Remember when the Japanese dominated the TV industry?Japan’s once unbeatable consumer electronics industry is going through tough times and South Korea’s Samsung has now built an indominable lead over its Nippon rivals in the TV market.
(continue reading…)
Hi-tech
Coming to your screen soon
Foxconn expands and shrugs
Business is booming for Foxconn, the controversial hi-tech contract manufacturer that supplies Apple.
It plans to expand its facilities in China by opening a high-tech manufacturing facility in south China’s island province of Hainan. The Taiwanese firm’s existing facilities in China are all on the mainland in cities such as Shenzhen and Chengdu.
(continue reading…)
New twist to Apple’s Chinese workers scandal
This story will run and run. Allegations of poor working conditions at the Chinese factories that build Apple’s iPads and iPhones have been made on a number of ocasions. But the latest set of acusations, broadcast on US public radio show This American Life in January, have been questioned and the show has retracted the episode, called “Mr Daisey and the Apple Factory”. (continue reading…)
HK plays host to data centres
All roads lead to Hong Kong, at least the digital ones do. HK’s strategic location on the mainland’s doorstep combined with its business-friendly regime make it the idea place for a data centre hosting business.
So argues DediPower, a UK provider of managed hosting and data centre services, which has just launched a managed hosting operation in HK to service the Asian region.
(continue reading…)
Huawei’s 3G browser deal
Huawei, China's fast-growing telecoms equipment maker, has struck a deal with Japan's Access to incorporate the latter's mobile phone browser in Huawei 3G cellular phones.
In a clear sign of how the industry's centre of gravity is shifting to China, the deal was struck with Access China, the local subsidiary of the Japanese software company, and focuses on WCDMA handsets, which can be used in 3G networks around the world.
JA Solar inks tie-up
JA Solar, one of China's biggest solar cell manufacturers, hopes to leapfrog its rivals using innovative “solar ink” manufacturing technnology from a Silicon Valley start-up.
The announcement is just the latest example of how Chinese tech firms are challenging the commonly-held prejudice in the west that Chinese businesses do not innovate.
DST Global speaks Chinese
China's fast-evolving financial services sector creates big opportunities for western financial technology suppliers. DST Global Solutions is the latest to wake up to the potential of the Chinese market and it has launched a website dedicated to servicing its customer base in Greater China.
The UK-headquartered company specialises in middle office software for insurance companies as well as customer management applications for other industries.
Cloudy future for Dongyin
The Yellow River, China's second longest river, is today severely polluted. Undaunted, IBM hopes that it can get the Yellow River Delta's petrochemical plants and other industries to change the habits of a lifetime and embrace the idea of “harmonious development”.
To further this aim, IBM is working with Dongying municipal government to build the grandly-titled Yellow River Cloud Computing Centre.
Dongyin, located at the mouth of the Yellow River, is heavily dependent on the petrochemical industry but the government hopes to transform the city from a manufacturing centre into a “City of Digital Innovation” and the local economy into one based on services.
The cloud computing centre will provide software development and test resources for existing businesses and software start-up companies that want to build cloud-based resources. Cloud computing is one of the hottest topics in the IT industry today. By writing software that runs in the “cloud” – remotely over the internet — software start-ups are spared a lot of the challenges and investment facing traditional software development.
For their part, companies that want to use the cloud-based applications do not need to invest heavily in IT resources or software licences as they use the software, which is hosted remotely on servers, on a pay-as-you-go-basis.
I wish Dongying well in its ambitious project but it is difficult not to be sceptical of these type of announcements. Many rust-belt cities in the west have tried to achieve similar transformations but few have had much success.
That's because knowledge-based industries such as software development tend to cluster in locations where there are good universities and established hi-tech companies, rather than in green-field locations.
And it is not as if the fields around the Yellow River are particularly green… According to a recent report in the Guardian newspaper, a third of the Yellow River is now so polluted that its waters are now unfit for even industrial or agricultural use.
Telefonica and China Unicom swap stock
Why is Telefónica expanding its relationship with China Unicom? History shows that global telecoms alliances rarely produce anything of substance.
Remember Unisource? Global One? Thought not. WorldCom is remembered, but for all the wrong reasons — it was the centre of a $3.8bn fraud.
Despite the poor precedents, the Spanish telco, which is the world's third largest by market capitalisation, has filed to increase its holding in Chinese operator China Unicom to just above 8 % from 5.4% it currently has.
More significantly, perhaps, the Chinese company will take a 0.9% stake in Telefónica — the first time a Chinese telco has taken a stake in a mainstream European operator. The share swap is valued at $1bn.
And what are the benefits? According to a joint statement, Unicom hopes to use its strengthening alliance with Telefónica to enter Latin America, where China is forging relationships to secure supplies of metals and hydrocarbons.
For its part, Telefónica is keen to diversify outside the mature domestic market, where recession has hit demand. But there are precious few Spanish multinationals operating in China that could benefit from the duo's “one stop shop” approach — the traditional justification for these global alliances.
More pragmatically, Telefónica and Unicom also agreed to co-operate on the purchasing of handsets and phone equipment, roaming, and the provision of network services.
Telefónica initially invested in China Netcom in 2005. The Chinese fixed-line carrier was acquired by Unicom last year in a share-only deal as part of a government-led reorganisation of the domestic phone industry.
The Spanish carrier's stake in Unicom following the latest increase will be more than double the stake that is held by South Korea's SK Telecom.
A decade ago, global alliances between national carriers were all the rage as telecoms markets around the world felt the winds of liberalisation and deregulation.
But the alliances rarely produced any tangible benefits for business customers — the supposed beneficiaries — and in recent years telcos have invariably chosen to get bigger through acquisitions.
Because of their size and their flag-carrier status, there's not much chance of either Telefónica or China Unicom being acquired — by the other party or by anyone else. So presumably the two have decided the only realistic way to expand in each other's markets is via a share swap.
China to overtake Japan in telecoms
China's telecoms market is poised to overtake Japan's by 2014 according to market research firm Pyramid Research.
It had to happen sooner or later, of course, nevertheless the prediction serves as a wake-up call for those western vendors for whom “Asia” has traditionally meant first and foremost Japan.
China's telecommunications market was worth $110bn in 2008, making it the second largest telecommunications services market in Asia-Pacific after Japan, notes Daniel Yuh, analyst at Pyramid Research.
He predicts the Chinese market will grow at a compound annual rate of 8.8% between 2009 and 2014, reaching $187bn by 2014, when it will surpass Japan as the largest telecommunications services market in Asia.
The big driver for growth in China's telecoms market, like that of many emerging economies, is mobile telecoms, with more than 71m new mobile subscribers in 2008.
Roughly 12% of all new mobile subscribers worldwide came from China, second only to India's 113m net additions. By the end of 2014, Pyramid predicts that mobile phone penetration will grow to 80% of China's population compared to 58% at the end of 2009.
Pyramid expects mobile services to account for more than 76% of total services revenue in China by 2014.
The big question, of course — and one that Pyramid does not answer — is what will happen after 2014. Will the mobile market hit a plateau with a penetration rate of around 80% or will it keep growing to achieve the 100% penetration that is common in developed economies of western Europe, for example?
The answer largely depends on how successful the government's policies are at developing China's rural economy and lifting the poorest segments of the population out of poverty.
Since 1978, hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty but around 10% of the population still live on less than $1 a day, which makes a mobile phone a luxury they can currently do without.
