Tech in Asia: Our Picks for News of the Week

In a new weekly feature, we’re asking a bunch of our staffers from all across Asia to pick their favorite story of the week. It doesn’t have to be the biggest story, just the one that reverberated with them the most.

Charlie’s Pick: Xiaomi Gets Dat Paper

I’ll take Xiaomi’s securing a giant bucket of money as my choice for top news this week, because it comes at a rather interesting time. Xiaomi competitors are coming out of the woodwork, and in fact, this week also saw three cheap domestic smartphones launched on the same day. Does Xiaomi’s new $216 million funding mean that it has nothing to fear from these competitors? Certainly not. But it’s further evidence that Xiaomi has a head start in almost every conceivable measure: funding, social media presence, buzz, and (most important) actual sales. If other players in this market want to catch up, they’re going to need some creativity or an even bigger war chest. I wouldn’t count on seeing much of the former, but the latter…well, we’ll see. Right now, though, it looks like Xiaomi’s game to lose.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably admit here that I own a Xiaomi phone, but that doesn’t make me a Xiaomi cheerleader. After all, I also own an Apple computer, and I recently wrote a nice, long negative piece about Apple.)

Willis’ pick: A handful of Xiaomi for me too

Xiaomi’s funding news got to be my top pick for this week. We first covered Xiaomi July last year when it had its specs leaked and also raised its first round of funding at a $200 million valuation. Today, this Chinese company is probably valued at more than a billion dollars with its recent Series C round and achieving profitability along the way. All these are accomplished in just about a year. Its stunning growth is one that commands respect. Kai Lukoff of Techrice and Wandoujia made a recent comment which echoed my thoughts:

One good sign for the firm is that Xiaomi doesn’t just have users, it has real fans, in the same way that people are absolutely gaga about Apple products. Where iPhone is an amazing product + amazing brand + high price, Xiaomi is a good product + good brand (in China) + low price.

It’s true not just in China. Even in Singapore, folks who are closely keeping track of the China tech space are also gaga over the phone. The common complaint is that supply is so low that they can’t seem to get friends to buy them the phone at RMB 1,999.

Rick’s pick: Anonymous goes to Japan

I don’t really care so much about Xiaomi, so for me this week’s big news was the blow-back (or lack thereof?) over Japan’s new copyright law revision. Most of this, as you have likely heard by now, was from hacktivist group Anonymous, who swooped onto the scene to deface and bring down the web properties of certain offending parties in government and elsewhere. Strangely though, the group did make a bit of a hacker boo-boo of sorts, bringing down the Kasumiguara River Office, apparently confusing it for the Kasumigaseki government district. It was announced today that metropolitan police have launched a full probe, although I’m not sure what took them so long to roll into action as Anonymous made no secret about what it was doing (maybe they were reading Bloomberg?). In any case, while I don’t advocate the actions of Anonymous, I do hope that more people pay attention to this issue because it is deserving of more debate and discussion.

Steven’s pick: Flippin’ onto Android

For the sake of diversity, I’ll avoid picking Xiaomi’s funding as well – though it was enormously impressive; the biggest funding round in China since 360Buy’s last fundraiser – and instead select Flipboard’s launch of its “Chinese Edition” for Android. Yes, the localized version of Flipboard is already on iOS, but you can reach even more smartphone owners in China on Android. Plus, it’s fun to see an overseas startup do so well in China. It’s all too rare. Doubleplusgood, I really like using Flipboard on Android.

Enricko’s Pick: Foxconn goes to Indonesia