Chinese Group Buy Scam: 24quan Closing Offices, Withholding Wages, Ignoring Debts

We don't recall Yinan Du (right) discussing the 'incur and then ignore massive debt' strategy when he was onstage at Disrupt Beijing last month

Last month at Techcrunch Disrupt, Du Yinan of the group buy site 24quan surprised us all by saying that even in the midst of a market so harsh it has seen massive layoffs at a bunch of Chinese group buy companies, 24quan was expecting to become profitable by this December. How is that possible? Mr. Du didn’t go into detail, but it turns out we should have been listening to Meituan’s Wang Xing instead. Later in the same panel, he said: ‘It’s easy to be profitable if you cut thousands of people; you’ll be profitable next month.’

That may be exactly the strategy 24quan has adopted.

CCTV is reporting that 24quan local branches, like their Huai’an branch, have essentially disappeared overnight. Offices are empty and the people are gone, leaving only angry merchants who are still owed tens of thousands of dollars. This follows earlier reports that 24quans Taiyuan branch owes over 2 million RMB ($312,000) to merchants and is behind in payments, and there are similar reports for other regional areas.

24quan insiders are saying that the central office is closing branch offices and essentially leaving the workers there, who it owes money to, out to dry as they’re threatened by local merchants 24quan owes money to. And there were reports as early as September of large-scale staff cuts of as many as 1,000 employees.

So, is 24quan going to be profitable next month like Du Yinan suggested at Disrupt? It sure sounds like it. Of course, that may be because they appear to be making massive staff cuts while keeping money owed to both employees and vendors, but hey, that’s just business, right?

Oh, wait, no, it’s not business, it’s stealing.

[Via DoNews]

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Jay Chou Invests in Ucan, Developing “3D Interactive Game Social Network”

This guy is bringing you some kind of 3d social networking game, apparently

Most people, when they think of Jay Chou, probably think of his music or his movies. But the dude is also into tech startups (his first was 31SMS), and his latest sounds pretty crazy. Apparently, the Taiwanese pop star has signed a contract with the Macau company Ucan and is backing its “3D interactive game social network.” Yeah, we don’t know what that means either.

The agreement makes Chou a shareholder in Ucan, and also names him the company’s worldwide cultural ambassador. Along with his money, Ucan gets to use Jay Chou’s image, voice, and name in their design and products for the game social network whatever it is they’re making.

Ucan also apparently plans to offer some kind of 3D online video service branded as a new kind of interactive media, but it’s not really clear what that will look like either. It’s supposed to be here but, as you can see, there’s nothing at that link, so I guess we’ll just have to wait.

Wait, and ponder what the heck a “3D interactive game social network” might be.

[Via QQ Games]

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Indonesia Digest: PlasaMSN goes live, Q&A service on medical issues, and more

Here is some interesting startup news snippets from Indonesia, not only in its capital, Jakarta, but also other tech startup hubs such as Yogyakarta, Medan, Surabaya, and many more. These listed news are taken from our partner, DailySocial, a leading blog on Indonesia’s tech startup scene.

(1) After several months of rumors, PlasaMSN has finally gone live. PlasaMSN is a news portal that brings you curated content from multiple partners and works in a similar vein as Yahoo!’s portal.

(2) What if there’s a Quora for medical topics? That’s what MeetDoctor is all about.

(3) A new travel site, GoIndonesia, will be launched this November, and they’re aiming to be an online social platform for everything travel-related. GoIndonesia will enable visitors to make online reservations and payments.

(4) SteamOps is the winner of the INAICTA 2011 competition for the video game category. It will also compete at the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards 2011 (APICTA) in Pattaya, Thailand.

(5) Hoodemia, a site developed by Pusat Ilmu Komputer (Pusilkom) Universitas Indonesia,  is one of the few social media sites  officially affiliated with an education institution.

(6) ICT incubator has been established by KEMKOMINFO (The Ministry of Communication and Informatics).

(7) CrossCoop, a Japanese-based incubation office provider recently expand their service to Jakarta after launching in Singapore last month. It provides office space for Japanese and local entrepreneurs doing business (especially in the tech industry) in Jakarta.

This has been brought to you by SGE and DailySocial. DailySocial is a blog that covers the Indonesian tech startup scene. They publish in both Indonesian and English.

Thank you to nordicfactory for the flag image.

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Adobe Opens an Online Store in China, Tries to Not Think About Piracy

The design software vendor Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) has just launched an online store for China, for the first-time selling copies of its software – such as PhotoShop, DreamWeaver, and the some other programs from its flagship Creative Suite 5.5 – in mainland China.

It’s a turnaround from Adobe’s decade-long shunning of China and some other Asian countries, where rampant piracy of digital goods made official sales channels unsustainable. Pirated copies of popular software – Adobe’s and Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) being chief among them – generally sell for as little of 10 RMB (US$1.57).

Sohu’s IT news portal quoted Adobe’s MD for China, Huang Yao-hui, as saying:

The opening of the Adobe store here will be convenient for users, and will allow them to get the very latest in the Adobe software family […] by direct-download, to save money, or by a traditional courier delivery.

The Chinese prices – such as 1,423 RMB for PhotoShop CS5 – are inline with US costs. That’s in contrast to Microsoft’s approach in some regions where it has reduced price-tags to be more in-line with local wages. As a result of that, Microsoft Office Home Edition can be purchased for 250 RMB ($39) which is well below the ordinary $119 set for the US.

Adobe, though, is perhaps aiming this new store at enterprise users, such as the blossoming Chinese start-up sector, or the growing number of design-oriented creative agencies in the country.

Check out the Adobe China store here.

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Verizon expands VoIP service in Asia-Pacific

Verizon announced at a recent press conference that they are expanding their Verizon Business offerings in Asia-Pacific. This includes their Voice-over-IP (VoIP) service which enables multinational companies in key commercial hubs across the region to have access to their latest unified communications and collaboration applications.

Some of Verizon’s strategic investments in the region are:

• Cloud & IT Services, where Verizon is known for it’s security
• Network & Advanced Communications
• Mobility Enablement
• Partner ecosystem, Mitsui in Japan being their biggest parter in the region so far

The telecommunications giant had just reported the 5.4 percent year-on-year increase in revenue for the third quarter, at US$ 27.9 billion dollars. They are also seeing their wireless data business being the company’s top generating business with a report 20.5 percent increase year-on-year with an impressively low churn-rate of 0.94 per cent. With such numbers, Verizon is confidently expanding into the region as they look to provide their customers here with a reliable and secure communications network. According to Christopher Kimm, who is responsible for operations across the EMEA and Asia-Pacific region, “Networks are becoming conspicuous in their absence,” as realized by RIM in their recent network outage.

Verizon also presented their identified top 10 technology trends that they believe will impact business and their workers in 2012. The trends are:

• The high-IQ network effect – all endpoints and devices will become inherently smarter and new opportunities will be created to solve societal challenges. Because of the network’s importance, any interruption of service will have profound impact. As such, there will be a demand for carefully designed and well-managed services at the core of the global IP backbone and high-speed wireless networks.
• To the enterprise cloud and back – the enterprise cloud will finally come of age and dramatically reduce capital expenditures and creating business efficiencies and better economies.
• Big data equals big insights – the role of Chief Information Officer will evolves as companies that harness the intelligence inherent in their data, secure it and act on it accordingly can expect to gain a significant competitive edge.
• The social enterprise – a multi-generational workforce will employ technology to truly embrace a borderless work style.
• Video is the new black – the use of video has grown more popular with the support of ultra-high bandwidth capabilities
• Service your way – personalization will continue to be an inspiration for  innovation. The enterprise cloud will help business personalize their customer service experience and enhance satisfaction
• The consumerization of IT – enterprise IT policies will change to support employees through their personal consumer devices
• Machine-to-Machine-to-People (M2M2P) – machine-to-machine communication will change the way people manage their world but the human factor will still play an important role
• Compliance gets increasingly commercial - as more companies and consumers go digital, the understanding that complying with security standards will help them avoid being victims of data breach. As such, compliance will become a pre-requisite for good business practices
• Energy savings power better business and greater good

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Apple Sits Down With Chinese Environmental Protection Groups

Apple supplier, via Gizmodo

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) products may be huge in China, but they’re also made in China, and that process produces an awful lot of pollution, according to domestic environmnetal protection groups. As many as 27 different Apple suppliers have been accused of releasing pollution and carcinogens, and yesterday Apple finally sat down to talk it out with its critics.

The meeting, which lasted three and a half hours and took place in Apple’s Beijing offices, was attended by nine representatives for five different domestic environmental groups, and five Apple team representatives.

Li Li, a representative for one of the environmental groups, told Sina Tech that she was pleased Apple took the time to sit down with them, but that the company is still pushing the responsibility for pollution problems onto its suppliers and its attitude wasn’t sincere.

Apple admitted that of the 27 suppliers accused of polluting in the environmentalists’ report, 15 were indeed Apple suppliers, Li Li said (Apple does not publicly list its suppliers). In keeping with form, Apple would not tell the groups which 15 names were correct. According to Li:

Apple said they had already spoken to 11 supply firms and asked them to reform, and they’re in the process of initiating communications with the other four.

Of course, what the environmental NGOs are really worried about is when and how well these suppliers reform their practices, and — as ever — Apple kept mum on that front, although it did say it would maintain better communication with domestic NGOs in the future.

Feng Yongfeng, another environmental rep present at the meeting, said that Apple had admitted it didn’t place enough emphasis on environmental protection, and that in the future environmental problems will be included in the evaluation process that occurs when Apple chooses its suppliers.

[Via Sina Tech]

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Flash, HTML 5 and Developer Community

[Editor: The author of this post is Neo Zhang (@neozhang), co-founder of Guohe Ad, the largest advertising management and optimization platform for mobile applications in China, which offers professional solutions including mobile ad aggregation, optimization, management and data analytics for mobile developers.]

The breaking news in the developer community from last week is Adobe’s abandonment on mobile browser Flash in favor of HTML 5, which finally puts an end to the dispute over Flash and HTML 5.

Such dispute began in April 2010, when Steve Jobs publish an article titled Thoughts on Flash on Apple.com. In this article, Steve listed out reasons such as “open”, ”full web”, “reliability, security and performance”, “battery life” and “touch”, to explain that Apple will not let a third party layer of software exist between the iOS platform and the app developer. Thus, HTML 5 becomes the only choice besides native iOS experience, and the only choice for cross platform development. This article first raised the heated discussion about such topic within the industry. I still remember Adobe’s full-page advertisement on New York Times, with bolded “We Love Apple.”

One and half year later, we still did not see much exposure about Flash on mobile devices. Quite the opposite, HTML 5 is expanding in both desktop and mobile space at tremendous speed. It not only becomes an important element of web apps, but can also be applied to web games, interactive advertisements, or distributed as native applications in App Stores under the support of frameworks like PhoneGap. Adobe’s acquisition of Nitobi Software, the creator of HTML 5 mobile app framework PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build not long ago, shows its strategy shift from Mobile Flash to HTML 5.

Within the developer community, more software developers are turning from C++ and Java towards Objective C and Android. More books on such technologies are available. Native applications can completely support various device features with better performance. The developing tools are not worse than Flash at all. Moreover, with the ecosystem created by App Store and Android Market, and via in-app advertisements or purchases, native apps can conveniently earn revenues. In just a few years, millions of apps are downloaded onto billions of devices. This has never happened before in the developer community in the Flash era – do you still remember that Adobe did design an app store for Flash / AIR applications?

However, HTML 5 looks still less familiar to many developers. It seems that web technologies really need ownership. W3C is fairly slow-moving in the process of making HTML 5 / CSS 3 standards,  JavaScript as a language is confusing and lacks of consistent standard framework. When facing different devices and browser environments, HTML 5 has no edge to enhance performance or leverage hardware features. Recently, our team is planning a lightweighted product feature for mobile devices. I got such feedback from our product team, “HTML 5 might be the best choice for such feature, but making an application is what this team is better at.” Such comments may occur in many mobile development teams, because their DNA has already been transmitted onto native apps. Then we may have to face an awkward “brain drain” in HTML 5 talent pool when the smartest minds of our time get immersed in profound exploration of native app development.

HTML 5 needs a more definite leader. The developer community should be supplied with more explicit tech standards, more detailed tech guidelines, more user-friendly development and design tools, as well as streamlined development process, consistent design guidelines and even an App-Store-like ecosystem with organic business model. This will reduce the learning cost and encourage developers to form a community, or help developers get into the native app ecosystem through PhoneGap-like frameworks. Such positive cycle will lead to the explosion of massive code snippets, software libraries, SDKs, development tools, open source projects and commercial products within the system, to make considerable profits and further stimulate more development practices and more matured businesses. And this is the public secret of App Store’s success.

By the way, Mozilla website listed out a few technologies usually called part of HTML 5 that aren’t. If interested, you can click here to check those plausible concepts out.

[image credited to Telecomnewspk]

Related posts:

1. Led By Sohu and China Unicom, iPhone Developer Association To Be Launched Tomorrow
2. Fishing Joy Developer Punchbox Raised US$ 14 M In Series B
3. The Falling of (Some of) Chinese Android App Stores

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RIM Launches Blackberry Bold 9790 and Blackberry Curve 9380 in Indonesia

RIM (NASDAQ:RIMM) have officially launched its latest handsets, the Blackberry Bold 9790 and Blackberry Curve 9380, at an event in Jakarta. Indonesia was chosen to be the first country to enjoy the newest OS 7 and NFC-equipped smartphone.

We recently saw the Blackberry Bold 9900 & Torch 9810 launched not too long ago, but yet RIM is offering the Blackberry nation new smartphones to crave. So what’s new about these two smartphones?

The Blackberry Bold 9790 is quite similar to its brother, the Bold 9900, which offers both touch and a QWERTY keyboard. Equipped with a 1GHz processor, the new Blackberry Bold 9790 will run apps, browse the web, and work with documents. The five megapixel camera also has the auto-focus feature and it includes 8GB of onboard memory and can be expanded up to 32GB. As for price, it will cost 4,599,000 IDR ($510) if you want to get your hands on it.

Taking the battle to Android handsets and the iPhone iPhone, RIM also released the Curve 9380 with its tagline ‘All Touch, All Social.’ It features a 3.2 inch high resolution display, and it also comes with pre-instealled social networking apps like BBM, Facebook, Twitter and the new ‘Social Feeds’ which aggregates all your Social Media feeds.

At the launch event, co-CEO Jim Balsillie shared some stats with us. He stated that Blackberry in Indonesia holds a 38 percent market share, making it the leader in the Indonesia smartphone market (Frost & Sullivan 1H report). Four out of five smartphone sales are Blackberry. IDC also forecasted that RIM will ship 9.7 million of Blackberrys in 2015.

In this newest Blackberry line, RIM is helping local developers and start-ups with promoting their apps. Names such as Koprol, Bouncity and Menoo are all in the prestigious list in addition to Macetter.us, Domikado Finance, Fun Komik, Gift&Take and Makanter.us. With RIM going all out in Indonesia, it will be interesting to see much attention and focus other smartphone makers place in the region.

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Muji Launches Social Game Muji Life For Global

Toshima-ku/Tokyo-based Japanese consumer goods brand Muji (Mujirushi Ryohin) starts a social game Muji Life on November 15 (release [J]).

You may join the game by either of three social networking services, Facebook, Twitter and Mixi.

You will create your shelf with your favorite Muji products and other items like book, CD, DVD, etc.

You may display your shelf to your friends, give and receive gifts.

At the Muji retail shops around the world, by its iPhone app, you can get special items, music and Muji coins, virtual currency you can use in the game.

On the launch, English and Japanese languages are support. Chinese is planned to be added.

Muji Launches Social Game Muji Life For Global

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