solution as one that’s a lot more flexible in terms of latency, price, location, with customers of RightScale able to choose between its key cloud partners.

#15:34: But are the cost savings real, asks our moderator, Eric? Of course things fail and break, admits Chau, and that’s why startups still need to think of how to recover from server issues.

#15:35: “We’re at 99.95 percent” of uptime, says Norman – as are numerous other cloud platforms. 100 percent is impossible.

This is a part of our coverage of Startup Asia Jakarta 2012, our startup event running on June 8 and 9. You can follow along on Twitter at @startupasia, on our Facebook page, on Google Plus, or via RSS.

The China Telecom E-Surfing app store on my phone today. Note the two Angry Birds clone games that are featured!

All three of China’s mobile telcos have their own app stores, offering up – and sometimes selling – a mix of mostly Android smartphone and JAVA feature-phone apps. And now the smallest of the three, China Telecom (NYSE:CHA; HKG:0728), has revealed some user stats for its Tianyi – or “E-Surfing,” to give it its English moniker – app store and said that it’ll cooperate more deeply with Microsoft on the Windows Phone (WP) mobile OS.

The E-Surfing stats were revealed by China Telecom’s app market head, Dong Tao. He said the the store – at 189store.com – now has 60 million users, 20 million monthly downloads, and a grand total of 100,000 apps covering Android, Samsung Brew, and the older Windows Mobile 6 platforms. But those figures pale in comparison to some of the startup third-party Android app stores in the country. Just last month, one such site, 91 Mobile, said that it saw 900 million downloads (including updates) in the first quarter of this year.

As for buddying-up even more with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), it’s not clear if that will entail WP7 apps replacing the obsolete WinMo 6 ones in the E-Surfing store, or whether it pertains just to more marketing and support for its sales of the CDMA version of Nokia’s Lumia 800. But WP7 is not so open as the old WinMo 6 in terms of side-loading apps, and so – unless jail-broken – WP users need to use the official Marketplace. And so it’s more likely that China Telecom’s store will aggregate and link to a bunch of apps in the Marketplace in future. In addition, Dong Tao said that his company would engage more with WP app developers and offer up its services to them, such as using the telco’s testing facilities or its cloud platform.

We’ll have to wait and see how that benefits Microsoft’s new mobile OS in China, but it certainly needs more friends in its battle against the dominant Android and the strong iOS.

[Source: Chinabyte - article in Chinese]

Microsoft’s local portal, MSN China, has revealed that it has grown to 50 to 60 million active monthly users in the country, as it continues its battles against home-grown news and entertainment offerings from the likes of Sina, Netease, and Tencent. In addition, MSN China’s GM, Liu Zhenyu, said that the company is planning a move into the Chinese e-commerce market, and that such a shift would coincide with its search engine, Bing, coming out of its beta testing period in the country.

If we cast our minds back to last November, we’ll recall how Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) first e-tailing effort in China was sent to the deadpool as the ‘MSN Mall’ Yobrand women’s fashion site failed to compete against local e-commerce giants such as Tmall. It’s not clear if it’ll again be a fashion-oriented site, and no time-frame was specified.

Mr. Liu also outlined, as reported by Sina Tech a three-point plan of attack for his eight-year old cn.msn.com portal: pushing business growth through more effective advertising; some paid services; and, the afore-mentioned new e-commerce initiative. The initial two areas are already covered by the Microsoft local subsidiary, leaving the latter to be conjured up.

A representative of MSN China in Beijing explained to us this afternoon how the portal generates its revenue:

The first one is from display advertisements based on the MSN portal and Windows Live products. The second one comes from Bing search engine advertising revenue. This includes providing e-business services to Chinese enterprises […] such as Bing adCenter [and the] MSN M+ program [for SME] internet marketing and branding. The third source is from assisting Microsoft to manage mobile internet products, such as the Windows Phone Marketplace, manage apps, and provide display advertisements for apps.

And so MSN China also runs the local version of the Windows Phone Marketplace, which went live in March right after Nokia launched its WP7 smartphones in Beijing.

In the past, MSN China has not been able to turn its tens of millions of readers into online shoppers, so it’s going to be an even greater challenge the second time around. There are already plenty of big-name and smaller niche e-commerce sites in the country, covering pretty much every product area.

As for Bing China, the localized version of its search engine, Mr. Liu pointed out that, despite its tie-up with Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) to provide English-language search results and some other mutual working areas, Baidu ads will not be a part of Bing China.

On Friday tech blogs big [1] and small were running a story citing Microsoft as the source of an interesting factoid. The stories all varied in their phrasing, of course, but most of them were pointing to a post by Dutch website Emerce.nl which had the headline that Windows Phone in China is bigger than the iPhone [2], to the tune of seven percent market share. That claim was said to come from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), and its Greater China COO Michel van der Bel.

And as much as we love interesting market share figures, this one just smelled a little bit funny. Windows Phone looks like a great mobile operating system, and very well could overtake the iPhone eventually. But this quick? It only launched two months ago, and my colleagues in China tell me they haven’t seen very many in the wild yet. I suppose it is possible given the current stage of the iPhone life-cycle [3], and the fact that Windows Phone is brand new in China.

So we got in touch with representatives from Microsoft for Greater China by email on Friday and then by phone today asking if this market share figure originated from Microsoft. Just now the company has issued the following statement, in English and Chinese:

While we are encouraged by the progress Windows Phone has made since its launch in China two months ago, Microsoft does not give out marketshare information.

So does this mean that Microsoft nor its Greater China COO Michel van der Bel did not recently say it had more market share in China than the iPhone? We immediately followed up on this directly, but Microsoft has not replied, despite generally being prompt to answer before now. That leaves us to draw our own conclusions, and I can only assume a possible mis-statement or mis-quote was made at some point perhaps, leading to the subsequent flood of reports hailing a possibly premature victory for Windows Phone in China.

As for the actual market share, we don’t have any figures for the last two months, but numbers for Q4 2011 from Analysys International last month put iOS at 5.7 percent, and the Windows Mobile (not to be confused with Windows Phone) at 1.2 percent. Android has the largest share of the market with 68.4, according to that report.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced today that Pixel Media will be the exclusive advertising representative for Skype in Hong Kong.

Skype will now be available as an advertising option for online and mobile advertising, and advertisers will also be able to reach other Microsoft properties, says Leslie Chu, the company’s general manager of advertising in Hong Kong and Taiwan:

We’re excited that advertisers in Hong Kong can now be part of the Skype experience. By including Skype into MSN, Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail, we are able to offer advertisers unparalleled reach across very intimate and unique communication platforms.

Pixel Media’s CEO Kevin Huang noted that his company is pleased to have been selected by Microsoft, pointing out the importance of a platform like Skype in the digital advertising landscape in the region. In addition to Hong Kong, we’re told that in the Asia region, advertising is available on Skype in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Japan.

Indeed it was just last year we when saw Japanese advertising agency Dentsu sign a deal to be Skype’s exclusive advertiser in Japan, that particular agreement focusing on display ads in the “Skype Home area,” for Windows only. This partnership with Pixel Media, we are informed this afternoon, is also for the Windows platform only.

The announcement also notes that the destination resort Galaxy Macau is the first advertiser to get on board.

According to the team at Julu Mobile here at the GMIC G-Startup competition, online ad spending in China is at $9 billion – but mobile advertising spend occupies only eight percent of the pie. With more people spending more time on mobile, there is certainly a growing potential which Julu Mobile aims to tap into and transform the mobile monetization experience.

The Shanghai-based company wants to solve three key problems:

1. irrelevant mobile content
2. a lack of engagement with advertisements
3. most users do not trust or like mobile apps, trusting only recommendations from family and friends

They’re looking to bring desktop-like advertisements to mobile, providing more personalized and engaging mobile consumer interaction. There will be Julu technology in place to predict the interest and intent of users, and ads will be served to users through the Julu content network.

For instance, Julu detects that the user is a female, and loves to shop, and so an ad from an e-commerce site Taobao will be pulled from its content network and displayed for the user to see. This should create greater interactivity between the user and the advertisement (unlike with text-based ads) and increase the purchasing rates on smartphones.

The team is made up of technology experts with top-class backgrounds from Google, Microsoft, Starcite, and Tokbox, and claims to have a deep understanding of what Chinese want.

Today Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has opened the doors on its first-ever Microsoft Technology Centre (MTC) workspace in Southeast Asia, which sits at One Marina Boulevard in Singapore. The US company has promised it will invest S$23 million (US$14 million) over the next five years for running the centre.

[UPDATED on April 24th, 4 hours after publishing: Added photographs supplied by Microsoft of the ribbon-cutting ceremony (done virtually using a Kinect!) and more images of the MTC facilities].

The new Singapore MTC – much like ones in New York or Beijing – is a place for collaborative workshops for Microsoft customers, where they can engage with MTC staff in briefings, sessions, and other technical courses. The Singapore MTC features, Microsoft tells us, an interactive zone, two development suites, an executive briefing centre, an envisioning centre, a consumer experience space, a server display wall, a device wall, and a partner solutions wall. With all those walls, I hope there are plenty of Windows. (Sorry). The idea behind these spaces – there are now 27 worldwide – is that third-party developers – across both desktop, mobile, and cloud services – get to work closely with the company. Jessica Tan, Microsoft Singapore’s MD, explained the attraction:

The ‘experience first’ approach is a key differentiator for MTC, allowing our customers to ‘see, discuss and try‟’before organisations incur actual costs in implementing scenarios. We believe it will make a huge difference to organisations, to enable the adoption of cutting-edge technologies at their own pace while saving time and money in the process.

At the ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this morning, Singapore’s Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Dr. Yaacob Ibrahim (pictured above, and in the photo below this), opened the facility, alongside Ms. Tan. An accompanying press release says that, pretty soon, “Microsoft also plans to include made-in-Singapore innovations [in its MTC] to provide greater exposure to local software companies.”

In addition to the new space, Microsoft highlighted how it has “invested over S$4.7 billion in Singapore” since 1990. Some local tech companies and startups have already received tours of the new 7,000 square feet MTC, which is in the high-rise known locally as the NTUC building. If you want to drop in and take a look, here’s the centre’s new page on the MTC minisite.

Hosted in Bandung, the Windows 8 Boot Camp by Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) a few weeks back produced no less than 44 applications for Windows 8. All of the applications, which were made by top Indonesian developers, and are ready to compete in global markets through Windows Store. All of the applications will be launched at the same time as Windows 8 launch in Indonesia, rumoured to be around the fourth quarter this year.

The three-day workshop consisted of application development using the latest features of Windows 8, including Metro Apps, Live Tile, and Charm Bar. It was not only developing a concept, but developers had a hands-on experience building Windows 8 applications where they saw their ideas materialize into prototype apps.

Farid Zulkarnain, the EVP of business development of Navcore Nextology, a partner of Microsoft Indonesia said:

In this workshop, we prepared and will keep preparing top apps to be able to crack the market. Indonesia has a high competence and a lot of talented web developers who can apply their skills directly with HTML, HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS to build Windows 8 Apps. The workshop was successful and a lot of developers are interested to join the next one.

The Windows Store approach will open opportunities for Indonesian developers, not only to reach PC users but also tablet users and even game consoles (Xbox). One highly regarded developer, Batista Harahap, CIO of Urbanesia also applauded Windows 8:

If you compare to other platforms, Windows 8 could provide a richer UI/UX. In addition, the context you want to display can be driven (by push notification) from the server thus eliminating the pulling mechanism. From concept to production, a lot of development time is saved.

Microsoft is faced with the the challenge of ensuring those who access the app from PC, tablet, and X-Box will have the same experience. This can lead to confusion for developers, similar to what happened with Android. So we’ll have to wait and see how Microsoft can push Windows 8 as a attractive platform for developers, and specifically, how the developer community receives it in Indonesia.

Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone platform has just given itself an interesting linguistic edge in China by adding support for translating to/from Chinese in its Bing Translator app. This now works for text, voice, and even visual inputs using the OCR tech that allows written words to be scanned and converted in real-time (pictured above). And it’s free. Neither iOS nor Android has such a tool in a single app for free, and it bests the capabilities of Apple’s Siri and Google’s Voice Actions if you ignore the app commands element.

The app 'reading' and translating a menu. Click to enlarge.

The Bing Translator app added much of these as new features earlier this week, and also incorporated downloadable language packs so that the whole app is still functional offline. That’s especially useful when traveling overseas so that you don’t rack up exorbitant data roaming charges.

Of course, this app’s new skill can be of use to tourists to China as well as to locals who want to translate something from Chinese to English, or to any other of the supported languages. The speak-and-translate function could also be useful to Chinese consumers, allowing you to try and have a flowing conversation in a foreign tongue with a bit of hi-tech help.

But the killer feature of such apps is the OCR point-and-scan, giving you an instant understanding of text when you’re not sure how to even read it. Folks using iOS or Android could get this for free with Tencent’s QQ Hui Yan app which we reviewed last year, or for a premium you could get the impressive and educational Pleco app. Though the Bing Translator app also supports a slew of other languages, such as Spanish, Dutch, Slovak, Thai, and many more. Note that where I did review those afore-mentioned apps, I’ve not tried Bing’s updated offering as I don’t have a Windows Phone to test it on.

If you’re on WP7, grab the free update to the app in the Marketplace, or check out this demo video made by the Bing team:

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has won a major contract from Indian authorities that will see its cloud computing services, such as Microsoft Office Web Apps, used in more than 10,000 technical colleges and educational institutes throughout India.

The win for the Microsoft Live@edu package came over rival offers from IBM and Google, and will be implemented in the coming three months. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) board oversees more than 7 million students and nearly 500,000 faculty members in India. The deal – of which no financial terms have been revealed – makes AICTE into Microsoft’s largest cloud customer to date. The company already has over 10,000 schools on board around the world.

All the Indian tech college students and their teachers will have a whole bunch of new web apps to learn, such as MSN instant-messaging, Microsoft Exchange online email and calendars, SharePoint, Lync, and 25GB of SkyDrive file storage. Plus, Microsoft Office 365 for education will be rolled-out later this year when it launches. It’s essentially all the stuff that the youngsters will encounter a couple of years later when they’re out in the workplace.

Dr. S. S. Mantha, chairman of AICTE, said in a press release issued jointly with Microsoft:

Microsoft’s cloud platform will make for a truly progressive ecosystem and contribute to the country’s technical education by providing a better communication and collaboration platform for institutes and students.

The statement also lauded “Microsoft’s comprehensive commitment to education across all the company’s products and programmes” as partly the reason for it not choosing Google Apps or IBM’s solution. Its search engine rival does actually have specialist Google Apps for Education to offer, but it didn’t make the grade this time round.

Microsoft India’s managing director, Sanket Akerkar, welcomed the new project, and said that such a platform given to the youngsters could “empower not just teachers and students but collectively India as a nation.”

Deployment of all those Live@edu web apps is expected to be done by this summer.

And while it might seem like that’s an insignificant number of people, it isn’t. Certainly, console gaming is far less popular in China than PC gaming, especially if you don’t consider the Wii. But according Lisa Hanson of Niko Partners, a research firm that tracks video game markets in Asia, the number of Xbox 360 users in China isn’t insignificant at all. Back in 2009, she estimated that over 600,000 360s had been brought into China and sold over the previous year. I got in touch with her myself via email to see if she had any newer numbers, and while she didn’t have any specific Xbox numbers, she did tell me: “Last we estimated there were about 1.7 million grey market console sales per year in China.”

That number is down from previous years — there were 2-3 million console sales in China in 2008 — which shouldn’t be surprising that current gen consoles are starting to look a bit long in the tooth. But it does indicate that even now, hundreds of thousands of Chinese people are likely buying hacked Xboxes each year. The total install base for China must be at least 2-3 million, which means that Microsoft and third party developers are missing out on big chunks of change since they don’t net anything from pirated game sales. The Chinese government is also losing a lot of potential money it could make by taxing the import and sale of these consoles and games.

Go East, young man. Then go digital.

Assuming that the the government is unwilling to reverse its mostly nonsensical and ignored console ban, though, there is one thing I think Microsoft could do to open up at least a small stream of revenue from China: enable day-one downloads of all Xbox 360 games via the Live Marketplace. Although most Chinese gamers are likely to balk at the thought of yearly subscription to an online service on top of what will seem like exorbitant prices for new games, Microsoft can almost certainly convert at least a small percentage of Xbox users who would be willing to pay the extra money for the privilege of being able to play online and getting access to the games they want quickly, easily, and reliably. And according to a very recent Niko survey, nearly two-thirds of Chinese gamers are paying to play, so the conversion rate might not be quite as low as some might suspect.

Of course, there are also a lot of reasons why this wouldn’t work: Mircosoft would need to add support for some kind of Chinese payment system like Alipay to even have the hope of attracting anyone but the most dedicated customers. Then there’s the fact that many of these games aren’t properly localized, although many of the popular games do have Hong Kong localizations that could be made accessible to mainland gamers as well. The biggest obstacle is the price, and with plenty of free PC gaming options to choose from, there’s not exactly a huge demand for online Xbox gaming here.

That said, it’s not all about China anyway. Digital distribution is the future. No, scratch that, digital distribution is the present, and even the past. In a world where Steam has been serving PC gamers the world over with day-one game downloads for years, it’s ridiculous that Xbox gamers still have to worry about tracking down a physical disk. Moreover, digital distribution gives Microsoft total control over the distribution of games, eliminates supply issues, and cuts used game retailers out of the picture entirely. Why wouldn’t Microsoft want to do this?

Of course, the short answer is that they do. There are already rumblings that the next generation of consoles — which we likely won’t see for at least another couple years — will have more thorough digital delivery options, but it’s already possible to buy and download some full games via the internet right now. Why doesn’t Microsoft allow more games to be downloaded directly? Probably because of the complex web of agreements it has with third party developers, publishers, and retailers that stock its console.

I know my dream of day-one downloads of new games is just that — a dream — until at least the next console generation. But seriously, Microsoft (and Sony), give it some thought. If it works for Steam on the PC, it can work for you on a console. And while you’re not about to start making billions from Chinese gamers as long as your systems remain technically illegal here, China might add a little something to your revenue stream! I know I would spend more money on buying legit games from China if that process didn’t require me to import them myself from the US (slow, a pain) or try to find a trustworthy Taobao vendor who has imported one themselves (slightly less slow, but still a pain, and expensive).

We’re only two days away from Nokia’s (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) desperately needed second-coming in China in which it will launch a couple of Microsoft WP7-powered phones. One news site, WPDang, has it on good authority that the Nokia Lumia 800 will be set at the official price of 3,699 RMB (US$585).

This pertains to the Lumia 800c model which is CDMA, and is therefore heading to China Telecom (NYSE:CHA; HKG:0728). And while that would make the phone 700 RMB ($111) cheaper than the telco’s iPhone 4S with a one-year contract (at the cheapest 3G package entry point), it’s worth remembering that the Nokia phone, for all its good looks, doesn’t have anywhere near as impressive a screen (just 800×480 pixels) as on the latest iPhone.

That 3,699 RMB price-point, while cheaper than some thought, makes the phone look pricey up against an Android-powered Samsung Galaxy SII. That device will probably follow in the tracks of the first iteration in being China’s most popular smartphone in terms of sales this year.

Still, at least it’ll be cheaper than the utterly pointless Meego-powered N9 (that sports the same form factor as this Lumia 800), which hit the market at nearly 5,000 RMB last autumn.

Nokia is holding a launch event in Beijing on Wednesday (the 28th), so we’ll soon enough find out what the price will be, and if it has any special Lumia app treats in store for Chinese consumers. Microsoft held its own WP7 launch event last week in which it emphasised that there are already 2,000 Chinese-made app for its mobile OS.

[Source: WPDang - article in Chinese]

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has just wrapped up its own launch event in Beijing for its new mobile operating system, WP7. It marks the official Chinese debut of the software, which will hit the shelves by the end of the month on new devices from Nokia, HTC, and ZTE.

Here are some of the event highlights, along with photos from various sources on Sina Weibo:

The hour-long launch focused on usability and readiness, emphasising that 2,000 Chinese-made apps – out of over 70,000 WP7 titles – have already been made, allowing potential switchers in China to be able to do all the social networking, gaming, and online shopping that they’d expect on a new smartphone:

Among the new apps was one on display from e-commerce site 360Buy (pictured below), and plus there are a number of updates to the early-bird Chinese WP7 apps that we looked at last summer:

WP7-powered phones from Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK), HTC (TPE:2498), and ZTE (HKG:0763; SHE:000063) all got a quick live demo:

China Telecom’s (NYSE:CHA; HKG:0728) deputy GM, Yang Xiaowei, hit the stage to explain in brief that his company will launch a CDMA version of Nokia’s Lumia 800 next week in conjunction with Nokia itself:

Weird interpretative dance. Apple doesn’t give you stuff like that!

ZTE’s contender will be this, the WP7-powered Mimosa:

HTC’s will be the HTC Triumph, which is a remake of the Titan phone:

Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud service got some stage time, with the focus on its 25GB of storage compared to only 5GB on Apple’s iCloud:

That’s it for now. Nokia is expected to be in action this time next week launching its Lumia WP7 phones in China, probably with China Telecom, and maybe the other two mobile telcos as well.

[Most images from Popmobile’s Weibo page - thanks!]

Microsoft Indonesia and the United States Embassy through USAID have launched iMULAI 4.0, an annual ICT-based business innovation competition. Taking place at @america, Pacific Place Mall Jakarta, the event is in its fourth year, and aims to encourage Indonesian startups to submit their ideas for new products or new services that can help entrepreneurs do business.

Participants can start submitting their business plan to the iMULAI site [1] right now. This year, ten winners will receive $300,000 worth of backing from Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) BizSpark platform for IT startups (instead of fifteen winners and $250,000, as occurred at last year’s iMULAI 3.0), some new hardware, and free participation in a special bootcamp to help them develop their business innovation. The most rewarding aspect might well be the opportunity to present their products to a group of local and global VCs.

With innovation as the focus of this competition, iMULAI will help startups bring their ideas to fruition and give them exposure. USAID mission director Glenn Anders commented on the competition:

We know that technology innovation stimulates improvement in business productivity. By giving entrepreneurs the tools they need to succeed, we are also promoting economic growth and prosperity in Indonesia and the global market.

iMULAI had quite a following last year and this year will likely draw even more interest from the community. I am hoping iMULAI can be a launchpad for startups in Indonesia to kickstart their products rather than just being a business innovation competition. But yes, we need founders in the country, and hopefully it won’t be the same people pitching the same products. I’m expecting some fresh ideas that solve real problems here in Indonesia.

[Image source: @america on Flickr]

Nokia’s (NYSE:NOK) CEO has told the Chinese news site 21st Century Business that its first Nokia phone will launch in China on March 28th. It is, said the Finnish firm’s new head honcho, “an exciting time.”

It’s the first clear indication of a date for the official launch of a Nokia WP7 handset in China. But unfortunately there was no word from Elop whether the upcoming launch would involve a mobile carrier or be sold unlocked. The first device is likely to be the Lumia 800 which has reportedly been tested extensively to ensure a smooth, localized user experience. The newest Windows Phone software update from Microsoft already added needed features such as Chinese text input.

But one Weibo user has found proof that Nokia might bring two models to the country soon: the Lumia 800 plus the 719C. That’s because, as pictured below, China’s telecom inspection department has approved both those models already:

Nokia is locked in an apparent race with HTC to launch the first official WP7 device for Chinese consumers. HTC (TPE:2498) started taking pre-orders for its HTC Titan – or ‘Triumph’ as it might become here – back on March 4th, but it might not be the first to actually get into people’s grasp.

When March 28th comes – or perhaps sooner if HTC gets its way – there are already crucial Chinese apps ready in WP7 form, such as Sina Weibo and Tencent QQ. Also, Microsoft has its Marketplace sorted out for China, complete with stricter rules about salacious or overly political apps.

Hit the comments to tell us what you reckon Chinese consumers will make of WP7, or if Nokia’s ship has already sailed now that so many folks love Android and iOS so much.

[Source: 21st Century Business - article in Chinese]

Microsoft released research conducted by IDC that shows exactly this trend. Cloud computing will create nearly 14 million new jobs by 2015 globally. Interestingly, the rising superpower nations, Indonesia, China and India, will account for about half of all new cloud-related jobs, adding more than seven million cloud-related jobs by 2015.

In Asia, communications and media are expected to amount for 1.8 million cloud-related jobs by 2015, while banking will hit 1 million. Other parts of APAC, including Australia, Malaysia, Japan, and Korea are expected to enjoy a growth rate as high as 155 percent in cloud-related jobs. Check out the full infographic below:

Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) new baby, Windows 8, is only a few days old, but already one Indian company is claiming to be the first to make an e-commerce app for the brand-new Windows app store. Cbazaar, an online store for handmade or ready-to-wear ethnic Indian clothing, already has its app online, made with the radical Windows 8 Metro style in mind.

The Cbazaar app – find it here in the Windows Store – uses bold-coloured panels and the full Metro user-interface (also pictured below), and allows users to browse, search, and buy anything they fancy without needing to go to the regular website. Since the site ships internationally, the app could be of use to Windows 8 early adopters around the world.

The app, inevitably, can only be run on Windows 8, so it’s currently only available to folks who’re testing out Microsoft’s free ‘consumer preview’ – i.e. beta – version of the desktop OS. Microsoft revealed earlier today that a million people had already downloaded the beta, and so the new Cbazaar Windows 8 app has a fairly sizeable amount of potential customers able to download and use it.

Cbazaar is owned by the major Indian web company Hanmer MSL. In an announcement this event, Rajesh Nahar, CEO & co-founder of Cbazaar, admitted:

It was quite a challenging task to keep in pace with the technology that allows us to venture into a whole new realm of handling apps. Furthermore, accomplishing this advancement at a break-neck speed marks a niche, and bridges the gap between the end user’s demands and our capability to serve, technology-wise. We are expecting to witness a sea of change, an obvious result of this progress.

Which I think translates to We were the first… nya-nya-nya-nya-nyaaaaa! It’ll be interesting to see a whole new app wave from other major e-commerce sites in the region – from India’s Flipkart to China’s Tmall – in the run-up to Windows 8 launching for real later this summer.

Nokia Indonesia together with Microsoft Indonesia held its Nokia Lumia Developers Day 2012 last week in Bandung. With the launch of the WP7-powered Lumia 800 and 710 imminent, they want to boost the marketplace with more apps – especially local ones. The event surprisingly attracted 1074 registrants on day one, and 810 developers attended the event in one room where they coded for more than 12 hours to submit an app to the Windows Phone Marketplace. The winners were awarded Nokia Lumia 800 handsets and also will get media/PR exposure through Microsoft and Nokia media/PR activities, both through this event and future Windows Phone promos in the country.

After hours of hacking and coding, a grand total of 173 apps were submitted, which were then reviewed and dwindled down to 21 apps to be judged for the prize. With Narenda Wicaksono (developer operation manager, Nokia Indonesia), Irving Hutagalung (technology advisor, Microsoft Indonesia), and Puja Pramudya (Microsoft MVP & master trainer for the event) as the judges, they eventually announced 8 winners.

The winners were: BuzzleMall, CitizenHero, TheGarbager, GogoKeto, Movieblist, ShelterView, Spothemall, and Puppet Solitaire. The winners all come from developers from universities such as the Bandung Institute of Technology, IT Telkom, and the University of Indonesia.

What’s next after this event? It was announced that there’d be an ‘Amazing Nokia Lumia Apps Challenge’ which is a contest to build a prototype of your application with the Windows Phone SDK and register it before the March 31st deadline. If your app is approved, a Nokia Lumia 710 will be sent to your address for testing purposes. Then after 30 days your app must be published to the Windows Phone Marketplace; and if you have published 3 apps before June 30, 2012, the Nokia Lumia 710 will be yours to keep.

Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Irving Hutagalung said:

Nokia and Microsoft will continue to engage the developers to ensure that their apps are submitted to the Marketplace worldwide. On top of that, for other participants who have not submitted their apps, we will also continue the engagement to include them on our app creation process, such as to invite them to future trainings and workshops, to provide them support to submit their to-be-created apps.

Nokia’s (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) Lumia will be launching on February 17th in Indonesia, and the Windows Phone Marketplace has already opened in the country in readiness for its new customers. If Nokia and Microsoft can work out the payment method with the telcos and prove that they can win over both developers’ and customers’ hearts again, the Lumia could prove to be a serious challenger to Android, or even the aging Blackberry, here in Indonesia.

[Disclosure: Nokia promoted its developer days across the region at our recent 'Startups in Asia' event in Singapore, where the company also served as a sponsor. But of course we remain independent on this issue].

GREE girl at 2011 Tokyo Game Show

Japanese mobile social gaming company GREE (TYO:3632) has announced a number of global partnerships that will bring support tools as its prepares to launch its global gaming platform.

There are 20 new international partners coming on board with GREE to assist with development, most notably Amazon and Microsoft. Other companies highlighted in GREE’s announcement are as follows:

Back in December the company also partnered with Paypal to help facilitate payments as it expands globally.

On a related note, the legal battle between GREE and rival DeNA escalated yesterday as the latter filed a countersuit to an anti-competitive lawsuit which GREE (and others) had filed a couple of months back.

A graphic that's currently on Nokia's official Renren page. But how many consumers in China are still aboard the Nokia train?

The final quarter of 2011 proved to be another chapter in Nokia’s (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) horror story in China with the Finnish phone-maker reporting a drop of 40 percent in net sales compared to the same period in 2010. According to its newly-released unaudited results, the volume of devices sold in Greater China dropped 33 percent from Q4 2010 to the same quarter of 2011.

It’s nothing new for Nokia, whose sales have been trending downwards in China for quite some time. The quarter-on-quarter figures are not so dramatic: sales down 19 percent; volume down 8.

Nokia has been hit hard by the lack of a convincing smartphone line-up at a time when China’s newly-emerging middle-classes have been snapping up iPhones and numerous Android devices. Worldwide, there’s an operating loss to the tune of EUR2.5 billion (US$3.29 billion) year-on-year, with 31 percent fewer phones sold.

But Nokia’s business in the Greater China area – which is the mainland, plus Hong Kong and Macau – is still worth EUR1.008 billion ($1.32 billion) in net sales, shipping a claimed 14.7 million units in the final quarter of last year. Here are the two key tables, with the China region highlighted in orange:

The stats from Nokia come with the hopeful promise of Lumia phones for China “in the first half of 2012.” That is, I believe, the first official word from Nokia on this, after Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) earlier dropped a big hint that its Windows Phone 7 (WP7) platform, which powers the Lumia phones, will launch in China pretty soon.

Photo: star.news.sohu.com

The Financial Times is reporting today that Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is bringing a lawsuit against electronics and appliance retailers Gome (HKG:0493) and Buynow, claiming that computers sold in their stores have pirated copies of Windows and Office pre-installed.

Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer claimed last year that even though PC sales are about the same in the US and China, the company makes about only five percent of its US revenue in China as a result of piracy.

We’re not sure exactly how much Microsoft is seeking in damages from these two retailers, but the company had apparently tried to resolve the issue with the retailers before, but to no avail.

China has long been seen as a danger zone for intellectual property, particularly software. Beijing’s famous Zhongguancun reportedly saw four of its biggest electronics malls take steps towards eliminating software piracy just last month, with fines for any vendor caught selling pirated software, or selling computers with a pirated OS installed.

[Photo: star.news.sohu.com]

American model and entrepreneur Anina loves fashion, tech, mobile – and China. And that’s why the country is the focus of her 360Fashion Social news app. It comes preinstalled on all Nokia N9 (Meego OS powered) phones sold in the country and mixes curated haute couture news with deep Chinese social media integration. Indeed, the app is a sort of third-party Sina Weibo client all by itself, which helps users chat and share designer info and pictures without launching another app.

In conversation via email with PO, she says that China remains a focus for the team going forward. And so she’s looking at bringing the Chinese version of the app to Windows Phone 7 (WP7) later this year when Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) phones running Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) new mobile OS seem likely to hit stores in China.

Her company, 360Fashion, started up in 2005 and Anina is proud to say that, “I have funded my company myself and I am 100 percent owner.” The fiery-haired model’s fascination with China started with a modeling assignment in Hangzhou in 2007 – “I realized then, that if I wanted to become well known in China I had to go to Beijing and participate in the China Fashion Week during the Olympics.” And so she did, and that led to participating in panel discussions in the country, which led to her wanting to bring international – yet localized – industry news to young Chinese women.

Being a self-proclaimed fan of Nokia, Anina’s apps are not quite so full featured on other platforms: on iOS and Android, the app is shrunk down to be ‘360 Fashion News,’ without the in-built social streaming elements. Those apps have not yet been localized into Chinese, but Anina promises that they’re coming soon.

That long-running relationship with Nokia has won the company a top partnership award, presented by CEO Stephen Elop himself (pictured right).

Going forward, Anina says that she’s mostly sticking with Nokia:

For our 360Fashion Social news app, we are looking forward to the Windows Phone platform with Nokia. And also Android TV looks very promising in China.

It has been rumored that Microsoft’s WP7 will launch in China later this year, and doing so primarily with Nokia makes sense given the company’s (faded?) prestige in the country. Indeed, Microsoft is telling developers to prepare their WP7 app for distribution in China, so the Redmond giant – hand-in-hand with Nokia – seems to be close to a new move into smartphones in China.

What Chinese Women Want

As for the question of what Chinese women want in terms of fashion, Anina feels that it’s best served by a woman – and one who appreciates and understands cultural differences. She says that marks out her 360Fashion apps:

First, our app stands out because of it’s content: our approach is to curate the designers and collections and have a high quality mix of emerging designers from east and west, established western brands, and established eastern brands. Currently, I have not seen any apps with such a wide content of fashion collection galleries inside, that connect to social media, on the market. The Style.com app for example, does not have any mainland fashion designers inside, nor connect to Chinese social media.

Second, our understanding of how women in China shop: they tend to begin by looking at social media and what people are saying about the brand, then they read the established news, and then they will consider checking out the items in a store to test the quality. We overcome and make the first two steps easy for consumers, and in the near future we will bring out the e-commerce and mapping features [into the 360Fashion Social News app].

Get the 360 Fashion News app for Android (Market link) or iPhone and iPad (iTunes link). Or for just China-related news from the startup, follow along on Weibo.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has announced that app developers on its Windows Phone 7 (WP7) platform can now enable their apps and games to be distributed in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Argentina, and Chile. The WP7 app store – called the Marketplace – doesn’t yet support customers in those countries, but that looks likely to happen a bit later this year.

The news came via the official Windows Phone developers blog. By opening up the submission process early to these nations, it’ll ensure that the Marketplace is full of apps once the virtual doors are opened to customers. A number of major Chinese web companies have already made WP7 versions of their apps – such as for Weibo, QQ, and the video-streaming site Tudou (NASDAQ:TUDO) – despite no WP7 phones having been officially launched in the country.

The Marketplace for WP7 hasn’t yet launched in China, and currently shows the old and retired Windows Mobile 6 store.

But apps submitted for distribution in three of these new Asian markets – China, Indonesia, Malaysia – have one extra hurdle to leap. Microsoft’s Todd Brix explains:

You should be aware that applications submitted to three of these six new markets – China, Indonesia and Malaysia – will be subject to additional requirements due to local laws, regulations or norms.

Delving into the WP ‘content policies’ pages reveals five extra areas where Microsoft’s approval process – following the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) style ‘walled garden’ approach, in contrast to Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) freer method with Android apps – will be more strict in the region. They are:

• People in revealing clothing or sexually suggestive poses

• Religious references

• Alcohol references

• Sexual or bathroom humor

• Simulated or actual gambling

Presumably, Microsoft will also have to bend to the political sensitivities of Chinese authorities as well, which could mean that apps that contain controversial material here would also be nixed from the China version of the Marketplace.

Look out for the next stage of this roll-out – actual support for customers in China, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines – in the coming weeks or months. And then there’ll be the question of WP7 handsets launching in those markets, such as rumored ones from Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) and Lenovo (HKG:0992) as well.

[Source: Windows Phone developer blog; via Engadget Mobile]

One of India’s biggest e-commerce sites, HomeShop18, has formed a tie-up with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) to give online shopping gift vouchers to users who upgrade their browser to Internet Explorer 9, aka IE9.

As a part of the promotional partnership, IE9 will even be available for download from the HomeShop18 site. All the online shoppers need to do is switch over to IE9 and then pin the e-commerce site to their Windows 7 taskbar, making the shopper eligible for the voucher the next time they use the check-out. It’ll also make returning to HomeShop18 a lot quicker.

Of course, even if you prefer another browser, such as Firefox or Chrome, you could update IE in Windows 7 just to get this promotional offer, and then switch back to whatever you usually use for wandering the web.

In a press release to accompany the tie-up, the director of marketing at Microsoft India, Senthilkumar Sundaram, said his company was pleased to be working with “one of India’s fastest growing web destinations,” and that the update would be worthwhile to Indian netizens to give them an “all new immersive browsing experience.”

It’s an interesting bit of marketing from Microsoft, which is struggling to get people to upgrade from the ancient and insecure IE6 and IE7 in a number of countries – especially in China. Last month in India, six percent of web traffic was still coming from people on IE6, a browser which leaves users at risk of picking up spyware and viruses on the web. But XP users are out of luck, as they cannot update beyond IE8.

HomeShop18 has been pushing aggressively in the Indian e-commerce space this year, and recently wrapped up another interesting promo tie-up when it sold merchandise for the Bollywood blockbuster Ra.One.

Nokia's WP7 phones already have Chinese localization, but no official release in China. Yet. (Image source: QQ Tech news)

There’s a rumor in the Chinese media that Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) is preparing its Lumia 800 model (pictured above) to be China’s first ever Windows Phone 7 (WP7) device next summer.

Apparently, the Finnish mobile giant is extensively testing its Nokia Lumia 800 in its Chinese-language localization, as well as ensuring that its other services – such as its Comes With Music thingy – will work for locals on WP7. Nokia, however, has not publicly confirmed all this.

Since this move would actually require more work on Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) side, especially in terms of supporting Chinese users in its Marketplace with full localization and online payment methods, this is presumably being coordinated with the Redmond company.

The time-frame in this rumor chimes with word that the retailer Suning (SHE:002024) has already been chosen by Microsoft as its main retail partner to distribute official WP7 releases.

Currently, WP7 phones are being used by a tiny minority of local geeks who bought the phones on the grey-import market. Nonetheless, major Chinese web companies have been developing apps for the WP platform already – we looked at five of the biggest Chinese WP7 apps last summer; and just this week one more biggie was added with Tencent’s (HKG:0700) beta release of its group-messaging Weixin for WP7.

[Source: DoNews - article in Chinese]

China has far-and-away the greatest number of users of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) ancient Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) browser, with Chinese users of the decade-old web browser accounting for 27.9 percent of its global usage. That’s according to statistics compiled by Net Applications and which are touted by Microsoft itself. The tech giant actually wants IE6 to die so that the web as a whole – which is still so dominated by Windows and, by extension, Internet Explorer – can be a safer place.

That’s the reason behind Microsoft’s decision to follow the lead of Google’s (NASQAQ:GOOG) Chrome, or Mozilla’s Firefox browser, and implement auto-updates. That should get everyone in China up to the safer IE8 or IE9, right? Well, no. Because as PC Mag explains, these auto-updates will only occur for users who have “automatic updating enabled via Windows Update” on either XP, Vista, or 7. But I get the feeling that most of the people in China who’re still using the out-of-date software have turned that off, either due to the persistent nagging of the auto-update, or due to fears of their pirated Windows OS being detected.

And so IE6 will persist. Last time I checked Microsoft’s ‘IE6 Countdown’ site, on which it actively encourages people to upgrade for security and feature benefits, was back in March of this year when the China-IE6 stat was at 34.5. So it has dropped nearly 7 points in terms of detected traffic usage in the past nine months. At this rate, it’ll still take two years to die off totally in China, presuming that the auto-update implementation has no effect here.

Here are the updated stats for China and the world:

But in good news, IE itself is becoming less popular in China, with the growing popularity of home-grown browsers such as those from Qihoo 360 (NYSE:QIHU), Sohu’s (NASDAQ:SOHU) Sogou, and Baidu’s (NASDAQ:BIDU) recent Chrome-esque browser effort as well. Though all of those are based, in terms of their rendering engines, on IE7 – so web standards and compliances are still some way from being ready for HTML5, WebM, and other new things.

Check out the IE6 Countdown mini-site which gets updated with stats each month on that browser version’s very slow and sickly demise.

A leaked WP7-powered Lenovo LePhone S2, from Weibo user @Joker.

Lenovo’s (HKG:0992) own mobile product manager has confirmed that the brand-new LePhone S2 – unveiled yesterday at an event in Beijing – will spawn a Windows Phone 7 (WP7) version in the second half of next year.

That seems to sync with what we’ve heard of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) prepping to partner with retail giant Suning to distribute and promote a whole bunch of WP7 handsets. Indeed, since Lenovo’s S2 is aimed exclusively at China, then this is most sure indication that Microsoft’s WP7 platform is now ready to fight against Android and iOS in China. Indeed, we’ve already seen an apparent test unit running WP7 leak out on Weibo (pictured above).

The Lenovo man, Chen Yue (pictured right), said specifically:

We’ve already decided, the LePhone WP7 version is in testing, and we have a clear timeframe in mind, which is for the second half of 2012.

The refreshed LePhone S2 – see some close-ups over on Chinese Engadget – comes with Android 2.3.4 and a slightly beefier 1.4GHz single-core processor for an unsubsidized 2,990 RMB. It’ll come in TD-SCDMA guise for China Mobile (HKG:0941; NYSE:CHL), along with a WCDMA one for China Unicom (HKG:0762; NYSE:CHU), and a CDMA iteration for China Telecom (HKG:0728; NYSE:CHA). So those are all three telcos covered in China.

Lenovo’s event also revealed that a total of 700,000 of the original LePhone handsets have been sold since its launch in May 2010. Though that sounds good on paper, that was actually a very weak showing from what was touted as being like ‘China’s iPhone’ when it was first launched.

It’s also questionable if it’s wise to make a different OS version of a phone that – by the time of its WP7 brethren coming out – will be nearly a year old. That’s a long time in the fast-moving world of smartphone hardware by which time there will probably be quad-core beasts.

[Source: iMobile - article in Chinese]

Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) ‘Innovation Center’ at the Bandung Institute of Technology (MIC-ITB) has linked up with Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) and another partner to get Indonesian developers coding for the Windows Phone 7 (WP7) platform. And that has led to the creation of hundreds of locally-made WP7 apps that you could soon check out.

The initiative was centred on the MIC-ITB Code Camp 2011 for WP7, in which Microsoft Indonesia, Navcor Nextology, and Nokia set a target of 200 mobile applications to be created by local developers.

The training-oriented event, which was attended by 230 university students and mobile technology developers, lasted from November 22 until November 24 as a part of the Digital Media Festival 2011. Organisers claim it was the biggest mobile application training/coding event ever. In this workshop, the participants were also taught how to develop applications and games that are cost efficient, using a cloud computing infrastructure. Plus, the participants were coached in how to market the games and applications as well.

Hundreds of apps that resulted from this workshop are set to be available through the Windows Phone Marketplace for Indonesians to download and use. Nokia has been really pushing developers to make apps for Windows Phone so that the Marketplace can improve and expand ahead of the arrival of WP7-powered Nokias in the region.

Fighting Off Android and iOS in Asia

Based on research by Appcelerator and IDC, application developers around the world claim to be more interested in developing mobile apps for WP7 now compared to their previous enthisiasm for Microsoft’s defunct WinMo 6. The Windows Phone platform got as much as a 38 percent vote of confidence/intention from 2,160 developers that said they are really interested to develop an app in Windows Phone. Both MS and Nokia need this to come to fruition so as to prevent Android and iOS reaching the same kind of critical mass in Asia that it has already done in Europe and the US.

Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iTunes App Store was introduced in 2008 and has now amassed more than 500,000 apps up tp October 2011. While the Android Market has no formal approval/testing system for apps – and claims to be more open – but has just 300,000 apps so far. What of WP7? Well, the newly introduced Windows Phone MarketPlace (in October 2010) has 40,000 applications from 10,000 application developers all across the world.

[Source: Detikinet]

Rumors in the Chinese business media suggest that Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is poised to launch its mobile OS, Windows Phone 7 (WP7) officially in mainland China next year – and that it’ll partner with Chinese retail giant Suning (SHE:002024) for promotion and distribution.

Suning is not only a High Street electronics retailer – with over 700 stores across China – but is also slowly building up its late-starting e-commerce venture, where it faces stiff competition from younger and more aggressive sites such as Dangdang (NYSE:DANG), 360Buy, and Taobao Mall.

The rumor points to Microsoft making use of both Suning’s bricks-and-mortar and online stores in promoting both WP7 and the next version of its desktop OS, Windows 8. (It’s likely that the mobile version will jump up to WP8 to coincide with that).

This would be significant as WP7 hasn’t been launched officially in China since the totally reworked mobile OS replaced the now defunct Windows Mobile 6. But in the most recent software update – dubbed WP7 Mango – Microsoft’s platform finally got Chinese language input support, making it a great deal more ready for a potential debut in China.

Also good news for WP7 is that many Chinese web services have been developing apps for the OS this year, despite being used by a very small group of local geeks. Earlier this summer, we looked at five of the biggest-name Chinese WP7 apps, and saw some impressive-looking stuff. On the downside, Microsoft’s new-look Marketplace is still partially blocked (or deliberately hobbled?) in China after it first vanished in August.

Here’s a video, from Winrumors, of the recent update for inputting numerous east Asian languages:

[Source: QQ Finance news - article in Chinese]

MSN's YoBrand e-commerce site before it closed.

MSN China has shuttered its MSN Mall, a B2C e-commerce site, in an apparent restructuring of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) approach to China’s cut-throat online shopping sector. It was established in 2009 with a local company named YoBrand, and focused on women’s fashion items, such as clothing, bags, and skincare products from numerous brands.

The shutdown means that both the standalone yobrand.com site and the msn.yobrand.com domain have now closed, and contain only an official notice telling consumers what’s going on (pictured below). It advises people to find one certain jewelry brand on its Taobao Mall storefront.

That’s an unintended giveaway as to how fierce the e-commerce industry is in China – especially for women’s fashion and luxury brands – where B2C market leader Taobao Mall battles with Tencent’s (HKG:0700) QQ Buy and lots of other more specialist e-tailing sites.

Thank you, and goodnight...

Nonetheless, it’s quite surprising that one of China’s most high traffic web portals couldn’t sustain its e-commerce venture. Microsoft takes MSN China – at cn.msn.com – very seriously, and it’s filled with local content that’s put together in China. YoBrand was one such local initiative. Just last October it gained a US$10 million round of funding from US-based Richmond Management, to say nothing of the backing given it by Microsoft.

Now that the MSN Mall in China is dead in the water, we’ll have to wait and see what else Microsoft has to offer in the B2C segment. Likely, the catchy ‘MSN Mall’ name will resurface pretty soon.

[Source: TechWeb]

An XBox 360 and Kinect at the Microsoft booth at this week's Canton Trade Fair. (Image source: bbs.a9vg.com)

Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) appearance this week at the Canton Trade Fair in Guangzhou, southern China, has raised the hopes of console gaming fans in China that the XBox and its Kinect companion might finally be legally on sale here in the near future.

Game consoles are technically illegal in China, but – as with so many things here – are actually widely available via other channels. Xboxes, PS2s, and PS3s – along with pirated games – can be easily found and bought.

It was thought that the situation might change this year, with the upcoming launch of Lenovo’s (HKG:0992) eeDoo iSec console, which has a Kinect-clone accessory. But the planned launch date has come and gone with no sign of the iSec console – or “home entertainment” device, as Lenovo’s marketing insisted, in an apparent ploy to get around the regulations.

I’ve found photos of the Microsoft booth on a random BBS, with trade fair goers seen playing the XBox.

If the console market is legalized and opened up in China, it might be a boon for indie, Chinese game developers to hit a new market in their homeland. Here are two more photos of the booth:

[Source: Netease Tech news - article in Chinese; Photos courtesy of A9VG BBS user 至爱余米高]

The notorious Chinese software pirate behind the ‘Tomato Garden’ cracked editions of Windows XP is now out of jail, having served a two year term in the slammer. His arrest in 2009 brought to an end China’s biggest software piracy ring. It is estimated that his Windows XP Tomato Garden Edition was downloaded over 10 million times, and that Mr Hong profited from ad revenue on the download website.

Now a free man, Hong Lei (pictured right) says he is abandoning his pirating ways, and also washing his hands of PCs – saying that smartphones are the way of the future.

Having started a Tencent Weibo account – you can follow him here – he admitted over the weekend that he has lost touch with Windows OS and coding in general:

These past three years I have forgotten many things, and not learnt anything new […] Now things are developing so fast – there’s Windows 8 now, but just three years ago I was on XP. I need to learn and recharge!

Promising to go legit, he’s eyeing smartphones – especially Android:

What to do in the future? I still don’t have a clear idea, but I’m thinking of opening a web forum first to see the situation. Smartphones are hot now.

I’ve just encountered Android these past few days. I think I could pick up on Android development pretty quickly.

'Tomato Garden' pirated editions of Windows XP are still all over the web and available for download. (Image source: a dodgy site that we can't name)

Hong Lei’s enthusiasm for Google’s mobile OS has already been seen in many other Chinese web portals and start-ups: from the small team behind the beautiful MIUI version of Android, to Baidu’s adaptation for its upcoming Baidu Yi OS.

Back in August of 2009, Hong Lei was sentenced to three and a half years in jail in his native city of Suzhou, on the outskirts of Shanghai. He was also fined 1 million RMB, which at the time was nearly US$150,000. It’s not clear why he’s being released from his prison term 18 months early.

When Windows XP launched its simplified Chinese characters version back in November of 2001, an upgrade copy cost 1,500 RMB – which was about a month’s wages for many office workers at the time. Nearly a decade later, Microsoft has learnt some sort of lesson from all this, and localized prices of Windows and Office software box-sets in many emerging markets.

However, the Tomato Garden rip of XP is still widely available all over the Chinese web, and is downloadable in just a few clicks.

[Source: TechWeb - article in Chinese]

A new report from SecDev, a Canadian analytics group, attempts to make sense of this and asks the question: how should American companies — and American legislators — deal with the restrictions and complications that often come with doing business in China?

Google’s pullout from China on ethical grounds — the company stated it was no longer willing to censor search results, but the Chinese government requires all domestic search operators to censor — is by far the highest-profile example, but the SecDev report contains several other case studies:

• Yahoo was one of the first American companies to enter China, but it’s faced criticism for its complicity with Chinese censorship and surveillance. In particular, the company voluntarily surrendered records of the private emails of dissidents to the government in 2005. These emails led to the arrest of several critics of the regime, most notably the editor and poet Shi Tao. That, in turn, led to Yahoo execs being called ‘moral pygmies’ on the floor of the Congress in hearings about their handling of the incident.
• Microsoft also got into China early, and has also participated in censorship by deleting blog posts connected to its MSN service at the request of government censors. Criticism led Microsoft to change this policy — it now censors blogs only after receiving legal documents requiring them to do so, and “deleted” blogs remain accessible outside China — but there are also concerns about the censorship practices of Chinese companies like Renren and Baidu, both of whom Microsoft has partnerships with.
• Skype’s China version, TOM-Skype, included keyword filtration software that blocked sending messages with banned keywords [we won't mention which here since we don't want this site to get blocked, either]. A 2008 investigation revealed that chats with banned keywords had been logged in their entirety and uploaded to public servers, along with user information details like IP address.
• Cisco has been selling hardware to the Chinese government for over a decade. Most recently, it was reported that Cisco had won a contract that would have them helping to implement the new, half-million camera security system planned in Chongqing as part of the “Peaceful Chongqing” project. Reports suggest they have even specifically tailored products to the Chinese government’s specifications and in some instances offered them special pricing.

There are, of course, other problems. Reading the report, we were reminded of Apple, which has been massively successful in China but has also been dogged with reports that its factories here are bad for the environment and that work conditions in its plants are horrible.

Perhaps the PR nightmare overseas is just part of the cost of doing business in China. But as we saw yesterday, American investors in China face a tech landscape where the laws and regulations vary from draconian to decidedly opaque, and the future of this sector is even more uncertain. Moreover, no company wants to be party to or assist in human rights abuses. So what’s an American company to do?

The SecDev report acknowledges that it’s a difficult question, balancing as it must public and private interests, but they do offer a few broad suggestions. The American government, the report suggests, should implement regulations that require American companies to adhere to certain standards in their operations overseas. Companies should also control their own behavior better and recognize that while China presents a huge opportunity, entering it heedlessly without giving a second thought to the ethical implications of participating in China’s crackdowns has damaged the reputations of some of the world’s biggest companies. Finally, SecDev argues that the “commons” of the internet needs to be preserved, and that American companies should not contribute to the segregation of China’s internet by participating in policies that turn it into an intranet (which it basically already is).

It’s important to note here that SecDev’s recommendations do not go so far as to suggest attempting to change Chinese laws and regulations:

This does not mean continually forcing the imposition of values: it is unrealistic and not the place of the U.S. or any other country to directly force changes in Chinese law. It means ensuring that [American] corporations operate within sensible boundaries.

Google aside, it seems most companies aren’t willing or able to set such boundaries for themselves. But could — or should — US legislators do any better? What responsibility to tech and internet companies have when it comes to enforcing local policies that conflict with their corporate values, or the values of the nation in which they operate? These are huge questions, and no one really has the answers yet.

But, if nothing else, it’s good that these issues are being raised and that American companies are being held in the spotlight for what they do in China. China’s tech market is a land of opportunity, but along with such great opportunity comes massive pitfalls, both financial and ethical. Foreign companies need to be aware of this, and whatever decisions they make should be made with the notion that people worldwide are going to see and judge their company based on its actions here.

[SecDev via @niubi]

A New Delhi based law firm Singhania & Partners has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft India in Competition Appellate Tribunal (COMPAT) for reportedly abusing its dominant position in the desktop software market for its Windows and Office products.

Further, the firm also claimed that Microsoft is forcing its dealers to sell more expensive Volume Licence costing Rs 9,300 ($202) for larger customers rather than OEM license of Windows Vista, which is available at Rs 6,350 ($138), although both products are quite identical in features. In case the customer wanted to opt for an OEM license, they would have to buy new computers along with it.

That being said, this is the second time Singania & Partners has filed such a lawsuit. It had filed a similar appeal earlier this year, which was rejected by Competition Commission of India (CCI) due to lack of evidence. CCI had later said that it couldn’t find any evidence against the Redmond software giant which indicated that it was driving away its competitors because of its dominant position in the market (see chart).

In its re-appeal, the law firm however has said that they had filed the case due to license overpricing and bundling of software, not because Microsoft was driving away its competitors from the market.

While I am no expert in law, the claims seem quite genuine. However I am not quite sure if this appeal will stand in the court, since Microsoft would have woven special partnerships with manufacturers to preload Windows OS into their computers. They simply can’t offer these special edition operating systems to normal business customers.

[Source: TimesOfIndia.com | Image: Marc_Smith]

Microsoft is launching a viral web campaign today in Hong Kong that’s aimed at reducing software piracy. The spot centres around a short comedy/drama series called Dream Break, where input from viewers via social media will affect the course of the plot before it hits its pre-set finalé at the end of next month.

The video series has a Microsoft homepage – take a look here – and its own official YouTube channel, and will engage with HKers via Facebook, Twitter, Sina Weibo, MSN Messenger, and email. It’s run in Cantonese Chinese. It features a Scrooge-y local businessman – played by local TV host/celeb Bob Lam (pictured above) – who finds himself in prison on charges of software piracy at his company. His aim, in the ongoing web serial, is to escape prison.

Personally, I’m hoping he manages to escape and then flees to Panama aboard a massive yacht called Screw U MS – but I doubt that’ll happen.

Seriously though, the educational message of the campaign is that it’s better to go legit. Also, as ad industry moguls Campaign China point out, piracy within a company of any size in HK can indeed land its CEO or directors in jail, as they’re legally accountable for such practices going on at their firm.

This is Microsoft’s first attempt at combatting piracy via social/viral marketing. Mainland China – not including HK – represents the company’s biggest bugbear in terms of software piracy. On numerous occasions, CEO Steve Ballmer has railed against in-grained bootlegging of its software – from Windows XP and 7, right up to full copies of MS Office. In mainland China, Microsoft tends to follow a more low-profile and measured mission of finding offending companies and hitting them with a huge bill to purchase legal copies of everything they’ve pirated. For now, this viral campaign is limited to the borders of the HK SAR.

Here’s today’s first part of the Dream Break series, which is just over three minutes long (or readers in China can watch just the trailer over on Youku):

Screenshots from the PR team. Bad quality but good enough to tell you what's going on.

Singapore-based sites Hungrygowhere.com (food reviews) and Tigerairways.com (flight booking) are now “site-pin enabled” if you’re using Microsoft’s latest web browser, Internet Explorer 9 (IE9).

How does it work?: IE9 users will be given the option to drag the websites into their Windows taskbar while they are on Hungrygowhere and Tigerairways (see above). Once completed, users can access both sites via the taskbar without the need to go through a web browser, giving them a desktop app-like experience.

But I wonder how many IE9 users are there in Singapore to leverage on this new feature. I have fired a question to Microsoft’s PR team and we will update as we soon as we know the figures.

Other then Hungrygowhere and Tigerairways, IE9 can also turn online banking sites like Citibank and DBS into desktop apps. Blogs which run on WordPress are already site-pin enabled. While Apple has a store for desktop apps, Microsoft seems to have the vision that the entire web is kinda app and perhaps we can see more of such developments in its upcoming IE10 browser.

Windows Phone 7 (WP7) smartphone users in China are reporting en masse that Microsoft’s app store, the Marketplace, is blocked or inaccessible in the country – making it impossible to download or update apps.

The issue – which sees all attempted downloads fail with a connection error message – has been ongoing since the start of the weekend. WP7 users in China report that they can download apps within China only if they switch on a VPN, as many of them already do in order to access Twitter, which has been fully blocked in China since June 2nd, 2009.

Weirdly, the rest of the WP7 Marketplace and other Zune features are unaffected. A WP7 user in Beijing, Kane Gao, explains to Penn Olson:

Browsing and searching are fine, push notifications for app updates are fine. Downloading anything is being halted.

The official Sina Weibo for WP7 app was launched recently.

WP7 hasn’t been officially launched in China, but has gathered a small yet hardcore following, mostly amongst tech-savvy Chinese youngsters who know the necessary work-arounds to get apps in China. WP7 phones are easily found for sale at grey-import gadget malls, alongside imported Android smartphones and iPhones.

So much so that a number of Chinese social media sites, such as Tencent QQ, Jiayuan and Sina Weibo, have released Chinese-language WP7 apps this summer.

One alternative explanation is that Microsoft has pulled the plug on downloads for users in some unsupported countries. Currently, the WP7 marketplace supports a mere 16 nations – of which mainland China is not one.

Apple’s iTunes App Store and Google’s Android Market remain unaffected. However, the Android store is horrifically slow, as are most Google services in China, seemingly deliberately throttled in speed so as to damage their popularity. On my 2MBps China Telecom connection, I rarely see download speeds of higher than 10kbps in the Android Market.

The last time we saw Net Nanny swinging into action, it was to block yet another Google product, its new social network, Google+.

WP7 enthusiasts will be hoping that they haven’t been permanently blocked – by either the Great Firewall or Microsoft.

[Source: @Chassit at WPsauce; and thanks also to Bestvpnservice for the tip on Twitter]

Among the other big companies that have been sent notices: Yahoo, Google, Bharti Airtel Ltd., Webaroo Technology (India) Pvt. Ltd., Amazon, AOL, Nokia, Bebo Inc., ExactTarget Inc., Ford Motor, Foursquare Inc., IBM, Linkedin, MySpace, NING Inc., Research In Motion Inc., Quora Inc., Salesforce.com Inc., Seesmic Inc., Siemens Enterprise Communications Inc., Sina.com Technology Co. Ltd., StatusNet Inc., PopBox Inc., Twitpic Inc., Peek Inc., The Iconfactory Inc., Ubermedia Inc., Yammer Inc., Facebook and Twitter.

The press release stated that many more companies and developers are going to be sent notices. The release proclaims that “We also welcome all the companies and developers for the licensing.” The confidence in the press release shows that the company is not unprepared and might have its cards ready.

What is Kootol’s Basis for Sending Notices to Such Big Companies?

CNET reports that Twitter was sent a notice along much the same lines last month. Twitter was said to be infringing on Kootol’s invention which allows the user to publish and send messages using one way or two way messaging and by subscribing to posts of other users of a network.

Could all this be just another attempt to grab money from the big guns? Or, is it a genuine claim by Kootol? Whatever it is, only time will tell. Until now, the companies notified haven’t replied with any response.