While most of the world was busy watching the $16 billion Facebook IPO, there was plenty of other action in China – mainly relating to new smartphones, a new version of a wildly popular game, and pondering the right way to approach the crucial mobile internet.
1. Facebook’s prospects in Asia
In the week of Facebook’s historically huge IPO, guest writer Benjamin Joffe looked at nations in Asia where Facebook is struggling to add friends, as well as how it’s slowly winning the battle against Cyworld and Mixi in South Korea and Japan respectively.
2. Baidu unveils low-cost Android smartphone with voice recognition
Chinese search engine Baidu now has two phones on the market after the launch this week of a much-rumored budget smartphone that’s made by Foxconn. Though based on Android, Baidu is adding its own features, especially the voice recognition tech and 100GB of free cloud storage thrown in.
On a related note, one other Chinese web giant has a smartphone on the way that’s loaded up with its own cloud services – Shanda’s is due on June 6th.
3. Kaifu Lee: Why most internet companies fail at mobile
Despite the wealth of Chinese apps – and even new hardware, such as the Baidu smartphone mentioned above – local investor Kaifu Lee isn’t impressed, and outlined five ways in which the nation’s web companies are messing up their mobile strategies.
4. After a record quarter, Tencent reorganizes business structure
Speaking of mobile business strategy… We saw a major rethink and rejig from China’s social media giant Tencent. It has been compartmentalized into six distinct divisions, with the aim that these – such as its Mobile Internet Group (MIG) – can be more lean and responsive.
5. PopCap cuddles Tencent: ‘Plants vs Zombies Great Wall and Kingdoms’ coming soon to China
PopCap China announced a new version of its huge hit game PvZ which will be exclusive to users of Tencent’s QQ Game Center. To learn more about the significance of the launch, we later chatted with PopCap CEO, David Roberts, who told us that the special edition “will attempt to combine the features of traditional Chinese Three Kingdoms stories, emphasizing hero training, and confrontational campaigns.”
6. Sina Weibo breaks 300 million registered users, mobile users growing
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