Lenovo jumped to take 14.9 percent of the market for Q1 2012, way up from the 9.7 percent that it held in the same period one year before (see chart below). The report notes that consumer buying was actually down three percent on the previous quarter, and Lenovo’s leap was largely due to a large contract with the Tamil Nadu government for 912,000 laptops, which was won by Lenovo, HCL, and Acer.

Following Lenovo in second spot was Dell, which dropped from the top position the year before. It now holds 14.0 percent of the market, just ahead of HP which has 13.7. Acer and HCL round out the top five with 11.8 and 5.8 percent respectively.

Of course HP is still the global leader in PC shipments, but Lenovo is expected to steal that crown during the second or third quarter of this year. HP, as you have likely heard by now, is planning to cut 27,000 jobs by 2014 in an effort to turn around the company.

*Disclosure: I’m a former HP employee (see our ethics policy), as well as a former Thinkpad owner.

Download image version of chart

Shareholders in Alibaba.com (HKG:1688), the business trading platform belonging to Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, have approved the proposal privatization put forward by the company back in February.

An Alibaba statement issued after this afternoon’s extraordinary general meeting explains:

Approximately 95 percent of the shares held by independent shareholders voting in person or by proxy were voted in favor of the privatization and a majority of the shareholders voting in person or by proxy on a headcount basis also voted in favor of the privatization.

Maggie Wu, CFO and executive director of Alibaba.com, pictured at the shareholders meeting and vote this afternoon. (Click to enlarge)

And so Alibaba.com’s shareholders will receive the agreed upon cancellation price of HK$13.50 per share in cash. After that nearly unanimous approval, the next step will be getting the approval of the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands – yay for tax havens, huh – before, the company hopes, becoming a private company on June 19 and thereby delisting from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Earlier this week, Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Alibaba reached an agreement over the Chinese e-tailer buying back 20 percent of Yahoo’s stake. Just yesterday we heard rumors that the massive sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp (CIC) was seeking a $2 billion stake in Alibaba via an issuance of preferred shares – something that would sure help with the proposed repurchase from Yahoo, which will cost just over $7 billion.

Some analysts expect that a more consolidated and centralized Alibaba Group – replete with privatized B2C portal Alibaba.com, and with Yahoo having a much smaller stake – might go for a massive IPO at some point later. But the Yahoo buyback won’t be complete for another six months, so it could only happen after all that.

Alibaba runs China’s largest B2B, B2C (Tmall), C2C (Taobao) e-commerce sites, and the nation’s largest online payment platform, Alipay.

Apps Foundry has officially released its SCOOP app on the Android platform. SCOOP was initially an iPad-only app that allows users to download and read magazines. Its debut on Android comes eighteen months after its launch.

SCOOP for Android has a different user interface than its iOS version, but it also has adopted some features that aren’t available on iOS, such as a payment options for bank transfers or PayPal, and optimization for low-end Android phones.

Willson Cuaca, the CEO of Apps Foundry, explained more:

This is a significant improvement because there aren’t many mobile applications in Indonesia that are using bank transfers to sell digital content and this is running without e-currency. This system is needed to adapt and fill users’ need in Indonesia. For this Apps Foundry has worked together with Finnet, a subsidiary of Telkom. SCOOP is also optimized for low-end Android phones with slower processors and smaller memory and it is available for 16 different Android phone screens.

In terms of content, the SCOOP team says it has added around 90 80 percent (Correction: 80 percent is the correct figure, as informed by the company.) of local magazines in Indonesia and plans to add to that in the future. It has brought some well known publishers such as Gramedia Majalah Group, MNC Group, and McGraw-Hill from the United States. The startup also powers the Samsung eReading app in Indonesia.

Apps Foundry now has four products on the market:

• SCOOP for iOS – which has successfully distributed more than 1 million magazines via iPads and iPhones.
• Samsung eReading powered by SCOOP – an exclusive Android app for Samsung, the newest version of which will be released together with the Samsung Galaxy S3 in the country.
• SCOOP Interactive – an interactive iOS newsstand based on HTML5 that will carry over 10 magazines.
• SCOOP for Android – the new baby, now available for tablets and smartphones runing Android 2.2 to 4.0.

With plenty of funds and claiming to be already profitable, Apps Foundry has also acquired media startups/blogs Makemac and GameSaku. Though it initially built a reading platform, those two media acquisitions suggest that Apps Foundry is trying to build around its own content, although it’s still unclear what its next steps and products will be.

Get the new SCOOP Newsstand for Android from Google Play.

Disclosure: Willson is part of East Ventures, an investor in this blog. See our ethics page for further details.

Tencent's iconic penguin mascot surfs its way to social gaming success.

A seasonal survey of China’s online gaming market by Analysys International reveals some stellar growth up to the end of 2012 Q1 – and that Tencent (HKG:0700) has extended its lead as the country’s mavens of social gaming. Back in 2011 Q2, the Shenzhen-based web giant dominated with 29.5 percent of market share by revenue, but that’s now up to 33.7 percent.

The whole gaming sector has grown to be worth US$1.78 billion in terms of revenue in China. That’s 9.5 percent growth from the previous quarter.

There was a bit of a shuffle below Tencent, as Netease (NASDAQ:NTES) moved up from third to second spot, now claiming 17.3 percent of domestic online gaming revenue. Shanda Games (NASDAQ:GAME) saw no growth – despite its new World Zero title – and consequently got demoted to third.

Tencent runs China’s biggest social network with its QQ empire of IM, social networks, and social gaming. Earlier this week, we looked at the QQ Games exclusive tie-up with PopCap to launch Plants vs Zombies Great Wall Edition. It also operates some more hardcore MMO titles such as Crossfire. Indeed, social gaming is a large part of the reason behind the company having far-and-away China’s richest web portal.

Here’s the interactive chart for market share by revenue among China’s gaming services (2012 Q1):

(View the pie chart as a static image).

The online gaming market as a whole saw 33 percent year-on-year growth. When we last looked, last summer, it was at 8.7 billion RMB ($1.36 billion at that time), but the new figures show the industry has expanded to the point where it reels in 11.26 billion RMB ($1.78 billion) up to the end of 2012 Q1:

[Sources: Analysys International 1 and 2]

Before we get to the shiny charts: a quick reminder that this is data gathered based on Baidu pageviews, so it doesn’t apply to the entire Chinese mobile web browsing market. That said, Baidu has such a huge percentage of China’s overall search market share that Baidu’s numbers are likely very representative of overall internet trends in China.

OK, let’s get to it! Here are the top twenty handset models in China, by percentage of Baidu pageviews (note the Android handsets in green):

That iPhone stat has nearly doubled since we looked at Baidu’s previous report for 2011 Q4. At that time the iPhone’s lion’s share was at 4.48 percent.

It’s interesting to look at the massive contrast between this and the data we saw yesterday, which indicates that iOS users account for just 5.8 percent of mobile web browsing. Of course, the data is not contradictory; rather that big iPhone bar is the result of Apple’s limited handset offerings — there is only the iPhone. In contrast, note that while no single Nokia handset is anywhere near as popular as the iPhone, eight of the top twenty handsets are made by Nokia.

Diving more specifically into Android handsets, the fastest-growing segment of China’s smartphone market, we can also see some interesting things:

One of the most interesting things about this graph is the popularity of Xiaomi’s mi-one (also called M1) handset, apparently the fourth-most-popular handset model despite being only available in limited quantities and being generally difficult to find. That certainly bodes well for Xiaomi’s future device launches. Also of note are HTC and Samsung, whom eagle-eye readers (or just readers who can count) will note each have five devices on the top twenty list. Overall, there’s no one handset that’s blowing any of the others out of the water here. It will be very interesting to see how this graph looks a year from now, once the market has been flooded with the low-priced, Android-based smartphones we’ve been writing so much about lately.

The contract gadget maker Foxconn, which does the final manufacturing on all iPads and iPhones, and numerous other company’s devices, reportedly might double its Chinese factory worker’s wages by 2013.

The move would see Foxconn’s (LSE:HHPD; HKEX:2038; TPE:2354) base factory wage in mainland China go from the current 2,200 RMB, up to 4,400 RMB (US$693) per month. Presumably there’d still be the potential to add more by doing overtime. Back in the autumn of 2010, the entry-level salary was upped to 2.000 RMB per month from just 1,200 RMB, and before that was a mere 900 RMB. The higher rate would put the mainland worker’s wages more in line with those in more prosperous Taiwan, from where Foxconn and parent company Honhai originate.

Reports are basing this on words allegedly uttered by company chairman Terry Gou, according to the original source, the Taiwan Business Weekly. Nothing has yet been confirmed by the Taiwanese gadget maker. It might need to comment – perhaps to deny it – later today, or else spook investors.

Foxconn nearly doubled its local base salary in October 2010 – from 1,200 to 2,000 RMB – after a spate of worker suicides brought global scrutiny upon a once obscure OEM. Further incidents and catastrophes since then – such as plant explosions, and toxic leaks – have kept it in the media spotlight.

A doubling of the wage, if it transpires next year, would be alarming for other manufacturers in their battle to retain workers in such repetitive factory-floor work. But money in itself is no panacea, as Foxconn’s Shenzhen workers discovered to their cost earlier this year when greedy local landlords arbitrarily raised rental rental fees in the city so as to squeeze more cash for their Foxconn tenants. Some Foxconn workers who are migrants from China’s rural areas instead opt to stay in company dorms, which are cheaper.

[Source: iFeng Tech - article in Chinese]

The fraud ring used telecom networks and stolen or “phished” bank and credit card details to steal more than 73 million RMB (more than $11 million). In one of the biggest individual cases of fraud police have connected to this ring, criminals called a Jiangsu woman named Sha and told her that her company’s bank account was suspected of being used for money laundering and ordered her to submit to investigation by a Nanjing court. Thanks to an array of hacks and tricks they were able to provide Sha with enough evidence to convince her the ruse was real, and they asked her to transfer the money to a designated account as a kind of bail money with the promise that after she had been cleared of the money laundering charges, the money would be transferred back to her. You can probably guess what happened next: she transferred more than 12 million RMB in company funds to the “bail” account, and then it all mysteriously disappeared.

Although this gang has been shut down, police have reminded the public that these criminals are good at covering their tracks, and that everyone should be careful who they share sensitive information with, especially online or over the phone. There are still telecom fraudsters out there looking to clean out your bank account. The case is also being touted as an example of successful international police cooperation, something that will likely become more necessary as major telecom and internet companies in Asia begin moving into neighboring companies and establishing regional (rather than national) networks.

[Beijing Times via Sina Tech]

The dreaded server login error message

Blizzard’s newest drug game, Diablo 3, is busy consuming the lives of everyone worldwide who has purchased it over the past week or so. In China, of course, it’s not available yet — and there’s still no word on when it will be released here — but that hasn’t stopped some enterprising Chinese gamers from acquiring copies of the game (often via piracy) and signing into Asia-region servers to play (since Mainland China doesn’t have any servers of its own yet).

Unfortunately, gamers in those aforementioned countries-that-aren’t-China aren’t usually too happy about their servers being overloaded with eager Chinese gamers (Taiwan is sometimes an exception). It’s something that has been an issue with virtually every Blizzard release, and Diablo 3 has been no different. Already, some Korean gamers have asked Blizzard to ban Chinese IPs from connecting to Asian servers, and other players have been pelting Chinese players with foul language and exhortations to stop playing on other countries’ servers.

Speaking in generalities, some net users in Korea and China have a history of mutual dislike and abuse, so that’s certainly part of the problem. The other problem is that there are so many Chinese gamers that they are reportedly crashing the servers in other countries and making it more difficult to play a proper game. That may be partially Blizzard’s fault, as Diablo 3 gamers have been experiencing connectivity issues all over the world, even on servers that aren’t populated by legions of Chinese fans wanting to play the game before its official Chinese release.

This release is also a bit different because of Diablo 3′s global play feature, which integrates servers in different regions that had previously been separated by country. Chinese gamers with a copy of Diablo 3 are trying to log onto the Asia servers and play, but and the Korean gamers calls for Chinese players to be banned from the servers has raised the ire of Taiwanese players, who along with Chinese players are now engaged in a multi-lingual war of words on the official Korean Diablo 3 site.

Basically, it’s a multinational mess, and Blizzard is trapped right in the middle of it. It’s not clear yet how the company will attempt to resolve the debate, although a Blizzard Korea rep did say the case was complicated and that Blizzard would be attempting to find a solution that satisfies gamers in all countries. Good luck, Blizzard!

[178 Games via Sina Tech]

Recently someone asked me: “What do you think is really lacking in Singapore’s ecosystem, except the obvious, like seed investment?”

ORLY? It’s kinda funny, since I just happened to be chatting with early stage investors who were complaining that there are not enough good companies to fund.

The truth is that there’s always money. Sure, startup money is harder to get in some places compared to others, but there is always money.

Are you a waiter or a doer?

You have heard it a thousand times, let me repeat the cliché again, because it’s true – investors don’t invest in ideas, they invest in people. The fact that an entrepreneur spends even a second talking about the ecosystem is the first signal that maybe they someone who waits for things to happen.

Too many startups daydream about becoming overnight paper millionaires, Silicon Valley style. Real entrepreneurs don’t romanticize, and they don’t wait – the state of the ecosystem doesn’t matter.

Sure the ecosystem has real influence in the speed and outcome of a venture, which is why many teams would still rather be in YCombinator or 500Startups. But real hustlers don’t waste energy thinking about things they can’t influence and instead focus on getting what they want in the fastest possible way – and that sure isn’t whining about the ecosystem.

Don’t give up just because investors rejected you. Investors are never completely closed to an investment opportunity even if they pass initially. The most impressive of entrepreneurs will go out and get shit done anyway and come back with kickass results even without funding. (If you can’t get shit done without money, you can’t be trusted with more money). The same business idea would look completely different when you start to get traction. Trust me; it is more fun when you get investors licking your boots to put in money. Don’t be a waiter, be a doer.

Product-Market Fit

Your startup is a product and your investors are buyers – they are buying an investment opportunity. This is why you shouldn’t be discouraged when you get rejected by an investor. Just like your product is not for everyone, your company is not for everyone. It doesn’t necessarily mean your startup sucks, it could just mean that the investor is not the right one for you.

But if all the investors in your envisioned target market reject you, you might want to rethink either what you are doing or where you should look for money. For example, raising money for an ice-hockey social network in India is kinda stupid – you might want to do cricket instead or move to Canada. True story.

(Pro tip: often investors, especially angel investors without LPs, invest for more than ROI reasons, it might be to support a social cause they believe in, or to get bragging rights. Don’t forget to capitalize on that).

Bite like a dog

Raising money is a sales activity. There have been so many pitches I’ve listened to that when the investor said “No,” the startups just walk away defeated and said, “OK….”

Just like in sales, if your ideal customer doesn’t buy, you go after them until you figure out why. There should be only one of two outcomes in a sales engagement – you understand why your product-customer fit is wrong, or you turn it around and make a sale.

Far too many startups walk away from a failed pitch and lament, “Oh the investors don’t have the balls for this,” or some other rant. Well, that may be true, but it doesn’t help you, does it? Instead, your burning question should be: why aren’t they buying it and how do I fix it? If it involves biting the investor like a dog until you get an answer, one that you truly understand and can act upon, do it. Go ahead and pick up the phone, ask for a lunch meeting, whatever!

Pro tip: investors, especially in Asia, may be polite and reject you with some lameass excuse like “you are too early” – but don’t take that at face value, go get the real feedback. Rub their ego by asking them to coach you. Be sincere, be authentic, be persistent!

I was just reading a piece from Xinhua that says Chinese authorities suggest that it could use forms of social media to “educate the public about disaster mitigation.”

This is good.

But where various forms of social media and new internet services can really shine are in collecting and disseminating information after a disaster. Here in Japan after the 2011 earthquake, we saw almost the entire repertoire of Google’s services being used to spread information, ranging from Google Picasa, to Docs, to Calendar, to Maps, to App Engine, and more. Similarly, for the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, Google put forth a similar effort.

As I’ve pointed out before, if we think about services on the internet using a food metaphor, Google’s services can be likened to ‘ingredients’ which can then be used to create ‘meals’ of information [1]. And while there are many such ingredients on the Chinese web, many of the tools that citizens could use to self-publish information in the wake of a crisis are hindered, if not blocked, by censorship.

Back in early 2009 when the CCTV building in Beijing caught on fire, some Chinese netizens improvised websites using Google Docs or Dropbox to share information. It would be far more difficult to do this now, unless you had a VPN – and most citizens don’t [2]. Google still has operations in China, but access can be sporadic as my colleagues in Beijing and Suzhou are well aware. Trying to bring up Street View in a Chinese city, for example, doesn’t quite work like it used to.

I think that in many ways services like Google’s are nearly approaching essential emergency infrastructure. And it’s a shame that Chinese authorities prefer to block many of those services. Instead they usually censor people’s voices in the wake of big events, in the hopes of silencing potential criticism.

Indeed hosting impromptu websites from any cloud storage services can be very useful in most countries, but to my knowledge, many of these services appear to have the public sharing function neutered, which is unfortunate [3].

Now I’ve also noted in the past that social media can not reach everyone in a disaster, especially in a demographic like Japan where we need to find a way to get information to order people, for example, as a lower portion of elderly people are likely to be frequently online. That’s where mobile services and carriers need to step up, I believe.

But I hope that in China, that Baidu can continue to develop cool offerings, even though it too is hardly immune to the problems of government censorship. And while we’ve seen a lot of government concern over Chinese microblogs, I hope they can thrive as a useful emergency communications platform as well.’

[Image: Technology News]

If you guys have been following the tech startup scene in Beijing and last year’s TechCrunch Disrupt in the city, you’ll probably notice that the finalists at the competition had two Chinaccelerator graduates — Order With Me and NextGoals. And the former startup, apart from the glitz and glamour, walked away with the Disrupt cup and later brought in US$3 million in investment from Infinity Venture Partners and SOSventures.

Now, here’s your chance to be part of that winning accelerator in China, because Chinaccelerator has just started accepting applications for its 2012 intake.

So what can you, as a tech startup, expect from Chinaccelerator? Chinaccelerator is built by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. So apart from providing you the cash, you will receive guidance from mentors who are there not just to work with you on what’s really innovative and amazing, but also to build lifelong relationships with you. As part of the Global Accelerator Network, Chinaccelerator is committed to creating fabulous startup companies by providing a three-month accelerator program.

Chinaccelerator is currently located in Dalian, which is unlike the usual favourites hubs in Shanghai or Beijing. There are fewer recreational activities in the northern city, which could also mean there are fewer distractions, and you can focus all your energy and attention on building that killer startup during your 90 days with Chinaccelerator.

But do not fret – Dalian is a good place for tech startups as well. In fact, it is one of the most heavily developed industrial areas in China, placing great emphasis on the development of the tech industry. The city also has a significant population of Japanese speakers and firms, on top of the multinational firms which are already located there. This would also mean there is a transfer of skills from multinational companies to the Chinese locals in Dalian, and these people are also being constantly updated with the technological trends happening in the rest of the world.

Plus, there is a large pool of cost-effective graduates from fields of computer science and software engineering, with wages much lower than their Shanghai and Beijing counterparts – all of which make it a good place to hire and perhaps set up shop.

At the end of the program, startups also stand a chance to pitch to hundreds of investors at Chinaccelerator’s Demo Day, where you can meet potential investors and build relationships with many outstanding professionals in the tech scene.

The application deadline is June 30th, and you can find out more from the details at chinaccelerator.com. Or you can drop them an email.

Looking first at brands in general, Baidu shared this chart, which we have taken the liberty of translating below. Remember, this is the breakdown for phones that are used to browse online, so it doesn’t account for anyone whose phone never crosses the Baidu homepage. It includes both smartphones and feature phones, so long as those feature phones are capable of browsing Baidu.

Notice that the top three most popular net-browsing phone brands are:

1. Other
2. Nokia
3. Off-brand knockoffs

Collectively, those guys account for more than 60 percent of the web-browsing mobile phone market, according to Baidu’s calculations. I knew off-brand and Nokia phones were still a major factor, but I’m a little surprised they continue to make up such a massive percentage of the web-browsing market.

Looking at the breakdown of mobile phone platforms used to access Baidu, the outlook is pretty similar. Did you expect Android to be in the first place spot? Guess again:

Look at that! Android is still pretty small, and there are nearly as many people browsing the web with outdated versions of Symbian (S40) as there are with iOS. Bet you didn’t see that coming, did you?

It’s quite clear what direction the Chinese market — heck, the world market — for smartphones is headed, of course. I would expect that next quarter we’ll see Symbian continue to shrink and Android continue to grow. But these numbers are definitely a worthwhile reminder of where we are right now in China. The mobile internet is here to stay, but don’t assume that everyone accessing it is doing so from an Android or iOS smartphone, because it turns out a majority of them actually aren’t. Yet.

[via Baidu's Q1 2012 Internet Trends Report]

China Investment Corp (CIC), the sovereign wealth fund that has over US$410 billion in assets, is reportedly on the verge of buying up a $2 billion stake in local e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. This opportunity comes due to the imminent Alibaba repurchase of 20 percent of Yahoo’s stake, which was agreed upon earlier this week.

Reported by Reuters this afternoon as being at the stage of “advanced talks” between CIC and Alibaba, the major new slice of action could be crucial in helping Alibaba with its Yahoo deal. To raise the requisite $7 billion to buy back its own milkshake, Alibaba – which runs popular online shopping sites such as Taobao – is raising $4.6 billion of that from issues of preferred shares, some bank loans, and also offering larger stakes to existing shareholders. Chief among those are Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, and DST Global. The rest it can pay off from splashing some of its cash reserves.

While the Yahoo-Alibaba deal over this portion of its stake is expected to take six months to complete, in the interim we can expect to see a lot of cash and equity changing hands among Alibaba, CIC, Temasek, and DST. Reportedly, some private equity firms have been contacted by the Hangzhou-based e-commerce company to assist with some of the remaining funding that won’t come from shareholders or loans. Among those is Bain Capital, the vulture venture capital firm co-founded by Mitt Romney, the US presidential challenger to Barack Obama this year.

We’ll update if this CIC stake is confirmed officially.

[Source: Reuters]

U.S. retailer Macy’s (NYSE:M) has made a move into China today by investing in the Chinese discount e-commerce site VIPShop (NYSE:VIPS), which recently IPO’d. The investment sum is US$15 million, led by Macy’s along with Intel Capital.

VIPShop raised $71.5 million in its recent flotation, which effectively valued the company at $316.79 million, indicating that Macy’s input is relatively small. More significantly, perhaps, the deal will allow Macy’s to sell clothing items on VIPStore’s fashion-oriented site, Omei.com. The company’s press release states that that won’t occur until spring 2013.

Macy’s CEO, Terry J. Lundgren, conceded that “we still have a great deal to learn about the shopping patterns and merchandise preferences of consumers in China.” He added:

Our relationship with VIPStore will allow us to gain additional experience in the fast-growing Chinese market, and to better understand how consumers across China interact with Macy’s and the products we sell.

Mr. Lundgren also said that the new luxury-oriented Omei site in China would be “a good match for our current interests” in that country.

China’s e-commerce industry is well advanced to the stage that it’s a massively cut-throat market. Few overseas retailers or e-tailers have a fairly sizeable stake in the country, except perhaps Amazon China, and Walmart with its major investments in Yihaodian, the food-based online retailer. Chinese authorities estimate that the country’s e-commerce industry will be worth 18 trillion RMB ($2.8 trillion) in 2015.

Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten (JSD:4755) has been pretty busy of late, just a week ago announcing that it would be the lead investor of Pinterest’s next funding round. Today the company has some more news for us, disclosing that it has plans to launch an internet shopping mall for Malaysia.

The store’s home on the web will be Rakuten.com.my, although it’s actually scheduled to launch in late 2012. Masaya Ueno, Rakuten Online Shopping’s president and CEO noted that now is the right time for the company to enter the Malaysia market, as it has a good e-commerce infrastructure:

The market indications validate our timely entry into the market. At this initial phase, Rakuten seeks to partner mid-sized and large retailers across industries in Malaysia including fashion and apparel, IT and electronics, books and luxury goods. […] We aim to foster continued e-commerce growth in Malaysia by transferring our knowledge and helping retailers to make online shopping a truly viable and sustainable business, leveraging on our 15 years of e-commerce expertise.

Rakuten notes in its announcement that the relatively high internet penetration in the country should be conducive to growth in online shopping. It says that internet retailing in the nation was at RM842 million (or $267 million) in 2011.

This is the latest in a series of international moves for Rakuten recently. The company also launched an online shopping mall in Brazil just one month ago, but it also pulled the plug on its venture with Baidu in China around that time as well. In Asia, the other notable activities for Rakuten are its Rakuten Belanja Online in Indonesia, as well as Tarad.com in Thailand.

After Malaysia, what’s next for Rakuten? According to the company’s CEO Hiroshi Mikitani last year, the Philippines are also on the list of places where the e-commerce behemoth would like to set up shop.

Mobile is big everywhere, but especially in Indonesia. We know this well as it is preached by Andy Zain whenever we meet him there. Andy is a great friend who has helped us a lot in Indonesia.

But it is his knowledge and connections in the mobile industry in Indonesia that make him standout as one of the leaders to watch. Andy has his fingers in a few interesting pies: he is the director of the Jakarta Founder Institute, the director at Skybee Tbk, the founder and CEO of PT Numedia Global, and also the founder and organizer of MobileMonday Jakarta.

Through his experience, he has helped several prominent companies find their footing in the mobile industry in Indonesia, including mig33, Snaptu, and China’s UC Mobile. He knows the mobile industry inside-out. So for our upcoming Startup Asia Jakarta conference, we got Andy to take some time off to share his thoughts and views about the Indonesian mobile market with us on stage. If you’re looking to understand the Indonesia mobile space better, this is the session for you.

We will try to find out the challenges and opportunities in the Indonesian mobile industry, such as the struggle between building stuff on feature-phones versus smartphones in Indonesia, and also on monetization. Gaming and growth strategy will also be a part of our discussion. Andy is scheduled to be interviewed on stage on Friday, June 8, 12:00 to 12:30pm at Startup Asia Jakarta.

“We’ve given long-distance families something to talk about, something to bond over.” That’s the central part of the pitch for FamilyKo, an interactive video-conferencing platform that will allow families – especially including the kids – to engage with games and storybooks in an online chat. It’ll be like using Skype or Facetime, but with a welcome new twist. Created by a team from the Philippines, it wants to bridge the gulf of distance and communication between overseas Filipino workers and their loved ones back home. Launching later this year, FamilyKo will bring apps for PC, iPhone, iPad, as well as for Android smartphones and tablets.

FamilyKo’s Rafael Oca tells us that there are 13 million such workers among his countrymen and women scattered across the globe, working in fields such as domestic help, nursing, and software development. Of those, he feels that there’s an “addressable market size of over four million” such Filipino families. The key interactive elements come from the virtual books, lessons, and games (pictured above and below) that will be in-app paid purchases, leaving “the basic app free” to download and use. The startup feels it’s especially important to be on iPad and other tablets, where the finger-friendly large screens will make the interactivity feel stronger.

FamilyKo is one of 11 recent graduates from the first-ever JFDI Innov8 2012 Bootcamp, and the same team’s separate Hobbymash concept was the winner at Startup Weekend Manila 2011. The team consists of Liezl Buenaventura, Josh Liao, Mark Co, and Rafael as well. See the full FamilyKo pitch at the closing JDFI Demo Day in the video below.

Of course, there’s scope for international expansion for this interactive video-conferencing app. “Our ultimate goal,” says Rafael, “is to become the go-to application for long distance families all over the world.” That could be among other migrant worker populations, or among the many single parent households in the western hemisphere where more input from the wider family – from aunts, or grandparents – would be welcome engagement for the children. FamilyKo will be up against the likes of Splaype, the Skype-based interactive chat tool from Singapore – but FamilyKo will be different in having its own standalone apps.

Keep an eye on the FamilyKo road to launch on its Facebook page, and check out the startup’s JFDI Demo Day pitch in this seven-minute video:

(Direct YouTube link for mobile readers).

Online book publisher Bookboon.com is based out of London, but with sales offices in India, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore it is looking to make a strong Asia push. Specializing in academic texts, business books, and travel guides, the company says that in the past year it has seen over 1.5 million downloads from Asia.

We asked how that breaks down across the region, and we’re told that for the first four months of 2012, the company’s download figures are most dominated by India, but with many users in Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea as well. I’m told that Bookboon sees downloads from a wide range of universities in Asia, including Indian Institute of Technology Kanput, Institute of Technology Bandung, Singapore National University, and the University of Tokyo, just to name a few. The company’s CEO Kristian Madsen noted:

Many business professionals and students have an e-reader or tablet, with our wide selection there is something for everyone. This year we expect 6–8 million downloads in Asia.

What’s interesting about the service is that the ebooks are offered for free, with ads occasionally served up in inside the ebooks. Downloading books does require you to sign up for Bookboon’s weekly email newsletter where the company announces new book releases. I’m not a fan of this sort of pre-requisite, but I guess it is a small price to pay for a free book. A representative also assures me that your email address will not be shared with third parties.

The books themselves come in PDF format, which for me, is far from the ideal file format for an ebook. I’d personally love to see them offer ePub or even make it available in HTML [1]. But I expect that in many of the emerging markets where BookBooon is growing, PDF might be a good fit.

While the company offers books in an assortment of languages, for now it only has English books for Asia. Currently it offers over 1,000 titles, which you can browse over on Bookboon.com.

Of course, the mobile phone’s gain is a loss for the regular phone, and China’s hard-line phone user numbers dropped by more than a million over the first four months of 2012, putting the total number of wired phone users at about 283,758,000.

But telecom operators probably aren’t too upset about the loss of wired phone users, because the industry’s total business has grown 14.8% compared to Q1 2011. In total, the industry did more than 419 billion RMB ($66 billion) in business this quarter.

Anyway, while most of those billion mobile phone users are still on feature phones, mobile app developers should get coding right now. The plethora of cheap smartphones China’s likely to see over the next few years (like this one, or this one, or this one, or this one) means that China may well experience a corresponding explosion in smartphone users (whose numbers are already climbing rapidly anyway).

[via Sina Tech, Image Source: Asianews.it]

Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has announced that its new GREE Platform is now officially in Open Beta, and developers can download the new platform SDK as of today. The company acquired Open Feint last year, but will be abandoning that name and encouraging developers to migrate titles on Open Feint over to the GREE platform.

The company says in its announcement that the new platform will be available in both English and Japanese, and there will be over 60 games launched by September of this year.

GREE has been steadily expanding through partnerships and acquisitions over the past year, most notably with its recent pickup of social game developer Funzio for the sum of $210 million earlier this month. GREE claims that its ever-growing network now reaches over 230 million users around the world.

Even more mobile partnerships… #

Mind Candy & GREE (photo: mindcandy.com)

The company has also just announced that it will be partnering with entertainment company Mind Candy to bring the very popular Moshi Monsters kids’ game franchise onto mobile devices via the GREE Platform. The game lets children adopt and raise virtual pet monsters online.

The partnership will result in two Moshi Monsters titles being released in Q4 2012. Michael Acton Smith, the CEO and founder of Mind Candy noted:

Our fans love tablets and smartphones so we’re really excited to take our much loved characters and stories to these new platforms. […] GREE has achieved phenomenal success and we’re looking forward to working with them on these two games.

Moshi Monsters already claims over 60 million registered users in 150 territories around the world, and this tie-up with GREE will certainly help the game expand even further.

Weixin, which recently adopted the English name, WeChat, is marketing strongly on Facebook. I’m seeing ads on every other refresh on my Facebook page and that’s not all. For new users of WeChat you can even claim free Facebook credits if you sign up for an official ID — either through your phone number or by connecting it with Facebook. You will then receive a pin to claim up to 1,000 free Facebook credits. More details can be found here.

We also last reported that WeChat, according to Tencent’s CEO Pony Ma, has hit more than 100 million users. WeChat’s step to move into English clearly shows its ambition to scoop up international users. The move appears to be working as I find more and more of my non-Chinese friends hopping on to WeChat. Most, if not all, find that the app is pretty awesome. It is actually, and it comes with more emoticons which does make text conversation fun. Emoticons work very well in Asia.

WeChat isn’t just in English and Chinese but it is also available in Thai, Bahasa Indonesia, Portuguese, and Vietnamese. Its Facebook campaign looks pretty gung ho with localized pages set up for India, Thailand, and Malaysia. While Western companies find it hard to break into China, I’m sure Chinese company will find it tough to internationalize a product too. But WeChat looks to be executing things pretty well so far. So watch out, team Whatsapp.

Kakaku.com's Macbook listings

I recently picked up a new laptop, after delaying replacing my old 2007 13" Macbook for about as long as I could bear. I’m not an impulsive buyer, and I usually agonize far more than should ever be required about major electronic purchases. Here in Japan I like to make use of price comparison engine Kakaku.com to research prices, and for this most recent laptop purchase, it resulted in significant discount [1].

But what I find most interesting these days, is why anyone would buy without first consulting a price comparison site to see which retailers offer the best price for whatever it is you want to buy. As big as e-commerce has become, price comparison engines provide great value to the customer. And I’m puzzled as to why these price comparison sites aren’t more popular. We’re beginning to see more and more companies offer them, especially here in Asia [2].

We’ve previously written about Alibaba’s eTao in China, into which the company plans to invest a cool one billion RMB ($158 million) in order to better market it to consumers. Similarly, China also has B5M.com which collates products from across the Chinese e-commerce space. For Indonesia, we’ve previously mentioned PriceArea that will cater to careful shoppers in that nation. In India, there’s MySmartPrice.com, Amazon’s new Junglee, and more. And in Japan, 15 percent of the afore-mentioned Kakaku was actually picked up by ad giant Dentsu, as announced earlier today.

I think there’s certainly some great opportunity for price comparison startups in the region’s growing e-commerce markets.

But I’m curious to hear how many of our readers bother with price comparison engines or such similar services. And if so, what are you favorite sites? What was the best deal you ever found? Do let us know in the comments.

Facebook listed, and social network stock prices dropped. I can think of two possible reasons for this. (1) Investors who were excited about social media in the past couldn’t buy Facebook shares, so they bought shares in Zynga, LinkedIn, Yelp, and RenRen instead. When the “real thing” appeared [i.e. when Facebook itself listed], they traded in their other social network stocks for Facebook shares. (2) Facebook’s first day of trading didn’t meet most people’s expectations, and [Facebook's underwhelming performance] has brought disaster to similar stock offerings [because it affects the way investors are looking at social media in general].

I don’t know enough about the stock market to tell you whether Mr. Lee is right or not. But he’s a smart guy with an impressive background in the tech industry, so it’s always worth listening to what he has to say.

[via Sohu IT, Image Source]

Photo: Gigazine

Japanese advertising giant Dentsu (TYO:4324) has today announced that it has acquired a 15.06 percent stake in Kakaku.com (TYO:2371), a price comparison engine in Japan which we have written about a few times before.

The stake is to be purchased from Kakaku’s main shareholder, Culture Convenience Club. According to Reuters this evening, Dentsu is looking to “advance internet advertising and digital marketing,” and tying up with Kakaku should help on that front.

Our readers may recognize Dentsu as the same company that was enlisted by GREE to assist in its overseas promotion, and it is also Facebook’s official ad sales and marketing representative in Japan.

As Serkan Toto points out in his report about this over on Asiajin, Kakaku also runs the online restaurant guide/website Tabelog, which is also quite popular. On a somewhat related note, it was just about a week back that Kakaku announced Tabelog would be getting Facebook sharing functions, injecting a little bit more social into the service.

As for Kakaku, I personally hope it continues to do well because speaking as a terribly cheap online shopper, I’m a huge fan of such price comparison services. I’ll have a little more to say on that subject later this evening.

Photo: Gigazine

There are lots of ways to look at this data, and it’s no surprise to see Tencent way ahead of the rest of the pack. But the first thing that jumped out to me was the stark difference between what Tencent is making from its social networks and what Sina is making — or more accurately, what it isn’t making — from Weibo. Granted, Tencent versus Sina isn’t an entirely fair comparison when it comes to SNS, since Tencent has QQ, Weixin and Qzone in addition to its weibo service. But it’s certainly clear that Sina is having a very hard time monetizing its popular social network.

(Incidentally, it’s also worth noting Sina doesn’t seem to be making much of anything from its weibo gaming platform either. That’s not a huge surprise, as I’ve reviewed a number of the games and found them to be pretty bad, generally speaking, and way too blatant about begging for money.)

[via TechWeb]

The new Chinese-themed Plants vs Zombies Great Wall Edition has arrived, bringing new scenes and levels to PopCap’s popular gaming title. The new version is available now for Android – but only in Chinese. Bad news for local gamers is that the game is not really free – the app contains the conventional PvZ game with the Great Wall levels as paid extras. So you can’t even see the stages on the ancient wall without coughing up at least 2 RMB (US$0.32) to buy some virtual items.

As we reported last week, the new version is a tie-up between PopCap and local social media/gaming giant Tencent (HKG:0700). As such, it’s a part of Tencent’s QQ Games platform, and so Tencent is guilty – er, I mean, responsible – for the rampant monetization in the game that keeps you off the ramparts until you’ve paid up. Worse still, when I tested it out I saw the graphics are pretty lousy and fuzzy – and my phone has only a middling 800×480 resolution. And it’s really buggy, throwing up error messages when loading. Plus it paralyzed my phone’s ability to take screenshots – and so I’ve sourced images from CNmo instead. It sounds like a bit of a disaster – and it is. The more user-friendly and accessible approach taken by Rovio with Angry Birds would’ve gotten the Plants vs Zombies Great Wall Edition a lot more traction. As it currently stands, there’s not so much excitement for the game online. On the bright side, the game has no ads.

Here are a few screengrabs:

You'll have to buy virtual items before you can access the new special levels at all. Below you can see the same old selection of plants, bombs, and other items.

We heard PopCap CEO, David Roberts, talk at a Q&A in Beijing last week, where he explained that another special Chinese edition of the popular zombie-bashing game will come later this year, based on the Three Kingdoms legends.

Grab Plants vs Zombies Great Wall Edition as an APK file from the QQ Games download page.

[Screenshots source: CNmo - 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.

Xfire, a California- and Shanghai-based online community platform that offers social tools to PC gamers, is partnering up with Southeast Asian games publisher, SEA Gaming. Their agreement will bring Xfire’s online game utility to SEA Gaming’s titles, including World of Tanks.

This will allow gamers in the region to share videos and screenshots, and chat across supported games. Its livestream function also allows users to broadcast live streams of their game play.

Xfire also just announced a few days back that it had raised $3 million in funding to put towards its efforts of expanding into Asia. That investment was led by Sinapore’s IDM Venture Capital. This is on top of the $4 million the company raised from Intel Capital in 2011. The company’s CEO, Malcolm CasSelle, noted that partnering with SEA Gaming is a big step in its Asia push:

SEA Gaming has the exact reach within Southeast Asia that we’re looking for to continue our overall expansion […] They have a solid line-up of titles coming out this year, and we look forward to introducing Xfire to new players through those games."

Overall, Xfire claims that 20 million gamers have downloaded its client, with more that six million gamers using it to connect each month.

The specialist Chinese e-commerce site Mbaobao.com, which sells only women’s handbags, has wrapped up a fourth round of funding, according to its CEO Ye Haifeng. The circumstances around this news coming out are rather odd, however – the confirmation from Mr. Ye was in response to rumors that one of its major backers, DCM, had refused to take part in further financing. But the CEO insists that DCM and a number of familiar investors are still on board. But no further details about this fourth round have been made public, except that it was finalized in February.

The CEO’s retort to the rumors came on his official Sina Weibo account – see the tweet here – where he also tackled the insinuation that the site was struggling. “Gross profit is up and costs are down,” he added.

A few hours after this kerfuffle, the accountants China Renaissance confirmed the D-round funding on its own Weibo page, but the investment amount is still hushed up.

Mbaobao – one of numerous specialist e-commerce sites in China that rely on customer loyalty in a niche area – completed its first ever major funding round in September 2010, which amounted to US$30 million and was led by DCM. When we chatted with DCM’s Hurst Lin last winter, he told us that lady’s bags are one of the best items to sell via the internet: because the bags don’t have sizes, and are often replaced annually. DCM also backs a lot of other niche Chinese e-tailers, such as VIPShop, which recently floated on the NYSE.

We’ll update if we get an official list of investors in this round.

Indian classifieds website Quikr has announced that it has raised $32 million in its fifth funding round led by private equity firm Warburg Pincus in exchange for a stake in the company, the size of which was not specified. Quikr’s existing investors Matrix Partners India, Norwest Venture Partners, and eBay also participated.

As many of you may know, Quikr was once Kijiji India until it rebranded [1] back in June of 2008. It’s very much like a Craigslist-style website, allowing users to buy and sell things, or offer or find services online in a wide range of categories. It has grown to have 17 million people and businesses using it in 83 cities every month. The service earns revenue by charging for premium services as well as advertising.

The co-founder and CEO of Quikr, Pranay Chulet, commented on how these new funds will be put to use:

The current round, which is our largest to date, will enable us to diversify our
offerings across both online and mobile platforms, intensify our product development efforts and further strengthen our marketing capabilities.

Presently the market for e-commerce in India stands at only about $10 billion, but with more and more people coming online, the market should grow in proportion to the nations internet infrastructure, especially as more and more people in rural areas come onto the web.

For more information on Quikr, check out their recent promotional video below.

[Warburg Pincus via Techcrunch]

Chinese search engine Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) slowly started rolling out its cloud services – along the lines of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the Google App Engine – last year. And now the company’s VP of engineering, Wang Jing, says that its Baidu Cloud applications engine can save startups a lot of money, and the revenue sharing from its developer platform gave “more than 100 million in shared-revenue” to app devs in 2011 – and he expects “this figure to at least triple” to 300 million RMB (US$47.51 million) by the end of 2012.

That stat was posted today on the official Baidu Beat blog in English. The post goes on to claim that developers who use its app engine can lower their app “development costs by 30 percent, and shorten the development period by 40 percent.” It gives the example of the locally-made photo-editing app Meitu XiuXiu, which made the switch to paying for Baidu’s enterprise cloud program to power its app. As a part of the deal, the app now gives its users free cloud storage on the new Baidu Wangpan, the Dropbox-esque consumer-grade file backup offering from the Beijing-based company.

All in all, Baidu says its cloud engine and developer platform now has 80,000 mobile apps on board from 60,000 devs. Citing the same 91Mobile report on China’s app-etite for mobile downloads that we looked at yesterday, Baidu points out that the top 100 ranking apps already make up for 48 percent of total user downloads – which leaves hundreds of thousands of app devs scrapping for the remaining space on the nation’s smartphones. And so, the PR spin implies, Baidu Cloud can give a startup the kind of boost – in terms of support, lower costs, and greater potential exposure – that can help it compete. One final alarming stat is that:

The cost of acquiring one non-paying app user has gone up to 1.4 RMB [$0.22], leading many developers in the China market to see the mobile app’s industry as a game for the wealthy.

That bodes ill for indie app makers in the face of China’s many web giants who like to have their fingers in as many pies as possible, such as Netease, Sina, Tencent, Alibaba, and… er… Baidu too.

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), for its part, is fighting back in Asia against such new competition from Baidu, making the case for its AWS being the engine that should be powering startup’s apps, allowing them to scale up – or down – their server needs in a flexible and affordable way. We even recently saw the startup MadeiraCloud, which allows users to map out their AWS architecture in a visual manner. Amazon’s AWS is available and accessible in China, in contrast to the situation with many other foreign web services.

But Baidu won’t have things its own way among Chinese services, with strong competition from Shanda (NASDAQ:SNDA; FRA:RZP), makers of the Bambook e-reader, with its Cloudary platform.

Baidu itself has been pushing its consumer-level cloud services a lot in the past six months, when its own Android-based mobile OS was launched and came with all its social apps and utilities bundled together. This was followed just last week with its budget smartphone that added cloud-powered voice controls.

If you read Chinese, the Baidu Developer platform homepage can be found here.

According to SingTel, GTW Holdings Private Limited (GTW), the holding company of HungryGoWhere.com, will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of SingTel. Operations-wise, it will be merged with inSing.com, a Singapore lifestyle and local search site, which is also a subsidiary of Singtel.

Food bonds people together, and that’s especially true in Asia. With this acquisition, SingTel is attempting to make it easier for people to find, rate, and book restaurants in a personalized way. Users can expect to get access to over 100,000 restaurant reviews, deals, and discounts. They can also have convenient access information from their mobile devices on over 15,000 restaurants currently on board with HungryGoWhere.com.

On the acquisition, Mr Dennis Goh, the founder and managing director of HungryGoWhere, said,

We are delighted to be joining the inSing.com and SingTel family. This deal allows our award-winning content to be seen by even more people in the region and will accelerate the investment and distribution of our new online restaurant reservation system.

Its new online restaurant reservation system, the TableBD reservation platform, allows restaurant owners to take and manage reservations, and improve productivity in restaurants through TableDB’s customer relationship management (CRM) tools. With the acquisition and merger of both HungryGoWhere.com and inSing.com sites, they are looking to provide a one-stop shop for restaurant reviews, deals, and reservations.

Its new service sounds pretty similar to what Chope is offering, and I wonder what other food applications, such as Burpple and Buffet Mania, are looking at this acquisition. Will the startups in the food apps space be merging to take on the bigger boys? Let us know your thoughts on the acquisition below.

[Singtel via @danielgoh]

Readers may recall late last year we wrote about startup 88tc88, which helps artists and record labels sell their music legally in China. The company has now just announced that investment company Alstin has made a ‘single-digit million euro investment’ in the service, in exchange for a ‘significant equity stake.’

We got in touch with founder Thomas Reemer, who explained that the company isn’t just about music anymore, but it also will work on localizing games, apps, ebooks as well. In fact, says Thomas, the company’s B2C sales platform Paishou88 (set for a closed beta release in June) will offer 450,000 apps.

When asked what artists have used the music service yet, Thomas lists names like Sean Lennon, The Feelies, Johnny Winter, Manu Chao, and others.

Of course when it comes to entertainment in China, not only do you have legit competitors, but you also have piracy to compete with as well. I asked what kind of plan the company has up its sleeve for enticing Chinese users with its many offerings. Thomas notes:

We will offer a lot of exclusive content which means that there will be an alternative to piracy and gradually a clean license environment. As [for] engaging the Chinese audience we will start with the crowd we know best, the students. For over a year now we have been signing deals with universities which allow us a lot, [but] I can’t say more for now.

The Paishou88 e-commerce/m-commerce platform will be enabled with social features, and I’m told there will also be a virtual currency that will fluctuate in value according to demand – and that certainly sounds like an intriguing idea.

In any case, as we have noted many times before, the Chinese e-commerce market is a very big one with over 750 billion RMB (or about $118 billion) spent in 2011. Like the lucrative search market, you don’t need an overwhelming share of the pie to do well in China.

Tencent (HKG:0700), one of China’s largest and oldest web companies, got restructured into six separate units last week so as to make it more adaptive and lean. And now the new CEO of the freshly-formed e-commerce division, Wu Xiaoguang (pictured below), has suggested that its online retailing ventures – Paipai for C2C selling, and QQ Buy for B2C – are near the mature stage where it’d make sense to go for a subsidiary IPO. No time-frame was given for this, however.

Mr. Wu added, in a recent internal memo reported by the Chinese media, that the restructuring would allow the e-commerce division to use more flexible management strategies and to more tightly seize hold of the whole vertical, from offline logistics to new product development on the sites.

Despite Tencent’s huge social media user numbers for its iconic QQ IM service, the Shenzhen-based company hasn’t managed to translate that into e-commerce success, missing out on the initial growth stages in the industry to Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall sites, and then in the more recent few years failing to get ahead of more specialist e-tailers such as 360Buy and Dangdang (NYSE:DANG). That has left Tencent being, in this sector, in the quite odd situation of being an oft-overlooked also-ran. Indeed, Wu Xiaoguang admitted that his subsidiary’s operations will likely incur financial losses as it invests and tries to expand.

Tencent's new e-commerce head, Wu Xiaoguang. (Image from iFeng Tech).

Tencent starting its online shopping efforts in 2006 with Paipai, aiming to tap into the amateur shopkeeper craze that was started by Taobao in China after it crushed eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY). Now, says Wu Xiaoguang, the company’s e-commerce venture is in a mature third-stage of growth in which it needs to succeed whilst also adding value to the industry and consumers. Amazon is cited in his memo as a successful example of an e-tailing platform – though Tencent’s challenges are greater, having far more competition in the country and trying to compete on a much wider catalog of products. As if all that is not enough, Mr. Wu also name-checks mobile commerce as something that his unit needs to master.

I hope he’s getting paid well, as that’s a huge task to take on. In our most recent look at B2C e-commerce market share in China, QQ Buy is way down among the very numerous “others” operating in online retail.

[Source: iFeng Tech - article in Chinese]

Photo: k-tai.impress.co.jp

A while ago we wrote about a concept game design that conceived to integrate games into the straps that passengers grip while standing on trains. And while that sort of thing might be a while off, a company in Tokyo is currently testing out a way to advertise with these straps using NFC.

Shunkosha currently has FeliCa NFC-enabled straps installed on the Ginza and Marunouchi train lines for a trial period which started yesterday, and will extend to June 3rd. Users simply need to touch their phone [1] and obtain the embedded URL for the website being promoted by the ad campaign. For now, the travel agency HIS will be the advertiser in this initial phase.

It looks to be a process marginally easier than scanning a QR code, although I wonder how many people will actually use it after the novelty has worn off.

I still think that gaming might be a better way to advertise to people than by sending them to a URL. Perhaps some kind of real-life card collection game, where you can only obtain certain cards in specific locations as with the Japanese location-based game Colopl.

That would certainly be something I’d like to see the Japanese Tourism Agency get behind, for domestic tourists as well as those from overseas, especially Korea and China.

In any case, if you’re on the Ginza or Marunouchi lines in the next week or so, be sure to check out these new strap ads, and let us know what you think.

Shunkosha (pdf) via Wireless Watch

4 Mbps bills for 2 Mbps service

Guo lives in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, and his internet service is provided by China Unicom, so he called the company’s customer service hotline. He was told to wait for a repairman to come check it out, but no one was available for nearly a month. Eventually, it turned out that from his repeated calls, Guo had multiple bug reports in Unicom’s customer service system, but that no one bothered to deal with any of them.

Eventually, Unicom did send two repairmen, who told Guo the issue was that the wiring in Chifeng was old and that there was no way for him to reach speeds of 4 Mbps. If he wasn’t satisfied, they told him, they would be happy to remove his broadband connection entirely. They also tested his connection speed using a device they had brought themselves and pronounced it to be around twice as fast as Guo says he has experienced in his own tests.

Woeful customer service aside, Guo’s case raises a question I’ve seen elsewhere on the Chinese internet: why are companies advertising broadband speeds in places where they can’t provide them? Does this constitute a kind of false advertising? At my own apartment here in Beijing, I pay for 4 Mbps service. A test on speedtest.net just now gave me a speed of just about 3 Mbps for both download and upload, and in the past I’ve seen it as low as 2 Mbps. Obviously it would be difficult for the broadband company to provide a connection that is constantly exactly 4 Mbps. But if my connection isn’t capable of reaching 4 Mbps at all — I’ve never seen it that high — isn’t it false advertising to suggest that what I’m buying is a 4 Mbps connection?

Of course, this isn’t just a problem in China. The gentlemen from Penny Arcade suggested a solution to this problem all the way back in 2009:

Something tells me my broadband provider here in Beijing would have a problem if I paid them less than the price that’s posted on their flyers. Still, though, it would only be fair. Perhaps China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology should consider regulating the way broadband providers are allowed to advertise speeds. Or, testing connection speeds in the homes of random consumers to make sure they’re living up to their promises.

[Zheng Dongfang Wang via Sina Tech]

China’s most vibrant Twitter-esque service, Sina Weibo, has a stylish new third-party iPhone app in the form of Moke (pronounced ‘mor-kur,’ as in the Chinese). The new app looks a lot – perhaps a bit too much – like Tweetbot (see the comparison below), the popular Twitter client created by Tapbots.

Moke was made by Chinese developer Ling Wang, who gained some global recognition earlier this year for the elegant ‘to do’ app Voodo. The new Moke is a free app that supports English and Chinese, and contains a ‘pro’ in-app purchase for US$2.99. It’s a welcome addition to the three alternative Weibo mobile apps that I looked at last year, and a strong challenger to the most attractive of those, Weico.

While it would’ve been nice to see a more original design used, Moke looks like a sweet way to access all the main Weibo functions, such as comments, retweets, private messages, new followers, user profiles, etc. While we’re all fans – though also harsh critics – of Sina’s (NASDAQ:SINA) microblog service here at TiA, the official Sina app is textbook bloatware, crammed with all the social gaming elements that Weibo has, plus location-based checkins and local weather and trends and the kitchen sink. It’s all just too much. And so Moke – and the fine-looking Weico as well – offers a respite from that, and a speedier way to do the essentials such as fire off Weibo tweets and sees who’s interacting with you. That’s all that’s needed. Plus some eye-candy is nice too.

Get the Moke app – which requires iOS 5 to run – from the iTunes Store, or follow along its progress on the app’s new Weibo page.

The IGN Pro League (IPL), which is one major international professional gaming league, announced yesterday partnerships with China’s Netease and MarsTV. Both companies will cover future IPL events for a Chinese audience, broadcasting events and also sending reporters to international competitions. The IPL will also be bringing a few Chinese gamers along for the ride at some of its events in other countries throughout this year.

The IPL appears to be focused on two games — Starcraft and League of Legends — both of which are quite popular in China, and Chinese teams are likely to make their presence felt in international competition. As IPL founder David Ting put it: “We look forward to seeing Chinese StarCraft II players and League of Legends teams demonstrate their supreme dominance at IPL 5.”

Sure, these partnerships aren’t exactly the same as getting professional gaming on CCTV Sports; this is still very much a niche thing in China. But increased coverage on Chinese sites can only help expand pro gaming’s popularity, and perhaps someday China will be as game-crazy as its neighbors in Korea.

[PR Newswire via Marketwatch]

So Tech in Asia has been running for about a year now. We are a pretty hardworking bunch because we very much like what we are doing. We are very selective of the people we bring in. It’s true that the culture is first shaped by the founders and the core team members (Minghao and Vanessa included). And over here at our virtual news room formed across five cities made up by five nationalities, we are working pretty hard and doing a lot work of with a really small team.

A lot of factors make what we do possible, but I believe it’s the culture of this team is perhaps one of our core assets. It’s unique, I believe. When I saw this picture, it pretty much summed things up. Yes, sometimes, the f-bomb is dropped very liberally here but it makes a lot of sense to me. Joshua, our man in Indonesia, noted when he shared the above image with me: “Dude, it feels like you have been telling me all these.”

This picture was shared on Facebook, but I think it originates with the folks over at GoodFuckingDesignAdvice. It nicely sums up the spirit we’re trying to create, without the f-word of course.

A Xinhua report today brings some good news from China’s e-commerce space, where reportedly many physically disabled people are finding more ways to work and make a living.

Citing sources at China’s Taobao e-commerce platform, more than 30,000 disabled people are managing online stores on Taobao.com. The service initiated a job program last year for call center jobs that disabled people could do from home.

E-commerce in China was huge in 2011, with over 750 billion RMB (or about $118 billion) spent in total. That figure is likely to be significantly larger this year. But given online market places are far more accessible than many real world ones, it makes sense that many people with physical disabilities would make the most of such an opportunity — especially when discrimination can still be a problem for many hoping to enter the workforce in China. Xinhua quotes paralympian Yang Bozun on this point:

We have to admit that there is still discrimination against the disabled in getting a proper job. Sometimes we are being looked at differently. […] The Internet, somehow, provides an easy solution.

Assuming the report is accurate, this is certainly an encouraging trend to see. With e-commerce currently experiencing a wave of popularity as more people in China come online, we hope that the benefits can float everyone’s boat, including those with physical disabilities.

[Update on May 23rd: I had incorrectly asserted that Yebhi bought up the whole startup, but it actually just acquired the startup team. And so I have had to amend this post. My apologies].

Gurgaon-based fashion e-commerce site Yebhi is expanding its team, having just announced its acquisition of the pair of founders behind the health and fitness e-retailer Madeinhealth.com. The deal comprises of cash and equity for the smaller startup team, but the precise financials haven’t been made public. As for the startup website itself, that has been snapped up by specialist HealthKart.com, who described swallowing up its smaller rival as an “excellent strategic fit.”

Yebhi – formerly known as BigShoeBazaar in its initial incarnation back in 2007 – has grown to cover a lot more than just footwear under the stewardship of its CEO and owner, Manmohan Agarwal. The company was splashing the cash earlier this month as well, acquiring jewelry portal Stylishyou.in

In a press release issued earlier, Mr. Agarwal said:

We are happy to welcome the founding team of Madeinhealth to join the Yebhi team. They are a young and enthusiastic team and they bring zeal and a new perspective to [us].

Madeinhealth’s Jatin Modi said, in turn, that “Yebhi has the potential to be the pioneer e-commerce company” in India, and will now join the Yebhi business strategy team along with his co-founder Maniraj Singh.

It all points to lots of small-scale but meaningful movement and consolidation in India’s nascent online retailing space – and an apparent determination on the part of Yebhi to expand to challenge the likes of Flipkart and Homeshop18 across numerous product categories.

We’ve written about more than a few augmented reality applications here in the past, some more useful than others. But like one of the earliest AR apps, Sekai Camera, one of the more practical uses of the technology is in navigation. And Fujitsu has recently released an augmented reality iPhone app for use in in-car navigation, which also looks very practical. It’s called Driview.

It will be complementary to the Fujitsu Ten car navigation system, and users will simply mount their iPhone on the dash and connect it to the system with a cable. The video feed from your iPhone camera then gets geo-specific information and icons superimposed over the video feed, showing you route information and turns.

One other neat feature is that it allows you to use the front-facing camera to get a picture of your car’s backseat (see picture above). So if the kids are misbehaving you don’t have to turn around to catch them in the act.

Fujitsu previous launched other smartphone apps for in-car use, such as TwitDrive (for Tweeting while driving – we think this might be unnecessary!), DocoCar (for finding your car), and Car News Reader (now this one sounds useful!). For now it’s only available in the Japanese app store, but we hope that it becomes available in other markets later.

Check out the demonstration video in Japanese below, and screenshots after that:

[Via Patently Apple]

These 91 Mobile figures are compiled into a new report by the startup third-party store (complete with the graphs you see, onto which we have put English captions), and also reveal trends in what Chinese smartphone users are downloading and perhaps using. Since few local web companies make use of the Google Play Store, the 91 Mobile stats actually give a more accurate picture of Android user-ship in the country than Google itself could offer. And so we witness a drop in the popularity of IM apps – such as Tencent’s QQ – this year, and a shift towards downloading lifestyle apps that help folks eat out or find stuff to do, like Buding Coupons for example:

Looking at just two of the dozen or so app categories, we see the bulk of the graph moving in sync with the ever-expanding app numbers – but some kinds of apps are growing faster than others. A rapid riser right now is social commerce, with such Pinterest clone apps as Meilishuo and Mogujie rising from nothing to experience exponential growth in download numbers:

In contrast, more conventional e-commerce apps are not seeing such proliferation – but that’s likely just because it’s already a well-developed category, and folks already have their Taobao, 360Buy, and Tmall apps installed:

If you’re still hungry for graphs, check out recent data that shows Android is the dominant mobile OS in China, accounting for 68.4 percent of smartphone sales in the country.

[Source: 91 Mobile (PDF link); via 36kr - articles in Chinese]

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.

First, Lei was asked what being an entrepreneur means to him. He responded:

Being an entrepreneur means doing what others haven’t done, or doing what others haven’t done successfully. The very successful entrepreneurs are often iconoclasts, the larger-than-life sort. If he [the entrepreneur] has the courage to challenge everything, I think that’s a quality worth encouraging. Experience is the sum of things that have come before, [but] before Facebook, who knew that Facebook could be created? So I encourage entrepreneurs to challenge authority, to topple the existing rules; that is what successful experience is.

Later in the interview, Lei was asked more directly to offer some advice to budding startups and entrepreneurs on how to find investment. This is what he said:

Dont’ burn incense, it’s useless [i.e., don't just pray for a lucky break]. No investor’s money comes easily, because our money was earned with blood and sweat, too. Lots of people ask me: why don’t you invest in me? Because it’s my money, I can invest it in him or I can invest it in you. So, why should I definitely invest it in you?

If I’m following Lei correctly here, he’s saying entrepreneurs need to remember that no one invests in ‘good enough,’ and that you’re going to have to compete for every penny. If you go in with a why-wouldn’t-they-invest attitude, you’re probably going to fail.

[Huashang Wang via Sina Tech]

The Chinese startup behind the Flipboard clone Zaker has released a new app for iPad that’s aimed at fashion-loving women. Called Zaker Showcase, it’s a dedicated fashion and shopping app (pictured above) that’s filled with couture items to browse and then buy.

The makers will be hoping that its new Zaker Showcase will emulate the success of its original app, which now has just over 5 million users. The two are similar in that they present an easy format for browsing and image viewing, with options to share articles to social media such as Sina Weibo. But the key difference is that the original app was just for news reading – while this new venture is for window-shopping and purchasing clothes. As such, the new Showcase app supports account syncing with Taobao, China’s biggest e-commerce site, so that clothing items seen in the app can be more easily searched and bought online. It’s not clear if there’s a method for Zaker to generate revenue from e-commerce referrals, as occurs with local Pinterest-like sites such as Mogujie – but it is very likely doing so with this interesting and clever mobile commerce move.

Within the Zaker Showcase iPad app, users can search for fashion by type or style. Also, comments made by other users can be seen right next to the clothes. There’s full checkout and purchasing support too. We won’t be surprised to see some larger Chinese web companies emulate this more social and finger-friendly approach to social/mobile commerce in the near future – especially Alibaba’s Taobao or Tmall sites.

Grab the new Zaker Showcase app for iPad from the iTunes Store.

[Source: 36kr - article in Chinese]

According to Sina Tech, when the bus was parked the reporter was able to achieve blazingly fast download speeds: an average of 102.43 Mbps and a peak speed of 112.2 Mbps. To put things in perspective, that’s about 56 times faster than the ADSL connection I’m using to write this post. After the bus got moving, the speed dropped significantly, down to an average of about 40 Mbps with a peak speed of around 60 Mbps. That’s still pretty fast!

Now, will we be experiencing speeds like this when 4G networks finally come to China? Probably not. The reporter was testing the network on an empty bus; my guess is that the speed will take a major hit when millions of people are all trying to use it at the same time (although between then and now, China Mobile will also probably beef up infrastructure well beyond what’s being used for these tests). Still, the numbers are impressive and suggest that 4G will be a major step up. They also suggest that China Mobile is improving the TD-LTE network’s performance, as a similar test last year returned lower (though still quite fast) results.

[via Sina Tech]

Most of us are well aware of the risks involved in losing or not protecting sensitive data. That’s why many organizations opt to purchase expensive document collaboration tools equipped with security solutions. The team at Clault basically saw the opportunity and developed an easy-to-use cloud document sharing tool with built-in enterprise-grade security – and it looks pretty stellar from its video demo (embedded below).

How does Clault work? First, it provides security solutions when you are sharing documents with internal and external parties. So when you are storing, transferring, or using the documents, Clault protects the integrity of the documents throughout its usage cycle. Second, the company has implemented its own enterprise-key management solution, which allows users to own their security keys. There are tools in place to assist in key creation, exchange, and lost key recovery. With the ownership of the security keys, it safeguards the confidentiality and authenticity of your information. Three, the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) technology service prevents leakage of information that was unintended for external eyes, which guarantees the privacy of valuable documents.

Clault also keeps guard of your documents as they’re emailed, and so it is somewhat complementary to the Dropmyemail service, from the makers of Dropmysite, that we looked at earlier this year. Marcus Tan, co-founder of Clault, explained to us how his startup product differs:

Our differentiation is security, and our competitors will be traditional IT security vendors instead of Dropmysite.com. No IT solution is 100 percent safe, but our service gets you really close to state-of-the-art protection in IT.

The Singapore-based startup is co-founded by another security scientist from A*STAR, Li Qiming, and is currently funded by SPRING Technology Enterprise Commercialisation Scheme (TECS) Proof of Concept (POC) grant that it received in 2011. It is also looking to launch a new secure document sharing service at the upcoming CommunicAsia, an event which caters for corporate development teams and organizations.

Here’s Clault’s own demo video:

(Direct video link for mobile readers).

Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO), which currently owns 41.7 percent of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, has come to a formal agreement with Alibaba to allow it to buy back 20 percent of that stake. With Alibaba worth just over US$35 billion, the repurchase will see Yahoo net approximately $7.1 billion.

Ross Levinsohn, the interim CEO of Yahoo, said in a joint press release that, “Today’s agreement provides clarity for our shareholders on a substantial component of Yahoo’s value and reaffirms the significance of our relationship with Alibaba.” It’s not clear how long this deal has been in the works, or how much it might’ve been delayed by the troubled search engine being on its third CEO so far this year. Levinsohn also thanked Alibaba CEO and founder Jack Ma and the other key players in “this successful outcome.”

The deal also outlines how Yahoo can monetize its ongoing stake in Alibaba – which runs online shopping sites such as Taobao and Tmall – in the future. It includes a framework for the event of Alibaba Group opting to IPO, in which case “Alibaba will be required either to repurchase one-quarter of Yahoo’s current stake at the IPO price or allow Yahoo to sell those shares in the IPO.” But a listing isn’t an apparent plan for the group. Indeed, its sole listed entity, the business-to-business trading site Alibaba.com, will almost certainly delist from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange this summer in a privatization move.

How will Alibaba raise all that cash? The joint statement notes: “Alibaba intends to finance the repurchase through a combination of its own cash resources, debt, equity and equity-linked financing. The transaction is expected to close within approximately six months.”

Also today, Alibaba’s contract to run Yahoo China has been extended for another four years. The Chinese version of the web portal and search engine is not popular in the country, its online search market share never even troubling the statisticians in a market dominated by Baidu, Google, and Sogou.

The phone will be manufactured by Huawei, and it looks like it will carry Huawei branding in addition to being associated with Qihoo 360. In terms of specs, it sounds pretty standard for smartphones these days: 4.3 inch HD screen, dual-core 1GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, 4 GB internal storage. At 1,499 RMB ($237), it runs slightly over the 1,000 RMB target everyone seems to be aiming for these days, but it’s not clear whether that will matter much. Xiaomi has certainly achieved a lot of success at an even higher handset price, but then again, Xiaomi has word-of-mouth buzz as a hip new company. I suspect Qihoo and Huawei may have trouble arousing the same level of interest.

Of course, this is all just speculation at this point. Is the market thirsty for as many cheap smartphones as China is serving up? We’ll just have to wait and see.

[via Sina Tech]

Bangkok-based gaming company Sandbox Global is in the process of launching an English language version of their Facebook fashion game Stylista for markets in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

The game, similar to Mall World or It Girl, is currently featured in Thai language. Sandbox Global is studying the game’s usage in Thailand, where it currently has 56,000 monthly active users, and is compiling data to support expansion.

As I mentioned over on Pando Daily, Sandbox is shooting for one million users by Q3 2012 – when they also plan on releasing the game in Bahasa Indonesia for Indonesia and in Vietnamese for Vietnam. The plans are ambitious, but Sandbox has solid investment backing from Jeff Lapin, former CEO of Atari and Grand Theft Auto developer Take Two, and IDM Venture Capital.

Sandbox Global founder Ferdinand Gutierrez, a Filipino-American raised in New York City, moved to Southeast Asia over a decade ago to work in the region’s nascent digital scene. His major positions included group managing director at pioneering digital advertising agency New Media and then managing director at Neo @ Ogilvy in Singapore, where he specialized in digital media. Gutierrez oversees Sandbox with Peter Theisen, whose role is leading technology and product development. Theisen is well-known for his experience in management training for C-level executives. The third member of the founding group is Jonathan Lor, whose experience includes leading regional digital initiatives with clients including IBM and Yahoo. Gutierrez explains:

The management team has extensive regional experience so we have working knowledge of all of these different markets in Southeast Asia. We were inspired to build this company to create homegrown social games in this region, supplemented by talent from more developed markets in North America and Europe.

In Stylista, users create an avatar, style it out with designer clothes, and shop for shoes and attend cocktail parties in the neighborhoods of Soho in New York, Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, and Bond Street in London. Sandbox Global has plans to expand the game to Siam Square in Bangkok, Ometasando in Tokyo, and Champs-Élysées in Paris soon.

They’re also in talks with a company in Taipei about distributing the Mandarin version of Stylista for distribution inside and outside of Facebook in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China.

From Wikipedia: “Carpooling (also known as car-sharing, ride-sharing, lift-sharing and covoiturage), is the sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car.”

Wodache (loose translation means ‘hiring a car’) makes carpooling simple in Beijing. A user can simply log on to the site or iPhone app to search for a carpool ride. Each available car is shown on the map with pins. You can also also find out more about the driver, such as:

• where he/she is driving from and to where
• time and dates of driving
• personal particulars and contact details for verification and easy communication

The service is a very welcome service from a consumer’s standpoint. Beijing’s traffic jams are about as badass as Jakarta’s and it doesn’t help if folks drive cars with no one inside but the driver. Having more people packed onto a vehicle saves costs, and helps reduces traffic jams too.

Co-founder Eric Wang said that the he and his founding partners — Jeff Hsu and James Hu — have long wanted to create a business that solves a real problem and is also profit driven. He shared some more thoughts with me:

The way China’s automobile development is definitely unsustainable. There has to be a market-based solution to solve this problem. At the same time, I have always wanted to work on a social enterprise where it is a business not only makes money but also contributes to society. After thinking for a few months, my parters and I all bought a one-way ticket and flew to China. We collectively gave up our lucrative careers (Investment Banking/Microsoft/Apple, full-scholarship Ph.D at UCSD, house and car) and against our parents’ wishes to come to China to make a difference.

The team is made of folks who are successful corporate people, working in the some of the most admired banks and technology companies in the world. Eric, Jeff, and James all grew up in the U.S but decided to head to China to create something big. But the startup also faces competition from similar services. Some related ones which we have covered so far include Yongche (black car service), Duducars (Dudu car rental using RFID card), and Ika Mobile’s car rental aggregator app. The one closest to Wodache is perhaps PickRide which is specific to carpooling only.

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

Also this week, Sina revealed that users of its Twitter-like Weibo.com service have exceeded 300 million in number. No word, though, on how many of those are truly active users, or how the recent ‘real name’ registration policy has impacted on activity on the social network.

That’s all for this week, folks! For our full spread of China coverage, you can subscribe to our China RSS – and we’re on Google+ as well, where we’re always happy to get feedback or try answer your questions.

In the last seven days, we have covered a couple of startups on Tech in Asia, specifically from China, India, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

For folks who are interested in investing or partnering with these startups, drop us an email — editors[at]techinasia[dot]com – anytime. No promises, but we’ll try our best to be the bridge.

And if you’re a tech startup based in Asia hoping to get featured, please send us your pitch here.

1. FusionCharts | India

I interviewed the founder of India-based FusionCharts, Pallav Nadhani, about a year ago. It was great fun documenting his story. As we noted then, story of FusionCharts started when he was age 17. He found charts boring and thought they could be made sexier and more interactive. He founded FusionCharts in 2002 and since then, the product has been used by some big names in the web world, including Google (Google Docs), LinkedIn, and Weather.com…

2. Buffet Mania | Singapore

Food apps seem to be all over the place lately. We’ve had both Chope and Burpple release new iPhone apps over the past couple of weeks, and now Buffet Mania is the latest to unroll a new updated iPhone app, supporting new features to enhance your hungry quest with a variety of buffets in Singapore.

3. Clozette | Singapore

Fashion social network, Clozette, this week announced that it has successfully raised S$2.4 million (US$1.9 million) in its series A funding, bringing the total funds raised by the startup to S$3.85 million (US$3.06 million) from its seed round last in April 2011. This latest investment round is led by Seed Ventures IV, a S$20 million (US$16 million) venture fund under the Singapore National Research Foundation’s (NRF) Early Stage Venture Funding (ESVF) scheme by Walden International.

4. Wolianxi | China

Wolianxi (loose translation: connect me) reminds me of Found, which is also an app that tries help users organize meet ups quickly. But Wolianxi is much more straightforward. The Chinese app follows common outing behaviors of Chinese users which includes karaoke, games, travel, and group buying collections.

5. Tujia | China

Readers may recall back in January when we looked at Chinese startup Tujia, a vacation home rental service which offers hotel-like online booking for your home if you’re on holiday. And now this evening there’s word from venture capital firm Lightspeed China Partners that it has made a series A investment in Tujia, along with CDH Investments and Ctrip International.

6. Mafengwo | China

Chinese-based startup Mafengwo is a website that provides content on all things travel-related. Aside from the website, one of the products that it has developed is Traveling Translator. The app serves to help users to get around despite language barriers and has attracted over five million downloads so far.

7. 8Securities | Hong Kong

Financial trading and dashboard startup, 8Securities, has just raised $1.5 million from Velocity Capital B.V and Full Global. Also this week, the startup has launched a campaign which would entitle new account holders to receive $200 worth of Facebook shares.

Related stories

• Startup Communities in Indonesia [#StartupAsia Preview]
• How Did mig33 Scale in Indonesia? [#StartupAsia Preview]
• Leading by Example
• Startup Advice from UCWeb, Evernote, and Vodafone
• Expanding Abroad: Risky, Scary, and Exciting

A tech ecosystem usually consists of startup founders, angel investors, VCs, government, universities, media, and communities. What often happens is that most people focus only on the entrepreneurs and the ones who invests in them — angels or venture capitals. But local communities are where all of these stakeholders meet, and there are more than a few startups being born or getting investment out of such meetups.

We have at least one strong startup community in each of the big cities across Indonesia, starting with StartupLokal in Jakarta, FOWAB in Bandung, Bancakan 2.0 and Gamelan in Jogjakarta, SuWec in Surabaya, and Stasion in Malang. They are holding regular meetups periodically to give updates about what is happening in the ecosystem and quite often they have a session to showcase newest product launches.

We will have five initiators from these communities talking on stage on the first day of Startup Asia Jakarta 2012:

1. StartupLokal

StartupLokal community is a community that based in Jakarta which acts as a melting pot, gathering start-up founders, digital industry enthusiasts, investors, and media, giving them a chance to collaborate in one way or another. This community started in April 2010 and has been growing since then. The StartupLokal community held Jakarta-based regular monthly meetups, in total 25 up until this month. It also has launched Project Eden, a startup incubator/accelerator aiming to provide pre-seed investment.

2. Bancakan

Founded back in February 2010, Bancakan is a gathering for all Jogjakarta startups and developers. They have already held more than nine meet-ups to date. It also manages Hackerspace YK, inspired by Bandung’s Hackerspace by FOWAB. Bancakan is Javanese term referring to ‘gathering’ or ‘eating together’

3. FOWAB

Bandung in West Java, Indonesia’s third largest populated city, is well-known as a creative city. It is also a high-tech city, as Insitut Teknologi Bandung, arguably Indonesia’s finest technological campus, is there. It’s not surprising to know there’s a creative tech community in Bandung too. FOWAB is community for creative people who get connected through the Internet in Bandung, so in a sense FOWAB is not exclusively for IT startup people only. FOWAB is for everyone from the creative industry who has the same vision to make Indonesia a better country and a better place to live. Since its first meetup in February 2010, FOWAB has held eight events. It has also created shared workspaces for creative workers named Hackerspace Bandung. It has held Geek Fest, a SXSW-like conference at the end of March 2012 and plans to make it an annual event.

4. Stasion

Stasion is a Malang, East Java-based local startup community that aims to build synergies among the members who work in digital business and technology. Founded in March of 2011, they have so far held four meet-ups and three public workshops. ‘Singo Edan’ is the term often referred to Arema FC, Malang’s beloved football club. Lately Malang is making a name for its developers after some hackathon/developer days that have been held there.

5. SuWec

Surabaya, East Java, is Indonesia’s second most populated city after Jakarta. So it’s expected that this city will have several tech communities as well. SuWec is a community for web industry practitioners folks in Surabaya. It helps and connects like minded people to collaborate and work together. Since its founding in September of 2009, SuWec has been a regular monthly event.

Not only will our speakers talk in depth about what their community is and what are they doing to help startups in their respective cities, but they will also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of being in their city. They will also speak to the difference between startups in these cities, and their plans to help the Indonesian startup ecosystem.

Interested to know more? Get your tickets to Startup Asia Jakarta 2012! Or if you have an interesting product or idea that you believe can wow the judges and audience, please register your startup for the Startup Arena competition and win US$10,000!

Facebook has gone public today (as NASDAQ:FB), and Hong Kong-based financial trading startup, 8Securities (who just announced $1.5 million of additional funding this morning), is offering something of a treat. 8Securities will provide US$200 worth of Facebook shares to every customer who opens an account with 8Securities.

Co-founder, Mikaal Abdulla, explains that although Facebook’s IPO has generated much buzz in Asia, there are only a few economical ways for them to access Facebook shares. Thus, 8Securities aims to be the platform for individual investors to trade economically in Asia. The only requirement is that the account needs to have a minimum funding of $10,000HKD. Mikaal also explains to me why his company is giving out free Facebook shares:

Our competitors spend their marketing budgets on expensive TV, print and outdoor advertising which is very traditional. We are simply choosing to give that value directly to our customers and we hope they help us spread the word. We will support this campaign through social and online marketing.

8 Securities claims to offer the best price in Asia when trading US stocks at only $8.88USD per trade with no hidden cost. The startup raised $8 million two months ago. And since then it has seen many active investment accounts from Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, and Singapore. The most popular stocks traded are Apple, Google, and Sina.

The website is quite simple. You can enter the name and email address of a person with signs of depression. The person with symptoms of depression will be notified by email that a friend is concerned. The email comes with a general survey about depression and tips about how to get better. By answering the survey the individual finds out whether they really are depressed or not.

Utsuppo was created by U2plus, a medical community for battling depression. The founder went through depression himself in the past, leading to his current efforts to help and support people with similar problems. He sees it as essential that as a society, we not miss the first signs of depression in those around us. And this is exactly what Utsuppo aims to do.

The website was created in just a week with help of Liverty, a group of people with a mission to develop as many creative web service and projects as possible. The group is lead by a serial entrepreneur in Tokyo, Kazuma Ieiri. The whole project of Utsuppo started when the founder of U2plus pitched his idea to Mr. Ieiri, who is now an investor as well.

There are several reasons for China Mobile’s uptake. One is that with the proliferation of phones that can hold multiple SIM cards, many mobile phone users in Pakistan are choosing multiple carriers. The company has also been doing a big marketing push there, offering special deals and improved services. It has also built a number of new bases and service centers, even in rural areas.

China Mobile’s Zong still trails behind local market leaders like Mobilink, Telenor, and Ufone, but it appears to be catching up.

[C114 via Sina Tech]

• Corporate Development Group (CDG)
• Interactive Entertainment Group (IEG)
• Mobile Internet Group (MIG)
• Online Media Group (OMG) [1]
• Social Network Group (SNG)
• Technology and Engineering Group (TEG)

The company’s CEO, Pony Ma [2] says that he hopes that this reshuffling will give Tencent the ability to better respond to new opportunities in the internet world. He outlines what he sees as the company’s main targets:

Our goals are: to strengthen our social networking services, to embrace the expanding global online games market, to extend our presence in mobile Internet, to integrate our online media platforms, to nurture our search business, to build out our e-Commerce platforms, and to enhance our capabilities to incubate new businesses.

Tencent recently announced its first quarter results for 2012, reporting a record quarterly profit of 2.95 billion RMB (about $466 million). It’s QQ instant messaging platform has grown to a staggering 752 million users, which is up 12 percent on the same time in the previous year. It Qzone social platform had 576.7 million user accounts, up 9.7 percent on the year before.

Let us make smartphones!

Perhaps inspired by Xiaomi, it seems everyone is looking to make a low-cost Android-based smartphone for the China market these days. Netease is apparently the latest company to throw its hat into the 1000 RMB ($158) phone ring, as high-level insiders told the Beijing News that the company has already produced a prototype.

The phone will reportedly be dual-core, feature a 4.3 inch screen, and run a skin of Android 4.0. Netease Founder Ding Lei has said the phone will come in at 1000 RMB or lower, making it cheaper than most of the phones on the market now. However, it’s not clear exactly when this phone will actually hit the market, and it’s likely to have a lot more competition in that price range if it isn’t released quite soon.

That’s because Baidu, Qihoo 360, and Shanda — among other companies — all have their eyes on the 1000 RMB smartphone market as well. Having more cheap smartphone options is never a bad thing for consumers, but these internet companies might do well to heed the warnings of Kaifu Lee about how internet companies tend to fail in mobile.

[Beijing News via Sina Tech]

Facebook’s IPO story is a lot about mobile, international growth, and Asia.

I am not Asian by birth but have been living there for a dozen years and researching key Asian markets since before Facebook was created. Here are my views on Facebook’s prospects.

From Facebook’s S1 filing:

In countries such as Japan, Russia, and South Korea we estimate that we have penetration rates of less than 15 percent; and in China, where Facebook access is restricted, we have near 0 percent penetration

While that sounds like a lot of room for growth, let’s look at the reality of it.

First, there is no Asia…

With its variety of languages, religions, GDP, population sizes, web and mobile infrastructures, regulations and incumbent players, ‘Asia’ as a word is little but the remain of a Western concept. The only realistic way to look at Asia is by looking at countries on by one. Let’s get started.

China

Why China first? It is the elephant in the room and still growing fast.

Facebook has been blocked there for years, and there is simply no way around the local definition of what constitutes objectionable content. Any web or mobile company who does not self-censor faces shut down if it local, and blocking if not.

While I heard local entrepreneurs say it is not worse than dealing with Sarbanes-Oxley [1], the enforcement is roughly equivalent to how other governments might deal with terrorists, drug dealers, pedophiles, and organized crime (the “four horsemen of internet apocalypse”), or how mass media deals with touchy topics that could upset the powers that be, or their advertisers. For foreign companies that offer content – published either by themselves or by users – it is a pretty big headache, compounded by the double set of constraints they have to deal with: those at home and those in China.

The PR headaches are – as Google experienced – pretty solid. And the question is: is it worth the effort? Assuming content is managed, China is not a walk in the park anyway: it is easily the most competitive market on the planet, simply because there are so many entrepreneurs and so much venture money. Social networks? China already has TWO listed on the stock market: Tencent (worth $53.4 billion) and RenRen (listed in May 2011 on the NYSE and today valued at $2.43 billion).

While RenRen called itself “the Facebook of China” and even went IPO a year before its Western cousin, it has a number of key differences with Facebook. Looking at revenue, RenRen is far from being Facebook: they made only $118 million last year, half of it from ads, the other from games. However, setting aside the sale of their stake in the travel portal eLong for $50.9 million, the year would have ended with a net loss.

RenRen is overall a very opportunistic company experienced at executing on proven concepts and raising capital. They even launched one of the numerous Groupon adaptations and spent tens of millions operating and promoting it, with limited results so far. Third-party developers hardly make money with RenRen, which even develops and operates its own games.

Meanwhile, Tencent is an entirely different game: $4.5 billion in revenue in 2011 (that’s 20 percent more than Facebook at $3.7 billion), $1.6 billion in net profit (62 percent more than Facebook’s nice and round $1 billion). Tencent operates TWO social networks (or three if you count their IM service QQ as another one).

Tencent counted 576.7 million active users on Qzone, 214.5 million on Pengyou and 751.9 million on their IM QQ. It also runs the largest microblog service in China with 425 million registered user accounts and 67 million daily active accounts, but we won’t talk about it as it brings no significant revenue.

Tencent’s revenue is for majority derived from online games, web games, social games and avatars (‘Internet value-added services’); a mere 7 percent comes from advertising. Their revenue split is thus vastly different from Facebook’s. Which also means that Facebook’s model is unlikely to deliver good results immediately – and this is provided they can launch and acquire users in China!

Japan

After some initial resistance due to Facebook’s design (“as long as it’s square and blue!”) and real-name policy (unlike the US, Japanese haven’t been desensitized about privacy for a decade with a Patriot Act and millimeter scans), Facebook has been growing well in Japan. The movie “The Social Network” definitely helped get more visibility and make it more mass market. Facebook’s users there stand at less than 10 million.

The benefits of addressing the Japanese market, whose population is less than half the one of the US (128 million people), are:

1. A high GDP/capita
2. Very good IT infrastructure (actually, far better than the US, according to Akamai)

Being the second largest online advertising market in the world, it makes sense for Facebook to go after it, and Facebook opened an office there some time ago.

Japan also has this interesting fact that it sports two mobile gaming platforms-cum-social-networks GREE and Mobage, by the company DeNA. Those two are on track to over 2 billion dollars each in revenue in 2011 from the Japanese market, with over 25 million registered users each. (GREE’s sales were $795 million in the year to June 2011, while DeNA’s were $1.8 billion – GREE’s sales were $575 million and DeNA’s were $526 million in 1Q2012), with healthy profits.

Of course, this did not happen overnight, but it means two things:

1. There is lots of money spent on mobile social games in Japan.

2. Facebook could potentially make money there, and in other markets, by learning a thing or two from Japan.

South Korea

According to Akamai, South Korea has the world’s fastest Internet. You could even argue it had its very own Mark Zuckerberg 10 years ago when Cyworld was launched and pioneered the micro-transaction model on its social network.

Unfortunately, had Mark Zuckerberg been born 10 years ago in Korea, he would not have been able to raise enough capital and grow his service internationally until the glorious moment of its IPO.

While Cyworld dominated Korea for a decade, Facebook finally started to register more page views than its local rival sometime last year. Cyworld has been around since 1999 but lost most of its youthful startup spirit after it was acquired by SK Communications in 2003 (for a whopping $7.14 million – that was all before MySpace boomed and a social network was even a word).

Is there revenue in other Asian markets?

Here I can share some first-hand experience from a company I helped co-found named Cmune, the Beijing-based makers of Uberstrike, Facebook’s largest first-person shooter. You read that well: a cutting-edge free-to-play multiplayer 3D shooter inside Facebook. Made from China, where Facebook is blocked. Enjoy the irony.

UberStrike’s user base is global (China excepted) and our number 1 market is the US. You might wonder: why not launch in China first? Well, the revenue share offered by local social networks Tencent and RenRen and the market size for social games were not so motivating. RenRen offers on average 50 percent, and the revenue (as seen above) is not great, while Tencent used to offer 90/10, unfortunately the 10 percent was for developers. We now hear of 70/30 (30 percent for you), though your mileage may vary. Overall, about a dozen social game companies make real money in China, with over 10 million MAU, but the revenue per user is generally 1/5th to 1/10th of a US user, so better grow in the US first.

China aside, and after disappointing results on Cyworld (Korean social platforms do not have their social gaming act together quite yet), we got a few surprises in Asia, which I will try to explain.

UberStrike registered many users from the Philippines and Indonesia. Unfortunately, most seem to be kids in Internet cafes and not eager to spend $20 on powerful guns, so they mostly play for free. Maybe when the country will reach over $5,000 GDP/Capita there will be a real market there.

On the contrary, Singapore and Malaysia players, while much less numerous, monetize really well. Singapore is easy to explain: English-speaking, wealthy, with great IT infra and lots of credit cards. So despite its rather small population (5 million), it brings valuable revenue.

How about Malaysia? Though not often on the “developed countries” list, Malaysia is no third world either: over 28 million people, though Malay dominates in this Muslim country, most educated people speak fluent English regardless of ethnicity. It has a decent GDP/capita, largely concentrated among ethnic Chinese who represent 20 percent of the population.

When I asked Ganesh Kumar Bangah, CEO of the e-payment company MOL, who bought Friendster (yes, Friendster is Malaysian now) before selling back its SNS patents to Facebook for a hefty sum and partnering with them for Facebook Credits distribution (they also own 3.5 million shares of Facebook), 70 percent of the revenue they collect is from those 20 perent of ethnic Chinese – still a solid 5 to 6 million people, a similar size to Singapore.

Other Asian markets? I am yet to see social gaming or mobile companies making hundreds of millions in Thailand, Vietnam or other emerging markets. Even India – depending where you place your “Asian” frontier – has poor infrastructure, low GDP/capita, numerous languages and poor payment systems, which make it unattractive for app developers to localize fully.

Sure, Indonesia is the fourth largest Facebook country with 42 million users (behind US, Brazil and India), but most of them are on mobile (with feature phones) and pay nothing.

So How Big is the Potential?

China is going to be an uphill battle if it ever happens.

Japan might eventually bring in good revenue, but it’s competitive, especially on mobile.

Facebook's Asian Friends: from John Saeki of AFP

Korea can turn into a decent market and competition is weak on the web, but users are not the next billion.

Other countries might bring users, but revenue will take years to come, if no local competitor emerges like in China or Russia.

As for mobile, the spread of Android ($100 and soon $50 mobiles, not the $500+ iPhone) is going to help gather many across “emerging Asia”. Money-making will only start when Facebook has something to sell on mobile, integrated with proper payment platforms. Even then, let’s keep real: it is not going to be raining gold because of the hard barrier of GDP/capita.

Let’s wish good luck to Facebook and its post-IPO investors. As Dan Ariely of the “Predictably Irrational” book fame posted, the pre-IPO investors – especially bankers and their clients – are going to do well regardless.

[Image credit: Facebook's Asian Friends by John Saeki of AFP via Thomas Crampton]

Trigrams from the I-Ching

Have you ever thought that an ancient Chinese text would be the key to investment success, or the tool that could help save your next startup? No? Well, I’d say you’re probably right, but Julio Urvina wouldn’t agree. Mr. Urvina is the author of The Tao for CEOs and Investors, a self-published e-book with a concept so strange that I just had to look into it further. Urvina holds that China’s ancient I-Ching is an oracle that can help investors divine the future. That’s not a metaphor; Urvina means it literally: this book will help you see the future.

Although traditionally dismissed by Chinese intelligentsia, who considered it more of a guide to the universe, there is a long history of the use of the I-Ching in China and elsewhere in Asia as a divination tool among the underclasses. It contains 64 hexagrams, each accompanied by several lines of interpretation. Traditionally, divination was practiced by casting yaro stalks while meditating on a question; the stalks suggest a hexagram which then provides the answer. (It’s actually a bit more complicated than that, but that’s the basic idea). These days, it’s more common just to flip a series of coins to determine the hexagram.

Anyway, having spent an almost absurd amount of time studying ancient Chinese philosophical traditions in college — I have actually practiced I-Ching divination in the traditional manner with one of the US’s most eminent China scholars — I really couldn’t resist digging into the copy of the book Urvina sent us. I don’t believe in divination (my practice of it in college was academic, not spiritual), but Urvina really does. In fact, he says of the I-Ching: “In my 45 years of consulting it, it has never, and I mean never been wrong.”

Urvina’s book — full disclosure: I only skimmed it — argues that the I-Ching is a useful tool for businesses and investors, including startups. He places particular emphasis on the capacity of “the Oracle” (his words, and capitalization) to predict whether or not a CEO has “the mandate of heaven” — essentially, whether they are fated to succeed or fail. Urvina covers every hexagram in the I-Ching, providing examples of CEOs who have embodied the various hexagrams at companies of all kinds, including more than a few tech companies. In an email, Urvina explained further:

As investors we want those CEOs who have the Mandate of Heaven. For instance, take the year 2002 and the case of Palmisano (IBM) and Ballmer (Microsoft). If you look at the Hexagrams of each of these CEOs and you would have chosen the one with a clear positive Hexagram you would have had a yearly double digit return for a decade with Palmisano and a lost decade with Ballmer. It is easy. This is the same case with Meg Whitman (HP) and Virginia Rometty (IBM) for 2012. By the way, the Forbes articles that just came out about the 5 CEOs who should quit are the same CEOs who should never have been chosen – read each of the 5 Hexagrams. Why invest in a CEO who is going to take his corporation into the wrong Time-Space?

I followed up with some more questions, like: why would an Oracle care about helping to make people rich? Urvina said that he’s helped people answer all kinds of questions, but he also said:

The I Ching likes wealth. But it also likes balance. The perfect picture is that of the lake on the mountain. When the lake is full of water it generously gives it to the mountain down below so that everything and everyone will prosper. The water from the lake makes everything green and the greenness brings the moisture and the clouds and the rain which in turn brings back the water to the lake in a never ending cycle. The Japanese would rather save than spend and continued to accumulate much as the Chinese, the result is deflation. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are like the lakes on the mountain. Charity is good, but forced charity is bad.

On how this whole thing works, Urvina told me:

Energy and Matter are the same (E=MC2). The same energy or force or Chi or Qi that moves everything in the Universe is the same energy that moves the hands that move the coins that makes the coins fall under the proper synchronicity that tells you about the future Time Space created when the BOD chooses a CEO.

Remember – nothing happens on Earth if it is not first ordained in Heaven. My work is to find out what does Heaven ordains with the help of the I Ching. I leave it up to others to define how it is going to happen.

In seriousness, I think this is a bunch of superstitious nonsense. But to be fair, I’ve never tried it. And if you’re the sort of person who believes an ancient Chinese book could be the oracle that will help you choose the perfect CEO for your startup, perhaps it’s worth giving it a try. After all, the business world has already co-opted one ancient Chinese classic; perhaps the I-Ching, too, is poised for a revival. Heck, it couldn’t possibly be less reliable than the jackasses on Wall Street, right?

For the upcoming Nintendo Wii U, the results of this particular survey do not bode well:

PS Vita at 2011 Tokyo Game Show

• Only 7.1 percent say they want to buy it
• 33.5 percent say they don’t want to buy but are interested
• 59.4 percent say they don’t want to buy it at all

For Sony’s recently released PS Vita, the responses are even worse:

• Only 7.8 percent say that they want to buy it
• 31.7 percent say they don’t want to buy but are interested
• 60.5 percent say they don’t want to buy it at all

Looking at the actual weekly sales figures [2] for Japan since the PS Vita was announced (see interactive chart below), you can see that the PS Vita is Japan is practically flatlined. Of course, it looks better if you change the scale of the graph. But in comparison to better selling consoles of the past like the Nintendo DS or the PSP in its prime, the Vita is (ironically) showing few signs of life so far.

Hong Kong-based financial trading and dashboard startup, 8Securities, has just informed us of a $1.5 million round of investment from Velocity Capital B.V. and Full Global. Both investors also led the first round of $8 million which was announced just two months ago. Co-founder, Mikaal Abdullah shared more with me:

This additional capital will allow us to invest more in advertising and marketing to accelerate our growth. We are also expanding the Portal and our Investing App Market in more languages (English, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and Japanese). In addition, we are in partnership discussions to launch 8 Securities presence in China and Japan.

It has been quite a rapid session of fund raising made by 8Securities, certainly not too common in Asia. But these guys somehow pulled things together very nicely. You can find out more about 8Securities in the video below:

Thanks to our Thailand contributor Byron for the tip-off that we now have a new number one city on Facebook. Bangkok, Thailand has overtaken Jakarta, Indonesia as the social network’s top city, with more than 8.6 million users in total, according to Socialbakers. That trumps Jakarta’s user count of 7.4 million. Istanbul is right behind in third with 7 million.

To be clear, Socialbakers uses Facebook’s own research tool to arrive at its statistics, so take this at face value as it may or may not be accurate. But it should at least be a solid indication of the distribution of users on Facebook. And it certainly looks like there are a lot in Asia, as Byron notes. Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, Bangalore, and Singapore are all in the top 20.

The United States is still the top country on Facebook, but Gartner analyst Shalani Verma predicted [1] that India could overtake the US for top spot within the next three years.

I’ve visualized some of the city figures from Socialbakers below, and you can see the biggest Facebook cities in the top left, decreasing in size and you go down and to the right. Click on a city to see its Facebook population and rank. Note the size of the country blocks as well, particularly India, where there’s so much potential for growth.

[Lead Facebook image with crown from Talk To Me Studios]

I was a little surprised recently to find that the Journalism and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong is offering Data Journalism Scholarships, funded by none other than Google.

I’m a big fan of news orgs that do data journalism well, in particular the folks over at The Guardian, The New York Times, The L.A. Times, and ProPublica. These are just a few organizations that – in addition to telling stories in the traditional way – realize that news is information, and that sometimes we need programmers and data wizards to help us find the clearest way to convey that information to the public.

So while I expect many of our readers might be looking to create the latest new photo app or perhaps the next big mobile game, I encourage programmers out there to consider bringing their skills to your local newsroom, or even create your own news startup. And if you’d like to help develop your skills further, consider applying for the JMSC’s data journalism scholarship.

Google is going to fund two full-tuition scholarships for Master of Journalism candidates at the school for the 2012–2013 academic year. Their program officer Jason Hui tells me that they’re looking for candidates with a computer science degree and programming skills, plus competency in database management and computational problem solving.

To my knowledge [1] data journalism is something that really hasn’t had much of an impact in Asia yet. Most news organizations that I’m familiar with in the region are still mostly just printed news copied and pasted to the web – not really taking advantage of the new ways that we can tell stories online.

So if you’re interested, the deadline to apply is May 31, 2012. You can read more information about it on the JMSC website.

Of course, even if you can’t be one of the lucky recipients of such a scholarship, you can still learn much about data journalism online. I encourage you to check our this Twitter list of programmer-journalists which I’ve put together over the years. All those people are super smart, and are definitely worth following. There’s also Hacks/Hackers, which is an awesome group that explores the intersection of journalism and technology. It currently has aspirations of expanding globally, if anyone in Asia would like to get involved.

[h/t to @sxren for the tip]