Spansion, the US-listed maker of flash memory chips, has struck a deal with China's SMIC in a bid to get closer to China's electronics industry. Flash memory is a cut-throat business and the pricing pressures are increasing as Chinese electronics companies make great inroads into the mobile phone and consumer electronics markets...   more »

The BlackBerry, the de rigeur handheld device for alpha males, has finally arrived in China. Chinese regulators did not approve the BlackBerry handsets for sale in China until the first quarter of this year and Canada's RIM, the manufacturer, had to team up with Alcatel-Lucent, which has a Chinese JV, to get the device approved...   more »

Tibco, the US software company, has strengthened its relationship with China's Worksoft in the latest development that shows the growing maturing of China's software development industry. Tibco specialises in middleware -- the "plumbing" of business software projects -- and this arcane area of the software market has not historically been seen as a big opportunity in China...    more »

China will launch its maiden unmanned mission to the moon in November, the culmination of the Chinese space programme that, like the US-Soviet space race of the 1960s, seems driven more by national pride than by any scientific rationale...   more »

Industrial shelving systems may not be glamorous but they are big business for Spanish-listed company Mecalux which, somewhat belatedly, is preparing to make its entry into the Chinese market...   more »

Dell's once ground-breaking direct sales model, which spurns dealers and distributors in favour of internet orders, has been found wanting in the west. Now, the US PC giant has decided that Chinese customers also prefer a face-to-face relationship and so it has struck a deal with Gome, the country's largest retailer...   more »

Chinese PC maker Lenovo has seen its ambitions to become a Top Three global player stymied by Acer of Taiwan. Acer has snapped up Gateway of the US in a recommended offer which vaults Acer into third position in the global PC market and effectively blocks Lenovo's attempt to acquire Packard Bell...   more »

China's chip industry is the world's fastest growing but it is still slanted towards relatively low value-added operations like production, packaging and testing, and the country has yet to be taken seriously in semiconductor design...   more »

Sycamore Networks, the US optical networking manufacturer and one-time dotcom star, has joined the growing number of western hi-tech firms to open an R&D centre in China. Based in Shanghai, the centre will develop technologies for so-called "intelligent" networks optimised for high-bandwidth voice, video, and data applications...   more »

More than 71m mobile phone sets were sold in China in the first half of 2007, a 25% year-on-year rise. In revenue terms growth was much more modest, just 5.5%, due to tumbling average prices and low-end sales offensives by leaders Nokia and Motorola. Samsung took third place while Lenovo in fourth position, is the leading homegrown brand...   more »