May 7, 2011 ~ Web 2.0 Asia Blog

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Beijing Apple store violent conflict

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Beijing-Apple-store-conflict

Pictures about Beijing Apple store conflict between employees and queuing customers have been circling on the web, but because of the language obstacle some English reports seem quite away from the fact. most of them said the injured customers are scalpers, but this is not confirmed by any Chinese media.

The conflict was happened around 5 PM on May 7 Beijing time. At the beginning a queue jumper caused quarrel in the queue. Security staffs were trying to keep the queue in order again, but they had physical conflict with some customers while handling this. At this time, a foreign man named John, in Apple store employee uniform, went directly to the queue from the store and beat several customers with a metal club, and then returned back to the store quickly. Irritated crowed were trying to enter the store to look for that foreign man, but were stopped by security staffs. A glass door was pushed down and broken during the confict.

four people were injured in this incident, including two women. Right now they are still in hospital for treatment, and they have to pay the fee on their own. There’s still no official statement about this incident from Apple.

[Source:Sina]

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Singapore Elections 2011 – Results

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The Singapore Elections 2011 is now over – the PAP has been returned to government. We can all go to bed. PAP – 81 seats in 11 SMCs & 14 GRC WP – 6 seat in 1 SMC & 1 GRC NSP – 0 SDP – 0 SPP – 0 RP - 0 Best performer [...] Related posts:

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Report: State of Internet Connectivity in India [Decline in Average Connection Speed]

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Akamai’s report on the State of the Internet reveals some pretty interesting facts about the penetration, adoption and evolution of internet services in world. Internet adoption and usage in a country is an important statistic to gauge the state of ICT ( Information and Communication Technology in a country ). While China, India’s no. 1 competitor in terms of growing markets is ranked higher on most of the scales used in the report, the statistics for India are not so impressive. Here’s a look at what the study has concluded about the state of the internet in India and how it compares with China.

Average Measured Connection Speed

India ranks 143 globally with an average connectivity speed of 0.8 Mbps in Q3 of 2010. India’s connectivity speeds took a hit with an overall decline and reflects in the negative QoQ ( quarter on quarter ) change. India’s QoQ change of Internet speed is -6.9%. The year on year change ( this quarter compared to this quarter last year) also took a downturn showing the decline in average connectivity speeds in India. The YoY change is recorded at -9.1%.

China comparatively did better with the QoQ change negative but relatively smaller compared to India. China is ranked globally at 129. the QoQ change was -1.5% but the YoY change was 9.3%.

Average Peak Connection Speed

Average peak connection speed is average of the maximum measured speed at city level. India ranks 135 globally in terms of global average peak connection speed globally. The average peak connection speed measured in India was 5.1 Mbps in Q4 of ‘10. While the QoQ was -0.4%, the YoY change was calculated as 13%.

China’s average peak connection speed was measured at 3.1Mbps. The YoY change for China is a whopping 48%.

High Broadband Connectivity

India ranks 80th globally for high broadband connectivity with 0.4% connections measured to have a speed in excess of 5Mbps. India’s comparison to itself in its previous quarter and previous year suggest a big decline in high broadband connectivity. The QoQ change is calculated at -18% and the YoY is -30%.

China ranks 85th worldwide and the QoQ was -14% while the YoY change was 13%.

Japan ranks 1st globally when it comes to high broadband connectivity.

Broadband connectivity

Broadband connectivity measures the increase in number of broadband connections. India ranks 129th in the report globally. The adoption of broadband internet has been rather disappointing. India has only 4.5% internet connections above 2Mbps. The QoQ change and YoY change too were unimpressive at -17% and -24% respectively.

Slow adoption of broadband services in India will hamper businesses that depend on high internet broadband consumption , like digital media providers and such.

China however did well with 8% internet connections measured over 2Mbps. The QoQ change was calculated at 5% and the YoY change an impressive 36%.

Narrowband connectivity

India has a high rate of narrowband consumption according to the report. India ranks 43 globally with 35% of its internet connections below 256Kbps. the QoQ change was calculated at 5.9% while the YoY change, a strong 39%. This suggests that although the internet connectivity speeds are not high, internet adoption is growing.

China can boast that only about 9.6% of its connection speeds are below 256Kbps.

While the report focuses on Internet connectivity, it does not provide any stats regarding India’s mobile Internet connectivity. India’s mobile connectivity is growing faster than any other country in the world and is expected to continue this growth trend. The recent roll out of 3G services in the country will be complete by the end of Q3 of 2011, so expect upward movement in this list.

This report (link) should look very different next year if the ISP in India provide mobile broadband services at affordable price.

What’s your opinion?

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4Cs of mobile marketing: currency (value), conversation, community and content [Mobile Insights]

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[Editorial Notes: This article is in continuation with our previous coverage of MMAF 2011 event. Read the previous coverage: Insights on the Youth Consumer and Mobile Advertising in India. The article is contributed by Aniketh Dsouza]

The last day at the MMAF2011 was kickass with all the great talks on one platform which got the live tweeters on their fingers! Here’s what the round up for those who missed it!

For those looking for the talk by Antti Ohrling, Blyk Media visit my earlier post – Insights on the Youth Consumer and Mobile Advertising in India

Let’s start with the presentation by Gavin from Coke

Coke’s current number #1 priority is SMS enabled mobile activation. Mobile web will be number #2 priority for Coke only once it (mobile web) crosses 20% penetration of smartphones, and as dataplans become unlimited. Currently, M-payment and M-coupons at vending machines are being used frequently in Japan by Coke.

Apps are number #3 priority for Coke in mobile. The question was – How to use them to create a brand that people love? The code of emotional branding is not yet cracked on mobile apps. But Coke is not giving up the fight to create emotional bonding on apps. They say that there is a long way to go to drive excellence on app platforms for the purpose of emotional bonding. Hence they tried using AR with the Avatar movie launch in Latin America. Coke bottle also became the remote control for the Avatar game.

Their mobile ad spend is less than 1% of their global ad spend. get 3% click-thru rates on mobile banners. “Test and fail, but learn to scale” – is their motto. They also ran a LBS (Location Based) campaign in Australia (this shopping mall has secrets, find them) which was success. Next industry trend. They also seem to be rolling out mobile marketing certification globally and also build up mobile marketing capabilities through a dedicated training program

The next talk went straight into the heart of the telecom sector and was presented by Joseph O’Konek from CSL : Featured City – Hong Kong

The key take away from Joseph O’Konek from CSL were:

Media buying is shifting from impressions to expression
Young kids when they see TV for first time, will try to touch it, thinking its a touch-screen
HK has 186% mobile penetration. But there are still underserved markets in every country
In Africa more people have access to mobile phones than to clean drinking water
Mobile broadband penetration in Asia Pacific is only 7,1%
If you were born before 1980 you are a “digital immigrant” not a “digital native.”
The way to reach everyone is SMS
Trends to watch: continuing growth of software-defined radio (mobile + Bluetooth + InfraRed etc)
Our industry thinks of itself like a monopoly. Industry today has 1% blocking which means for 60M customers, 600,000 are upset
Telco industry does not think like marketeers
No one in our industry has done enough to think like customers
Diaspora strategy, great for Asia. We think of our market not just as Cantonese speakers in HK but globally
CSL offers its customers service plans built around “multi-user, muti-service, multi-device”
The challenge is to market to customers with a phone, table & pc in great manner
We as cellcos need you as marketers to help us understand marketing and customers
Urges audience to look not just at Japan but also HK for thought leadership in mobile marketing
CSL in Hong Kong by 2015 the data consumed in 1 day will be same as consumed in 1 month today (2010)

Presenter: SunYoung Lee of Isobar Korea on “The Cornerstone to Mobile Engagement”

The key take away from SunYoung Lee of Isobar were:

Help consumers create time, not just find time.
It does not matter how many devices consumers have, focus on messages
Focus on cross-media promotion – one source, multiple devices
Mobile is becoming the controller in life
Successful consumer engagement = seamless engagement & augmented reality

Consumer expects seamless convergence of multiple media and thus Lee coined a new term: “war of the end-screens”. Mobile mash-up services actually trigger the emotion of mobile consumer. It (Mobile) is becoming the controller in life, and is increasingly being used to control devices like car or household devices in Korea. In Korea, its normal to use mobile to control home electronics like lighting and heat. Japan and Korea are different, but similar, when it comes to usage of Mobile. He also cited that Successful consumer engagement = seamless engagement & augmented reality

He further presented the Elle magazine case study

Elle was afraid to become irrelevant in digital age, Thus Isobar built a digital platform. Now, Elle is on 4 medias: web, mobile, TV and print. Their motto of cross-media promotion is one source, multiple devices. When readers of Elle see items they like, they use QR codes to get more info (or purchase) via mobile. Elle AtZine in Korea is a cross-media platform that distributes content over internet, mobile, television and print. This type of engagement is bound to be a seamless experience and thus he reaffirms communication should be cross analog + digital worlds.

Use of Augmented Reality

AR is not about technology but about maximising the consumer engagement. The AR Chevrolet campaign case study – try to catch AR Chevy on phone, and get coupon at partner like McDonalds. In worked well in Korea and Japan as the Mobile communication quality is excellent and use of AR and LBS are quite common.

Sunyoung Lee Isobar spoke about making a difference in consumer life – is the customer happier in digital world? Are technologies making us lonely and less happy? Then, Family digital Hubs can help!

Isobar created idle screen for TV – ‘family board’ to make people more happy by converging mobile & TV so as to bring the family together. Here’s how it works. Home TV screen can be converted into a “family board” with a mobile app. The ‘family board’ includes pictures to share, family album, but is synchronised using an app on the mobile phone, thus creating a synchronized TV Channel. Isobar’s sample of a “digital romantic moment” turn TV screen into an aquarium, feed the fish with mobile, Mood TV, show what the sky looks like at night, ie stars above you etc.

The Family Hub from Isobar is something that brings people closer, together and which merges mobile and television. And will be commercialised within a year.

Presenter: Sinem Soydar of Turkcell: How to integrate mobile marketing into the carrier business

31% of Turkey mobile subscribers have 3G out of 19.4 Million total 3G users.
Turkey has 74 M population, 84% mobile penetration, 48% Internet penetration
Understand corporate customer needs: cut costs, increase sales, improve productivity
Turkish people ‘feel’with their ears so its important to use voice services for mobile marketing
Turkcell rewards to consumers include airtime and ‘jingle tones’
There is no big difference regarding “knowledge” in the world, but how to imagine of localization looks key for Global success
More mobile operators are media owners, media planners, armed with rich customer data & have direct access to ad. clients
Having a limited media budget? Use mobile – great ROI!

Case Studies & Ideas

MMS campaign by Renault to get tickets to auto show. All tickets sold out in 20 minutes. 7% response rate
Renault, Flo Shoes. They offer cross-campaigns and measuring/reporting to clients. An (opt in) campaign: sent out 500K SMS, 400K MMS. result 160K responses
Turkcell famous Ringback Tone ad campaign, similar to radio advertising, won awards
Offers sponsored mobile content packages about Ramandan, Finances, Women&life and so many others
Pepsi uses MMS with embedded video to engage consumers and runs mobile-based campaign through Turkcell – and recieves 75% participation rate of tv-supported campaigns.
Pepsi campaign TV actor invited users to send codes under Pepsi lids, get free airtime and actor messages. Pepsi’s spring campaign in Turkey was run exclusively through mobile, using SMS, RBT. Codes were on lids and the video included an awesome Turkish music! Pepsi ringback was given to all who used it. Each ad reached 4 more consumers. Achieved 4M opti-in database for Pepsi.

Presenter: Jason Chiu of Cherrypicks shows award-winner campaign for HKTDC 720 Marketing Innovations

720 degrees = 2 X 360 degrees! All carriers, all platforms
Offers a unified rate card for all Hong Kong Operators for permission based marketing. Common ad rate card across operators suggests a highly competitive operator space in HK. Good for mobile eco-system development.
SMS and MMS still the best channels to reach mobile consumers
Specific segment based targeting (demographic, location, travel pattern) is essential for campaign success

Case Studies & Ideas

Get access to conference free of charge in exchange to customer phone data
HK Trade Devt Council campaign targeted visitors from 31 countries to Hong Kong via airport
Mobile site for HKTDC – with tracking for advertisers + coupons for international visitors
HK Trade Devt Council campaign achieved savings of 64% in visitor acquisition costs!
AR app – putting necklaces, rings, bangles, watches! Also change eye colour and hair colour
HK Trade Devt Council campaign used AR for eyeglasses conference with virtual 3D glasses trials
Augmented reality done in reverse with a mirror and face recognition technology.

Panel: 4 – The Agencies: Euro RSCG; Possible Worldwide; Qais Consulting; Starcom MediaVest Group

Mobile marketing should go beyond one-way and interruptive mode
Mobile marketing/ads today are like the “wrong numbers” of the early landline era
Simple, meaningful, realtime: success to mobile marketing campaigns
4Cs of mobile marketing: currency (value), conversation, community, content
Adblock options for customers – Cautions, that in future consumers will have more tech choices to tune out advertising
Ultimate opt-in and opt-out is not in the channel but in the heart!
Digital folks will ask for the formula to get “opt-in from the heart”. But it’s an abstract, emotion-driven strategy,not maths.
When technology becomes invisible it becomes relevant. True for mobile marketing as well
Content is a continuous service. Start/pause/resume should not disrupt brand experience
Devices are aware of a lot about what we do. Need to translate “awareness” into “intelligence” for marketers

Case Studies & Ideas

Mitsubishi Outlander campaign – social integration via different platforms and mobiles
Target store chain campaign during holiday season. Betty Crocker: iPad app.
Betty Crocker mobile app features: Smart search, better browse, detail dive, save your faves. Navigate with knuckles!

Presenter: Rachel Ooi from Ericsson: Japan

Mobile consumer segments: fun achievers, family safe keepers, principled professionals, modern Jurassics, self developers
Focus : SoLoMo = Social + Local + Mobile
Focus on multi-screen engagement. Need collaboration across ecosystem
Ericsson shows 7 segments ‘family *& fun’, ‘family safe keeper’, ‘principled professional’ etc

Presenter: Christian Cadeo of Google mobile Asia : Singapore

Mobile Search and Display – Reaching Consumers at Every Stage in the Funnel
There is a shift: Mobile Web on smartphones and non-smartphones. Mobile web is exploding on smart and non-smart mobile phones
Shift in Asia from SMS to search, mobile web and mobile consumption
Google search on mobile grew 5000% in 3 years in Singapore
12% of travel queries in Singapore are coming from mobile, beauty queries are at 14%, restaurant queries are at 17%
Google Admob 60B impressions monthly, 1/3 from Asia
20B+ monthly impressions coming from Asia. 5B+ monthly impressions in SouthEast Asia on AdMob
Bulk of search in South-East Asia is on non-smart phones

Designing Tip for Mobile

When creating a mobile specific site, dont put every info & buttons on it. Be creative
When you design for mobile web, design for thumb, not for mouse
Leverage uniqueness of the product and work across all platforms

Presenter: Heather Wee from Maxis on Engagement and Usage of Mobile Media : Malaysia

Engage with consumers – Keep it simple – Keep it fresh – Incentivise – Tie with other media
Messaging.. Its simple, powerful and smarter!
Mobile marketing is about targeted engaging with customers with relevancy
Characteristics of successful mobile marketing campaign: Trusted, Personal, Incentivises Consumers, Free for Consumer
SMS is trusted. Has to be opt-in and has to be permission based
With opt-in SMS, consumers can relate to the brand. It has to be personalized, you don’t get a second chance (to make first impression)
All opt-in members get rewards from Maxis for example on – air credits, messages
50% response rates for mobile campaign on opt in SMS base
You can embark on your digital strategy and deploy it on mobile messaging

Statistics

Less than 10% of phones in Malaysia are smartphones but more than double annually
Smartphone users consume 5x more data than 3G non-smartphone users and 10x more than 2G users
Myspace is number 5 visited site by Maxis users
Our milestone permission based community in 10 months with Out There Media achieved 2.9M opt in users . (myDeals has 2.9 million users – 1st and largest opt-in mobile community in the region)

Presenter: Joseph Tsang, GM Icon Mobile, China – Award winning North Face Red Flag campaign

Case study that resulted in 106% increase in sales, 300% return on investment of campaign generating 15M RMB in new sales (about $2M USD). All that people had to do was plant a virtual flag across China and all those who did, received a mobile coupon
Anytime anywhere, mobile is only device that can engage everywhere at all times
The North Place campaign reminds us that location-based mobile campaign is not only just check-ins or 4Square hence this is very innovative.
Mobile Media should be integrated with other media, not used alone
North Face used an outdoor screen to show LIVE the increasing no. of flags, influencing user behaviour. social + traditional media

Presenter: Chris Schaumann of Nokia on Bought, Earned & Owned media

Digital – especially mobile – is the most transparent media
More people expected to use the Internet via mobiles than via PC’s in 2014
Spent about 10% of the media budget on digital in Asia in 2010
Claims to have the biggest opt-in database in APAC with millions of consumers within SMS reach

Views on Social Media

Social media is earned media and it requires a lot of work
Social media is like the party where brands are not invited – unless you show up with a champagne case
You cannot bribe your way into social media.
People at parties not looking for marketing messages but…. champagne – respect that

Presenter: Dilip Mistry, Microsoft on Accelerating consumers through the purchase funnel

Focus on Multiple screen engagement, avoiding hero worship and be relevant
‘I need to build an app’ is the wrong approach: Microsoft
Be relevant: 43% consumers more willing to view informative ad, 53% willing to share location, 81% youth want advertising
Query Chain – The time it takes a consumer to begin & complete their search for specific confirmation.
The more screens, the higher the brand interaction/conversion. Think multi-screen when designing campaigns
The right approach is not to ask which device to market on, rather focus on the consumer and enable all/multiple screens
Mobile screen is much seen in the Evening time
Web daily use peak is around noon, mobile peak is late evening
Brands in the room: don’t get fanatical, deliver consistency across various screens at diff times of day
37% of people who saw avatar ad on mob went to see the film, add pc and console touch points

[Reproduced from Aniketh’s blog]

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NetQin – IPO Blue

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Not every Chinese internet company enjoys a pop in their share price during IPO. ADS of NetQin, which provides mobile security services, dropped 19 percent from its offering price of US$11.5 in their debut Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.

It is not a surprise. The company had a major scandal just before it filed its IPO plan. Government- backed CCTV accused it of cooperating with mobile phone virus maker Feeliu.

Yesterday, its share dropped further to close at US$8.4.

Last year, Sky-mobi also had a disappointing IPO, losing 33% in its IPO debut. But thanks to the effort of its CEO, Michael Song, the stock had a miraculous recovery in the following 3 months. It was trading at around US$20 just a few days ago . It dropped to US$14.8 yesterday, still 85% up from its IPO price of US$8.

I wonder what story NetQin’s CEO will tell investors to talk up his stock.

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GMIC 2011 Beijing: Where Are Social Media Going In The World’s Largest Mobile Population?

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The Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC), one of the world’s largest annual conference featuring mobile and social app trends, took place at China’s national convention center, which is located the Olympic Stadium in Beijing, Chinese capital. The two-day event celebrated its fourth edition this time, and it has been solely organized by Great Wall Club, a team of CEOs and executives of telcos, social network service providers and mobile app developers in Japan and Mainland China. I had another assignment in Tokyo, and I could make it only on Day 2.

Just in front of the venue, China Telecom’s base station van was standing by for burst mobile traffic which might be generated by an enormous number of the event attendees.

The Day 2 started with a keynote speech by Charles Zhang(张朝阳), CEO of Sohu.com(搜狐), where he reviewed what he had done during the last ten years and poured out his regrets including the acquisition of Chinaren[C] or the largest online alumni club in China with over 80 million registered users. (video by Tech163 [C])

G-Startups Competition

Between panels and speeches by Internet business tycoon and celebrities from China, Japan and the rest of the world, there were on-stage live demos by the G-startup competition winners who had been chosen from 20 start-up finalists. The both winners will won the prizes including participating incubation programs by Innovation Works (Beijing-based incubator founded by Kai-Fu Lee, the ex-president of Google China), China Accelerator (Dalian-based incubator founded by angel investor Cyril Ebersweiler), and Plug and Play Tech Center in Silicon Valley.

The 1st place winner of the seed/early-stage category:

SmarTots (Beijing, China)

SmarTots is a mobile education platform for children aged 2-7. It brings together educators, parents, and developers to create an interactive, fun, and manageable learning experience for kids through mobile apps. The company strives to unlock the true educational value of mobile devices by providing parents with reports, parental tools and personalized recommendations across many hardware and software ecosystems.

The 1st place winner of the growth-stage category:

Word Engine (Tokyo, Japan)

Word Engine is the fastest way to permanently memorize up to 99% of all the vocabulary required for important subjects. Word Engine is fast, inexpensive and mobile. They offer vocabulary courses for test preparation and special business needs. The app is a proven scientific solution already in use at hundreds of universities and multinational corporations around the world. They very much look forward to entering the China market.

After those demos, Takeshi Natsuno(@tnatsu[J]), the inventor of Japan’s mobile web standard for feature phone i-Mode and the president of GWC (Great Wall Club) Japan, was interviewed on the stage by Plus8Star‘s Benjamin Joffe(@benjaminjoffe) who is very familiar with the Asian tech scenes. Mr. Natsuno explained what has been happening on the Japanese mobile industry during the last few years, saying Japanese manufacturers once quit the development of feature phone handsets requiring a bunch of costs, but got back to develop additional features for the global cost-free mobile platforms such as Android.

He emphasized it is very important to have this kind of event in China, furthermore, organized by Chinese and Japanese industry players. (YouTube Video by Asiajin)

Peter Vesterbacka, Marketing Manager of Rovio Mobile (Maker of Angry Birds) interviewed on stage.

In association with the event organizers, Chinese mobile game portal d.cn[C] presented the Global Mobile Game Awards. The following ten games won the awards. (YouTube Video by Asiajin) Angry Birds captured an audience’s extra attention because they reportedly had earned USD2M in their 1Q. Beijing’s Global Times reported they would partner with a certain local game platform operator to launch their business in Mainland China.

The awards went to:

DeNA makes a big announcement at GMIC

Isao Moriyasu, the COO of Japan’s leading social app platform operator DeNA, unveiled they would partner with Fujian-headquartered Net Dragon (listed on the HK Stock Exchange), running mobile app store 91.com in China, and start co-developing social apps in the both countries. Furthermore, he announced the company would launch a CNY10M (USD15.4M)-worth foundation to encourage Chinese app developers to bring out more social apps to their platform.

After the Event

After the event, Asiajin contributor Hiroumi Mitani and I had a chance to join a dinner party with Japanese businessmen who are actively working with the Chinese mobile industry in Beijing. (Thanks to Jin Uehara(@ueharajin[J]) of MyNet Japan[J]) They insisted that we put our eyes on two emerging Chinese companies – Dianping.com(大众点评网)[C] and Vancl(凡客诚品)[C]. Dianping.com is an Yelp-like local search and reviews online service. Vancl is China’s largest e-commerce retailer that delivers fast fashion clothing to online consumers nationwide, and a noteworthy fact is that they have a distribution network of their own for a better user experience such as the rapid delivery of merchandise. A number of great internet entrepreneurs were seated around the party table, but I won’t tell you who they were because it was a private opportunity for all of them.

In The End

Smartphone handsets are not inexpensive for average Chinese people, I couldn’t see a lot of people carrying the iPhone or the Android phone on streets in Beijing where workers get comparatively higher income. (Regardless to say, everyone at the event had s smartphone of some kind. That circumstance did not reflect the average of what’s going on in the country.) That’s why Chinese and foreign handset manufacturers are competing one another to introduce inexpensive range line-ups of smartphones which can be easily accepted by Chinese consumers. (But I know “average” makes no sense in the country.) It’s volume zone business that intends to earn the market shares of the average-income workers.

For social app and mobile app developers, to achieve a great success in the country having the world’s largest mobile population, their products should fit not only the user interface of typical smartphone handsets but also that of China-made simple but intelligent handsets that are ranged between smartphone and featurephone.

Daily deal site ads at Beijing Subway: Groupon.cn[C] (upper-left), Lashou.com[C] (upper-right), 24quan.com (lower-left) and Nuomi.com(lower-right)

During my stay in Beijing, I often used the subway to go somewhere, and I found a great number of the daily deal site ads at stations and on trains. Reportedly there are more than 4,000 Groupon-like daily deal sites in the country. In addition, it is surprising that a company running “Groupon.cn” site has nothing to do with US-based Groupon. 4,000 deal sites and 800 million mobile users – these numbers have the power to change the global standard, which sometimes badly affects our business and scares us, but they mean the country has a great potential.

Author’s note: The event’s official media sponsor Tech163 has a great special coverage[C] which are filled with transcripts of keynote speakers and a bunch of interviews with celebrities in the industry.

See Also:

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The New Sin! Why Are People Angry at Baidu?

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[This post is written by our guest editor: Michelle Chen, from School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University]

A few weeks ago, Chinese race car driver, novelist, blogger, and future New York Times columnist Han Han wrote a letter to Baidu founder Robin Li – and caused quite the commotion. The letter essentially lashed out at Baidu’s business model – the locating and sharing of free digital information at the expense of creative artists.

“Baidu is eviler than Google”, a netizen commented on FTChinese.com. Why do they think that?

The New Sin: Baidu Wenku

Baidu has been suffering the complaint and anger for a long while because of its paid ranking system, filtered content and pirate downloads etc. The new sin got Baidu on fire is Baidu Wenku. Baidu Wenku is a free literary sharing platform, which is a student’s heaven but a writer’s worst nightmare. Users upload files and give ratings to earn stars, which are then used to download desired files. However, many of these files are uploaded without consent, and include copyrighted materials from all over the world, including the US and Europe.

Mid-March, 50 authors were summoned on Sina Microblog, including Shen Haobo, Zhang Hongbo, and Han Han. The authors, teaming up with Chinese Written Works Copyright Society and Mo Tie Book Company, sued Baidu on grounds of violation of copyrights. Since, a number of other companies including Qidian Online, Shengda Online, and even Japanese publishers, have begun to sue Baidu.

Even Guoqing Li, CEO of Dangdang.com, China’s largest online book retailer, posted on his microblog that he would “financially support Baidu suers”, “save tens of millions RMB by terminating its Baidu advertising to improve Dangdang.com services”, and welcomed everyone to “log onto Dangdang.com directly to search for any products you want to buy.”

“For a 25.0 yuan book, the average author makes about 2 yuan. Deduct 30 cents taxes, and you’re left with 1.70 yuan for each book sold,” says Han. At this rate, even a bestselling author will have to work for 100 years to afford a decent 2-room apartment in the suburbs of a large Chinese city.

Baidu admitted this time. After the copyright protection issue was brought to light:

	March 19	Post-uproar	% Change
Literary works	2.8 million	170	99.99%
Short novels	132	3	97.73%
Total works	200+ million	170+ million	15.0%

*source: http://tech.qq.com/a/20110331/000113.htm

However, so far Baidu has won most of both its anti-trust and copyright violation cases, that Han Han sarcastically mused “Perhaps Robin Li’s father is Li Gang?” This refers to the words used by the son of a high-ranking police chief who tried to evade responsibility for hitting and killing a student in a car accident by using his father’s name. Ever since, “My father is Li Gang” gained notoriety for those who thought they would always be protected by impunity.

Legally Acceptable?

“Mimicking and replicating – in China, they are all the utmost forms of flattery. When an artist puts Li Bai [famous poet] in their artwork even without consent, or copies your essay word for word, it’s considered a compliment, not an offense,” a renowned Political Economics professor at Peking University once said.

However, the fight against piracy must come at a time that is right for China. As one netizen commented on FTChinese.com, “to be honest, I am ashamed to be a user of pirated material. However, when I found that I couldn’t find jailbroken software, free texts, or China-adapted games, I thought, those people who are fighting against piracy don’t really know what they are doing. So I spoke out less. I am for piracy…perhaps when the Chinese become wealthier and are able to purchase certified products, then we can fight against piracy.”

Rumors are this week that there will be a huge government crackdown on unregistered DVD shops and street-side vendors in Beijing. This could be partly in response to Han’s widely talked about blog post, or fulfillment of a promise 10 years after accession to the WTO.

[image courtesy of Tencent Tech]

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Deal Aggregator, dealmandi Hits Your Mobile With An Android App

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In India, we have more deal sites than unique deals happening any given day (okay! I am exaggerating a bit here, but hope you get the pun). And lately we have seen a sudden peak in deal aggregators, i.e. sites that attempt to play the meta role in deal space [see this Aggregated List of Local Deal Aggregators In India] and aggregate deals from these sites.

One of the aggregators, Dealmandi has launched an Android app which brings deals from sites like myDala, koovs, taggle, cityoffers and even the newly launched timesdeal to your Android device. Dealmandi essentially surfaces deals from these sites and importantly, is available for 43 cities.

App Review: Dealmandi

Review: By khanapurechait [via : Appnomy]

Almost everyday we hear of a new deals site being launched that offers great discount. Deals are the hottest things out there today, sadly due to so many different players offering different deals at different discount rates does not really help end users, we need deal aggregators that help us choose the right deal easily by bringing together the all available deals in one page view.
Pros:
Dealmandi does an amazing job at deal aggregation, and shows a comprehensive list of deals to choose from. It aggregates deals from Timesdeals, dealsandyou, rediff deals, koovs,dealivore and more! The app supports a whopping 43 cities! This is what makes the app so good. What the app scores highly in is the simple interface. It is really very easy to use and you can’t go wrong with that. There are only 3 buttons that will filter all deals and one that let’s you choose your city.
Cons:
The app shows you a list of deals, but any further info about the deal is not shown, hence to see all the details of the deals you have to visit the website through the app, time consuming to do this again and again. A nice addition would be to add the phone numbers of the deals provider in the app to purchase over the phone.
All in all the (almost) perfect deals aggregator for your android phone.