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China ICT (Info Communications Technology) Industry, Infra, Commerce, Exports: News & Discussions


Alibaba announces $1.5 billion investment in online shopping in China's rural areas
CCTV News
Published on 26 May 2016

China's e-commerce giant Alibaba has announced investments worth 10 billion yuan, or 1.5 billion US dollars, over the next three years, to set up its services in China's rural areas. It is the first, and so far, only online retailer in China to set up a sales and purchasing platform for rural residents. Some say this is likely to help alleviate rural poverty.
 
MIT Technology Review
June 21, 2016

A View from Edward Jung
China’s Internet Boom

Online experimentation doesn’t have to be limited to tech companies.

It’s tempting to portray the rapid growth of the Chinese Internet as just one more example of China’s efforts to catch up with the West: Alibaba is the eBay of China, Baidu is the Google of China, Didi is the Uber of China, and so on. But China is actually conducting some fascinating experiments with the Internet (see “The Best and Worst Internet Experience in the World"). You just need to look outside the tech sector to notice them.

The most significant innovation is happening not among Chinese Internet companies but in the country’s so-called “real” economy. Corporations in old-school sectors like construction, agriculture, transportation, and banking are pursuing new business models based on big data, social media, and the Internet of things.

These are some of the largest firms of their kind in the world, yet many are young enough to be helmed by their original owner/founders. They’re like Rockefeller, Ford, or Carnegie with access to smartphones.

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So it’s China’s largest residential-property developer—not a tech company—that is pioneering the integration of Internet-based technology and services into fully wired communities. Vanke wants to create urban hubs that supply residents with gardens, safe food, travel, entertainment, and medical and educational services, all enabled by the Internet.

China’s insurance and banking industries have also embraced the Internet. Firms like Ping An Insurance recognized early on the opportunity to build customized models for risk assessment based on information gleaned from 24/7 tracking of physical and online activities.

Regulatory and finance structures in the West militate against this kind of experimentation, but China’s corporate culture encourages the broad reach. Asia specializes in big-tent conglomerates with protean areas of interest: a boat maker goes into semiconductors; a snack vendor might have an automotive division. In China, every big company can be an Internet, software, or device company, too.

China’s tech companies are similarly uninhibited. Xiaomi, a handset manufacturer, has taken a global leadership position in deploying the Internet of things. Tencent founded the online-only WeBank, which analyzes data from hundreds of millions of WeChat users to assess risk and extend small consumer loans without loan officers or physical branches. Alibaba is using its unprecedented knowledge of small business to provide financial services with an information advantage that no traditional bank has.

If Google did banking, these would doubtless be called the “Chinese banks of Google.” But it doesn’t—that’s the point. Information, entertainment, retail, and communication were the easy plays for U.S. companies, the real-economy sectors that the Internet could infiltrate without too much trouble. Chinese companies will be first to bring the Internet to the other realms of life and industry.

Then the West could be playing catch-up with the East.

Edward Jung is the founder and chief technology officer of Intellectual Ventures.
 
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This is a positive development for the online retail industry in China.

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Alibaba announces new system to track and remove fake goods
Now it's easier for brands to stamp out counterfeit products

Sean Buckley, @seaniccus
07.01.16 in Gadgetry

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If you've ever shopped at Alibaba, you know to tread carefully: the online marketplace has long had a problem with merchants peddling counterfeit goods. It's given the site a bad reputation, creating tension between Alibaba and major brands. Today, the company announced a new program designed to smooth things out and help companies identify and remove fake products from Alibaba's marketplace.

Alibaba's new "IP Joint-Force System" seems to be an extension of the company's existing good-faith take-down program -- essentially a method of streamlining communications between rights holders and Alibaba staff. Brands with counterfeiting concerns, like Louis Vuitton or Apple will be assigned an Alibaba account manager and be given access to an online portal, which companies can use to quickly identify authentic or counterfeit product listings and flag them for removal.

Alibaba is hoping to foster an image of teamwork with the program, stressing that companies "complaining about each other or criticising each other" won't stop counterfeit sellers -- and Alibaba needs to stop the deluge of fake products. Earlier this year, the company was kicked out of the US-based anti-counterfeiting alliance after several major brands complained. Company founder Jack Ma is insistent that the fake products need to go, and that they have "no place on Alibaba." With any luck, this new iniative is a step in the right direction.
 
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Seems that everybody is getting into the driverless technology business.

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China's Internet Giant Baidu To Mass Produce Driverless Cars In 5 Years
Tycho De Feijter, CONTRIBUTOR
I write about the Chinese car market.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

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Baidu BMW 3 GT driverless test car. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

China’s internet-search giant Baidu BIDU -0.01% is planning to mass produce driverless electric cars in five years, bringing the fight to Google GOOGL +1.11% and Apple AAPL +0.35%.

The company, which currently holds 80% of the internet-search market in China, will not manufacture the cars itself. Instead, it will outsource the actual production to an existing Chinese automaker, in the same way LeEco planning to outsource production of the LeSee. Baidu has approached several Chinese automakers but hasn’t made a final decision yet.

Currently, Baidu is testing its driverless technology with a fleet of BMW 3-Series GTs. The tests started in December 2015 with test cars driving on public roads in Beijing and Wuhu. BMW will have no involvement in the eventual Baidu driverless production car.

In April Baidu announced the formation of a driverless-technology research center in Silicon Valley, and the company’s chief scientist said they want to start testing driverless cars in the United States “soon”.

Baidu’s first commercially available driverless production vehicle is scheduled for launch in China in 2018. It will be a shuttle bus designed to run on a pre-set loop line. Similar lines already exist in other countries, including Greece, The Netherlands, and China. Production of these shuttles will be outsourced as well.

The driverless car for public roads will launch in 2021. The car will be fully autonomous without any need of any input of the passengers, bar their destination. The operating system is called Baidu AutoBrain (百度汽车大脑).

The system was announced in September 2015. It combines all the key ingredients needed for driverless driving, plus Baidu’s MyCar car-connectivity software and Baidu’s CarLife synchronization software for mobile devices.

One of the most important elements of the system, or any autonomous driving system, is the map. And Baidu has one of the best, fully incorporated in their search software. BaiDu Maps is comparable to Google Maps, but at least in China it is more accurate and up to date, with fully photographed 3D surroundings of every street and lane in every Chinese city. And again like Google Maps, it is helped by the millions of users adding information and photos while using their mobile Baidu apps.

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Baidu HQ in Beijing seen with Baidu maps. Screenshot.
 
China cyberspace regulator bans fake news
2016-07-04

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A villager expresses anger over an article, which falsely described the village as a corrupted place in Baoshi village, northeast China’s Liaoning province, on February 23, 2016. [Photo: Xinhua]

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) is cracking down on fake online news and false coverage, the People's Daily reported on July 3.

The CAC has released a notification requiring media outlets to provide real, objective, and impartial coverage by improving news production procedures and internal checking mechanisms.

It is also mandating local cyberspace regulators to tighten up their supervision, to avoid distorted news coverage based on rumor or speculation.

This year, the CAC has punished many major media outlets including sina.com and ifeng.com for disseminating fake news, following a series of false coverage scandals. Websites involved disposed of the public accounts responsible for the false information.

The CAC is also encouraging netizens to participate in the supervision of fake news.
 
I love how the Internet and e-Commerce are helping to improve the lives of rural folks.

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How e-commerce changes lives in rural China
Phoenix Kwong

Concerns over fake goods have also prompted some people to turn to online shopping.

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 05 June, 2016, 5:49pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 05 June, 2016, 6:27pm

Like several of her rural peers, Wang Xia, a farmer from Houtuan village in Shouguang city of Shandong province is reaping the rewards of China’s rapidly expanding rural e-commerce.

“I buy several of my daily necessities, clothing, fertilisers and even home appliances online. Not only is online shopping convenient, but also cheaper. In addition, I do not have to make long, trips to shopping malls,” she said.

E-commerce is not only helping to revitalise Chinese rural villages, home to half the population, but also opening the doors to a huge market for companies.

Wang’s family makes a living growing tomatoes in a 2,666 square-metre farm in the village and earned about 100,000 yuan (HK$118,000) last year. She purchased a new television set last month on Taobao, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s online shopping platform and made a single transaction of more than 5,000 yuan in a month.

Alibaba, which started its Rural Taobao strategy in late 2014 has set up 16,000 village-level and 380 county-level service centres to support its e-commerce activities and provide delivery services in rural areas. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Villagers like Wang can pick up goods they buy online at the nearest service centre which also sells products pre-ordered from merchants.

Concerns over fake goods have also prompted Wang to turn to online shopping.

“I buy infant milk formula for my two-year-old son from Tmall (Alibaba’s brand-focused e-commerce platform) and I don’t need to worry if it’s fake as the platform ensures the” product is genuine, she said.

Shi Binting, a Rural Taobao partner of Antao village’s service centre in the county-level city of Shouguang, said the gross merchandise volume (GMV) could reach 3,000 to 6,000 yuan per day.

“Most of our consumers are villagers. One of them once spent more than 200,000 yuan to buy a car and sent the same to this centre. There are some others who have spent more than 10,000 yuan to buy home appliances such as air conditioners,” Shi said.

Shi, who previously ran a shop selling cell phones in the village, said his income has more than tripled to about 10,000 yuan a month by being a partner who generates income primarily from charging service fees.

The income prospects offered by Rural Taobao for its partners have encouraged many youngsters to leave their jobs in cities and return home to run their own businesses.

Sang De, partner of a Rural Taobao service centre in Shouguang city’s Beiluo Township, is one of those.

“I had gone to Japan for work a few years ago. But I could not find anything that was to my liking, nor did I make any significant gains. I happened to learn about Rural Taobao and decided to come back last year,” she said.

The Beilou service centre was set up last October right before the Singles’ Day shopping festival.

Sang said the GMV at the service centre reached 430,000 yuan on that day (November 11) while monthly sales are about 400,000 yuan. During some festivals such as the Lunar New Year, the sales during a single month could surpass 1 million yuan, she said.

Sang declined to reveal how much she usually earns a month, but said she is happy with her income and the fact that she can stay with her family.

Another e-commerce giant, JD.com, is also expanding in the rural market by opening self-operated service centres and Jingdong Bang, a home appliance delivery and maintenance team in partnership with local shops.

JD.com, which runs about, 1,000 service centres, plans to have 1,500 of them by the end of this year. Jingdong Bang has opened more than 1,300 outlets.

Changjiang Securities analyst Li Jin said the rural e-commerce market has become more complex due to limitations in logistics, payment systems and product diversity.

Brick-and-mortar outlets are therefore important as villagers can get access to e-commerce and delivery services through these services centres, Li said in a study. One-stop services can also help build up rural residents’ online shopping habits.

Unlike Alibaba and JD.com, electronics and home appliances retailer Suning Commerce Group’s rural strategy is to open self-operated stores. It plans to invest 5 billion yuan this year to open 1,500 physical stores and expand its agent and authorised services network in rural areas.

The strategy of opening self-operated stores will allow Suning to have deeper integration with the local market, internet consulting company iResearch said in a report.

It’s hard to say which company’s business model will have an advantage, but Suning’s strategy will be more welcomed by local governments as its investment will also drive growth in other sectors and create more jobs in underdeveloped areas, it said.
 
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Online game giant aims to ride the 4th Industrial Revolution
By Guo Yiming
China.org.cn, June 27, 2016

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Robert Xiao, CEO of Perfect World, China's leading online game developer and publisher [Photo / China.org.cn]

China should strive to contribute and even lead the tide of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, said Robert Xiao, helmsman behind Perfect World, China's leading online game developer and publisher.



Xiao, CEO of the online gaming juggernaut, made the remarks during an exclusive interview with China.org.cn on June 26 at the sideline of the Annual Meeting of the New Champions, a World Economic Forum (WEF) event known as the Summer Davos, in China's northern port city of Tianjin.

"Though China missed the past three industrial revolutions, it is now at the same starting point with the rest of the world in embracing the fourth one," said Xiao, who believes that his company, as a tech firm specializing in developing massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), is poised to keep pace with the times during the current intelligence and internet-driven development paradigm.

The WEF event, themed "The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Its Transformational Impact", convenes over 1,700 business leaders, policymakers and experts from 90 countries and explores the economic, societal, cultural and ecological impact of the latest shift in human history.

A global vision

The event, as one of the most prestigious gatherings of the world's thought-leaders, is particularly beneficial for Chinese companies who have a global vision to get some insight in their future strategies, said Xiao whose company is vying for a growing share of the world's profitable gaming industry.

According to him, Perfect World has undergone four stages in its globalization strategy. From the initial stage of marketing and selling its products through agent companies and then building locally based operations and offices, to investing in localized development and production, the Beijing-based video gaming giant now embraces a stage of global resource integration and consolidation that mainly benefits from its global network of distribution and production.

"Thanks to this global network, we can pool the wisdom of our employees worldwide," Xiao told China.org.cn. "One individual project might be, without any exaggeration, inspired by an excellent IP (Intellectual Property) from Japan, developed by our US designers, processed by a group of Chinese programmers and polished by our French visual effects artists."

According to statistics, the sales of its independently-developed online games ranked first in terms of overseas sales for many consecutive years against other domestic rivals and once took up as much as nearly 40% of China's total game exports.

Xiao confessed that the competition for talent and the games' entry threshold in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, with regard to cultural differences, are still major obstacles for its globalized ambitions.

Chinese culture 'imbedded' in games

In a world of competition for soft power, all forms of entertainment, including video games, are important vehicles of disseminating a country's unique culture. Xiao said that many of the company's games were developed based on Chinese ancient stories and myths while presented in traditional Chinese artistic styles.

"As one of the most profitable online games developed by the company, the Perfect World International (PWI) was actually inspired by the Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shan Hai Jing), a Chinese classic text and a compilation of mythic geography and myth," said Xiao, revealing that some users actually got interested in Chinese history and culture through playing the game.

Another example, as Xiao revealed, is a video game adapted from Chinese Kong Fu novels, which became so popular overseas that it actually boosted the original book's sales in South Korea by over 20% as soon as the franchised game hit the market.

"Games, in essence, are a form of digital art," he said. "By imbedding Chinese art into our games, we are actually introducing our cultures to overseas gamers in a way that can be better accepted by the younger generation."
 
Baidu Will Bounce Back

Regulators clamp down on the leading Chinese search engine as fallout of an unfortunate death earlier this year lingers.


It's going to be harder for Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) to make money in China in the near-term. The Cyberspace Administration of China announced over the weekend that search engines will have to do a better job of identifying paid search results, something that was widely expected in the aftermath of a cancer patient that died after seeking treatment from a center that was a sponsored listing on Baidu.

The late April death of the university student went viral, especially as he took to social media to call out Baidu and the questionable treatment center he found through the site.

The Cyberspace Administration of China's move isn't a surprise, and even Baidu had already started to pare back on the way it was doing business. Regulatory agencies in China had already come to the conclusion that Baidu shouldn't depend on merely the highest bid in dictating which medical-related ads pop on its results pages. Reputations should matter. It was also suggested that Baidu limit the ads populating results pages to just a third of the listings.

This weekend's development may seem jarring, but Baidu was already moving in that direction. It slashed its top-line guidance two weeks ago after tweaking the way it accepts and broadcasts the once lucrative medical-related paid search listings. It went from initially forecasting $3.119 billion to $3.192 billion in revenue for the current quarter to a range of just $2.807 billion to $2.823 billion.

The new normal
The lower guidance will linger. It will probably be at least a year before Baidu's top-line growth approaches the 31% adjusted gain that Baidu sported during this year's freshman quarter. If the new restrictions stick -- and investors have every reason to expect that to be the case -- the next four quarterly reports will be stacked against periods when Baidu was living high on the high-margin hog of unchecked health-related ads.

There's naturally going to be a fair deal of skepticism about Baidu, but it's not going to change its role as the undisputed top dog in the world's most populous nation. Everyone will have to play by the same rules, and this may actually make it even harder for smaller rivals to grow and diversify the way that Baidu can.

The naysayers are starting to show up. Short interest in Baidu exploded from 4.8 million shares in mid-May to 8.8 million shares by the end of the month. The mid-June tally finds 9.1 shares of Baidu sold short, the highest tally since late last year.

Baidu has overcome similar hiccups in the past, and it's a more diversified company these days in terms of businesses as well as regions. It's no longer merely China's largest search engine provider. That was a problem with investors last year when the stock was slumping, but now it's a silver lining in justifying Baidu's valuation premium to the market at a time when organic sales growth is slowing dramatically. Baidu will bounce back. It's just what it does.


Rick Munarriz has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Baidu. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
 
Another example, as Xiao revealed, is a video game adapted from Chinese Kong Fu novels, which became so popular overseas that it actually boosted the original book's sales in South Korea by over 20% as soon as the franchised game hit the market.

That's the most effective way to export Chinese culture. Through video games and movies. Another good way is to properly translate some of the classic 武俠 novels to English for English speakers and overseas Bananas who cannot read Chinese.
 
Alibaba Unveils New System For Combating Counterfeit Goods
DAVID MURPHY
  • JULY 3, 2016 07:40PM EST

Will it be enough to make brands happier with the online retail giant?

Online marketplace Alibaba is adding a few new tricks for keeping counterfeit goods off its website, a move that could improve relations between it and various high-end retailers who want knock-off products to go away.

Alibaba already has a "Good Faith Takedown" program, which has more than 700 participating brands. Depending on the skill of each brand at successfully reporting fake goods on Alibaba's websites, brands are given priority access to the company's counterfeit reporting and removal tools—ensuring that brands' reports are reviewed and processed more quickly if they're good at spotting fakes.

Expanding on that system, Alibaba is introducing a new "IP Joint-Force System." Brands that are particularly prone to copyright infringement—or at least, very concerned about it—will be assigned an Alibaba account manager that will work directly with the brand to go after fakes on Alibaba's sites.

"The system will enable Alibaba to directly and efficiently seek information from rights holders regarding suspected counterfeit product listings, which Alibaba, as a third-party marketplace, is unable to authenticate on its own with full certainty," reads Alibaba's description.

"The system allows brands to identify the authenticity of a product and easily notify Alibaba of the infringing listing. Alibaba will then initiate the Good Faith Takedown process and immediately remove the listing without required subsequent correspondence with the brand. This two-way communication stream is critical in creating a feedback loop that will continue to improve the speed and accuracy with which Alibaba is able to determine the authenticity of a product."

It's unclear just how many companies are going to be participating in the IP Joint-Force System. Presumably, it's just reserved for some of the bigger brands and/or brands that have the largest infringement issues on Alibaba. At some future point, Alibaba expects that all companies already involved in its Good Faith Takedown program will also be able to be a part of its IP Joint-Force System.

"As the internet sector continues to evolve, brands and online marketplaces alike face new IP enforcement challenges. As the leading online marketplace, we have a responsibility to all of our constituents to govern our platform and find innovative solutions," said Jessie Zheng, Alibaba's chief platform governance officer, in a statement.

Alibaba was suspended from the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition in May, following complaints and threats from other member brands that they would leave the coalition if Alibaba was allowed to stay. They accused Alibaba of failing to do enough to prevent the sale of counterfeit material on its online marketplaces.
 
The Chinese eCommerce market place is very competitive, cutthroat - it's getting too hot for some!

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Walmart sells Yihaodian, its Chinese e-commerce marketplace, to Alibaba rival JD.com
Posted Jun 20, 2016 by Jon Russell (@jonrussell)

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Walmart is partnering with China’s second largest e-commerce firm, JD.com, as it aims to take a larger bite out of the world’s most populous country.

In a wide-ranging alliance announced Monday, the U.S. retail giant said it has sold Yihaodian, its online commerce marketplace, to JD.com. Walmart will retain the Yihaodian direct sales business, but rather than operate its own online store entirely, it will become a retailer inside Yihaodian. It is also bringing its Sam’s Club membership service to JD.com, while Walmart’s physical stores will be listed on JD.com’s O2O JV Dada delivery platform.

On the financial side of things, Walmart is buying a five-percent stake in NASDAQ-listed JD.com, which is slowly increasing its marketshare and closing the gap on Alibaba. That investment is worth around $1.5 billion right now based on JD.com’s share price.

Walmart first invested in Yihaodian, which specializes in grocery and items focused on affluent female consumers — in 2011 and it bought the B2C service its entirety last summer: so why is it cutting a deal to get out of the business less than a year later?

The U.S. giant seems to have fully realized that the Chinese market is dominated by two major players, and it is seriously cutthroat.

Data from iResearch suggests that Yihaodian accounts for less than two percent of China’s e-commerce spending — Alibaba and JD.com are collectively over 80 percent — although Walmart claims the service is strongest in eastern and southern China. Based on that, it makes sense to lean on JD.com as the distribution partner to help grow its business in China.

The Wall Street Journal reported that one-third of the $482.1 billion in annual sales that Walmart makes outside the U.S. market comes from China, so the country is clearly still hugely important. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how it fares with JD.com, which differentiates itself from Alibaba by owning its own logistics and specializing in fast delivery and fresh goods.

It isn’t uncommon to see e-commerce players sell on rival platforms. Amazon opened a store on Alibaba’s Taobao mall last year, for example.

“JD.com shares similar values in making the lives of customers better. It also has a very complementary business and is an ideal partner that will help us offer compelling new experiences that can reach significantly more customers,” Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Walmart, said in a statement.
 
From an Indian website, Alibaba is expanding into Indian market.
Note that Vijay Shekhar Sharma is biased as his company is 40% backed by Alibaba. I will just take what he says with "a pinch of salt".


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In a year, Amazon and Alibaba will dominate Indian ecommerce: Vijay Shekhar Sharma
By Gulveen Aulakh, ET Bureau | Jul 04, 2016, 06.02 AM IST

NEW DELHI:The fight for India's lucrative ecommerce market will be mainly between Amazon and Alibaba, with the contours of the battle likely to be clearer in about a year, says Vijay Shekhar Sharma, chief executive officer of Paytm, a company backed by the Chinese online retailing giant.

"The ecommerce business and market is reaching maturity of players. The next 6-9 months, it will be decided who the key contenders of the business are. Logically, to fight Amazon, you need the might of a strategic player - that is why it makes a lot of sense for people to align with Alibaba versus a lot of others," Sharma said, signalling the possible start of consolidation in the Indian ecommerce market.

Paytm, a digital wallet and online retailer backed by Alibaba and its affiliate Ant Financial, is preparing to start a payments bank. It will spin off its ecommerce platform into a separate company, which will have a new name and brand and the same shareholders as Paytm. It will then look to raise funds or be merged or acquired. The entity will be separate from the company's payments bank, which will go live around October, pushed back again by a quarter, Sharma said.

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India's ecommerce battle lines are already being drawn. Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, said last month it will invest an additional $3 billion (over Rs 20,000 crore) in India, raising the stakes after having spent about $2 billion. The announcement came as existing biggies such as Flipkart and Snapdeal face additional pressure to raise fresh funds, when money is harder to find than before and the government has written up rules that bar platforms from offering deep discounts and cash-backs.

Alibaba plans to directly enter India's online retail market, which Goldman Sachs projects will more than treble to $36 billion in 2016-17 from $11billion in 2014-15. Alibaba Group Holding's 40% share in Paytm gives the Chinese ecommerce giant a strong foothold in India to begin with. However, it also holds a 4% share in Snapdeal.

Sharma is timing the bifurcation of Paytm's businesses around the festival of Diwali. "We are going to make the marketplace separate, then we will be able to raise money, or do M&A, which means we will look to acquire correct optimum sized (companies) to become larger," Sharma said, without sharing details of how much equity will be diluted to raise cash and who the new investors are likely to be. Sharma expects Paytm's ecommerce business would be profitable on all levels by October, when Diwali will be celebrated this year. "Now is the time that Paytm should be identified with payments and financial services and commerce business can get its own name in due course," he said, adding that the move will bring clarity among merchants and investors, in terms of future investments, focus and also unlock value for both businesses.

On the payments bank side, the Noida-based company has put in place financial and technology integration on the backend from Infosys's Finacle core banking software, and Wipro, preparing for a late October or early November launch. The start of operations will hinge on approval from the Reserve Bank of India.
 
So many events occurring in the ecommerce or Internet space.
In business, timing is very important. Good timing will lead to a good bargain!


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Alibaba Rumored To Buy SoftBank-Backed Wandoujia At Greatly Discounted Price
By Nina Xiang | 04 July 2016 — 14:39 HKT

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Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. is rumored to be buying Wandoujia, a Beijing-based Android mobile app distribution platform backed by SoftBank Corp., Goldman Sachs, DCM and Innovation Works at a greatly discounted price.

The price for the 100% buyout is reportedly around US$200 million, a fraction of the US$1 billion valuation at the time of Wandoujia's last financing round back in 2014.

Alibaba first approached Wandoujia for a potential acquisition two years ago, offering US$1.5 billion just after the company raised US$120 million in a new financing round, according to Chinese media reports.

The Android app store has since suffered from internal strife and increasing competition. The stress is reflected by the fact that the company did not raise additional financing for the past two and half years.

With the latest deal, Alibaba plans to incorporate Wandoujia into its mobile Internet unit, completing its portfolio with a top ranked app store in China.

The deal would allow Wandoujia's venture and private equity investors to exit, albeit at a disappointing price.

Alibaba did not respond to an inquiry to confirm the news.

In January 2014, Wandoujia raised US$120 million in a series B round led by
SoftBank Corp., with participation from DCM and Innovation Works Development Fund.

Two months later, Goldman Sachs invested an undisclosed amount in Wandoujia in the Wall Street investment bank's first investment in a Chinese mobile Internet company.

Founded in 2009, Wandoujia previously received seed funding from Innovation Works in 2010, and US$80 million series A funding led by DCM in 2012.

In 2014, Wandoujia was ranked as the third largest app stores in China in terms of market share.

Among China's top four app vendors, Baidu app store group took a 23.4% share, Qihoo app store held 16.8%, while Wandoujian followed with a 10.9% stake and Tencent owned 8.7% of the market, according to T.H. Capital.
 
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Walmart sells Yihaodian, its Chinese e-commerce marketplace, to Alibaba rival JD.com

National market looks like consolidating. It is good to see that domestic champions are offering cut-throat competition to foreigners.

This will improve quality over all.

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Baidu, Wuzhen planning driverless car tourist services

Xinhua, July 4, 2016

Visitors to Wuzhen in east China may soon be able to get a lift between their hotel and tourist spots in the Venice-like town, after Baidu signed a deal with the local tourism agency to develop such services on Sunday.

Baidu and Wuzhen Tourism Co. will research which routes could be served by driverless cars and details like costs and how many vehicles will be needed before nailing down a more exact plan, said Wang Jin, Baidu's senior vice president and head of its autonomous driving division.

Wang did not say when the service might be launched.

Despite being a historic town dating back 1,300 years, Wuzhen, in Zhejiang Province, is also known as a technological pioneer after its IT infrastructure was upgraded over the past few years. It became the permanent host venue for China's World Internet Conference (WIC) in 2014.

Baidu debuted its driverless car at the second WIC in Wuzhen last year and generated a lot of excitement when it successfully completed a rigorous road test in Beijing in December.

The company said earlier this year that it would choose 10 urban locations to try out driverless cars in 2016. Wuzhen is the third after east China's Wuhu City and an automobile industrial park in Shanghai.

The driverless car's core operating system is called Baidu Brain, artificial intelligence that includes high-precision electronic mapping, positioning, sensing and decision-making and control systems thanks to Baidu's mining of big data.

Baidu is aiming to commercialize the driverless technology by 2018 and to achieve mass production of the cars by 2020.

Hinting at the kind of services that could be offered in Wuzhen, Wang said Baidu was open to working with regulators and other players in the automotive industry chain, and the cost of hiring a driverless car could drop below that of hiring a driver in the foreseeable future.

***

This is a great way to test and improve Baidu's drivereless cars.
 
Amazing!

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45% of top-100 Android-game revenues in China belong to Tencent
JEFF GRUBB JUNE 30, 2016 11:35 AM

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Above: King of Glory from Tencent is a mobile take on its megapopular PC game League of Legends.
Image Credit: Tencent

The company that owns League of Legends and has a minority stake in Unreal Engine also owns an enormous chunk of the Chinese Android gaming market.

Tencent accounts for 44.5 percent of all the revenue spent on the top 100 highest-grossing Android games in China, according to a joint intelligence report from research firms Newzoo and TalkingData. The international conglomerate publishes 23 of the 100 top-performing games. In 2016, China is on pace to generate $7 billion in mobile gaming revenues, which puts it ahead of the United States and Japan as the top market for in the world.

“[King of Glory], a popular MOBA mobile game, continues to be the company’s top performing title in terms of revenues,” reads the Newzoo and TalkingData report. “The most installed Tencent game is Happy Lord. It released at the end of 2015 and is favored by people of all ages and playable across both low- and high-end devices.”

Tencent’s Myapp store is also still the top installed distribution channel in China. Google Play is not available in the country, and this has led to dozens of marketplaces popping up and competing for players. Myapp, with a 24 percent install rate, is the clear winner.

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Tencent’s dominating market position in China is likely going to grow once it closes the deal to acquire leading global mobile-game developer Supercell this summer. Earlier this month, Tencent spent $8.6 billion to take an 84-percent stake in the maker of Clash Royale and Clash of Clans.

Clash Royale is an ideal game for China because of its focus on head-to-head competitive play. That kind of action is popular on all platforms there.

“In May, Clash Royale landed the No. 3 spot in top downloaded games on app channel 360 Mobile Assistant and No. 6 on the Baidu Mobile Assistant store,” reads the Newzoo report. “We believe it won’t take long for the title to appear in the rankings of China´s No. 1 Android app store — Tencent’s Myapp store.”

And that is likely one of the major reasons why Tencent decided to invest so heavily in Supercell. If the publisher can bring worldwide hits like Clash Royale and any future releases to its players, it could continue unlocking more of the value in a mobile-gaming market that isn’t finished growing.
 

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