Staff Picks: 6 Top News Stories this Week in Tech in Asia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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