NumberTank Gives 30Mins Free Web to Phone Calling Everyday – But Why?

A few years back we had a flood of free SMS sending sites. Though their revenue model has changed from footer ads in the SMS to serving banner ads on the web but the portals otherwise have good traction. Way2SMS, a leader in this segment is consistently amongst the top 30 sites of India for the past 2 years. Indyarocks managed to pull of a social network cum content farm on the back of Free SMSes.

A Surat (Gujarat) based startup, NumberTank is going one step further and offering free web to Mobile calling to its users. As a user you can make calls to people on your contact list free for 30Mins everyday (carry-forward-able). Currently the calls can be made to India, US and Canada. More countries would be added soon. You need to have an invite from existing members to join the network.

On first look the whole experience looks like a social network with free calling as a feature. The founder denies of attempting to make a social network.

We are NOT a social network. We are a communications company. We are trying to make communication real time, easy, seamless and more importantly, free.

If communication is the core of their product then voice quality of the calls has to be really worked upon.

The process of signing up is quite cumbersome with multiple forms. It makes it even more tedious when the flow does not capture the provided information to avoid singing in again. Though it shouldn’t be a problem because Indian users will take this pain for free calling. But the question is, what kind of users? Still, given the standards of wannabe networks that have come out of India in the past, NumberTank is quite decent.

Also, one has to answer 3 basic questions daily about themselves to get the 30mins of free calling. This is to build user’s interest graph. It will help them make quality recommendations for services they plan to release in the future. They claim to be working on some “unique” monetization model apart from conventional advertising.

Back in 2007, Ibibo had also launched the free calling feature to help gain traction to their social network. Recently they also signed a deal with Huawei to provide an app for the same on the latter’s mobile handsets. Ibibo is doing decently OK given the amount of spending they’ve been doing on sleazy ads around casual games.

What do you think of NumberTank? Do try it out and let us know.

Related posts:

1. Free Mobile Phone for Rural Families Below Poverty Line?
2. News: 3G Video Calling Approved
3. News Roundup: StratosHear launches MobiAdz, Premium Mobile Advertising Network, Videocon’s ISD Calling
4. MTNL launches Video Phone Calling Services
5. Make Free VoIP Calls To Japan [TringMe’s Blackberry App]

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One97 Mobility Fund Invests In Dexetra, The Makers of Iris

One97 Mobility Fund has invested in Dexetra, the company behind Iris and the super cool Friday-app.

Mentions Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder of One97:

Narayan and his team put their Artificial Intelligence skills to create this personal search engine for your world. And then one day Siri (on iPhone 4S)happened. The Dexetra team had done AI , done web bot and now challenged them to launch their own version for Android just in 8 hours. They created it overnight, calling by reverse spelling of Siri i.e. Iris..Since then things have not been the same. With nearly a million downloads and 10s of millions of queries iris crates first global product out from Bangalore.

Our investment made months before is announced today and is a great reinforcement of opportunity to create world-class offerings out of India.

Investments like these strengthens the ecosystem – they are made primarily for the love of ‘this is super awesome product!’ than mulled over questions like ‘what’s your business model? How will you make money?”.

A big plus to One97 Fund and Dexetra for the funding.

Related posts:

1. SAP Ventures Invests $10mn in One97
2. One97 makes strategic investment in TenCube, makers of WaveSecure
3. One97 Communications Invests S1M$ in Singapore Based The Mobile Gamer (TMG)
4. Intel Capital invests $23mn in IndiaMart, One97 and Global Talent Track
5. Seed Fund MyFirstCheque Invests In mKay Technologies

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6 Chinese Manufacturers Who Want to Make Your Next Smartphone

Increasingly, Chinese manufacturers are breaking away from being OEMs and are also casting off the shoddy mantle of making shanzhai – fake, or low-rent – gadgets. That’s because the likes of OPPO, Tian Hua, ZTE, and many more, are aiming to make your next smartphone. In so doing, these ‘designed in China, made in China’ companies are hoping to emulate – and then topple – the likes of HTC (TPE:2498) and Samsung (SEO:005930).

And thanks to both Android and WP7, they have a chance of being the smartphone that more people in the US and Europe slip into their pockets.

Here are six Chinese brands who’re now pushing, and enhancing, their smartphone range more aggressively:

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OPPO

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(Image source: Engadget)

The Donguan-based OPPO sure likes ambitious marketing, recruiting Hong Kong starlets and even Hollywood heart-throbs for its marketing campaigns. But aside from those clever campaigns, its phones have been lacklustre, and its brand-name is still as low as it can go among Chinese consumers.

But its Android-powered X903 showed potential (pictured above), and it looks like it could find a niche – with later iterations – on American or US telcos as a budget smartphone for those who love hard keyboards.

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Tian Hua

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Tian Hua has been nicely cashing-in on its W700 smartphone (pictured above) this year, manufacturing it for Alibaba as the first Aliyun phone, for China Unicom (HKG:0762; NYSE:CHU) as a mid-range carrier device, and soon for the Indian telco Micromax.

Now that it has found its stride, it’s a contender for pushing further overseas – although it shows no sign of doing so yet.

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Haier

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(Image source: Phandroid.com)

Qingdao-based Haier (SHA:600690; HKG:1169) showed some flair earlier this year with the nicely-skinned UI on its seven-inch Haipad Android tablet.

And, indeed, being a larger company than the above two brands, it’s already on US shores – albeit with some low-spec and none-too-alluring phones. But it’s a start.

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ZTE

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Let’s get more realistic now and talk about a company who’s already making big moves in the US: the Shenzhen-born ZTE (HKG:0763; SHE:000063). Already China’s second-largest telecommunications business, it has hooked-up with UK, US, Canadian, and French telcos already. Its biggest-ever launch happened just this month as its mid-range, large-screen ZTE Warp (pictured above) hit Boost mobile.

ZTE looks the most likely to emulate the success of its Taiwanese brethren at HTC – by building its brand quickly with mid-range Android smartphone that are reasonably stylish and don’t look too off-puttingly cheap.

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Huawei

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Huawei is finally shaking off the shackles of being the guys behind the $100 (or 1,000 RMB) ultra-budget phones, such as its IDEOS. With such devices costing a reported 700 RMB to manufacture (before even adding in R&D and other overheads), it’s clearly better off building higher-end devices and spreading its name. To that end, the Huawei Honor (pictured above) is its biggest push, hoping to steal sales from LG or Samsung with a 1.4GHz processor behind a decent 4-inch screen. But it’s initially aimed at Russia, China, and the Middle-East; we learned earlier today that it’ll ship in December.

About the name… Huawei remains controversial in the US and elsewhere, unable to lose the stigma of being founded by a Chinese army soldier and retaining close ties to authorities here. That’s hampering Huawei’s telecommunications business – where it competes with Cisco, and Ericsson – and losing it contracts in overseas markets that fear security breaches. Perhaps its smartphones can be a softening touch to win round consumers (and politicians).

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Lenovo

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Not a smartphone, but a leaked Tegra 3 tablet from Lenovo. (Image source: Engadget)

Lastly, here’s a very well-known name: Lenovo (HKG:0992). Now the world’s number two PC-maker, Lenovo – like Huawei – has been only gradually moving away from cheap smartphones that had to be subsidized by Chinese telcos. It was an odd stage to be in: supposedly making some of the world’s best business-oriented laptops whilst simultaneously making some crappy phones that devalued its brand-name. The stylish LePhone was an interesting gambit, though it largely failed in the face of cheaper devices that weren’t tied to perennially unpopular carrier contracts.

But Lenovo is still lacking in convincing phones, and seems intent on complementing its PC hardware with some powerful Android tablets for the global market instead. There’s a Tegra 3-powered slate reportedly due by the end of the year (pictured above).

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iSuppli forecasts that by 2015 global smartphone shipments are expected to grow from 478 million (currently) to 1.03 billion. It’s a higher profit sector than feature phones, and gives scope for international expansion.

Of course, there are still many challenges ahead – such as a lack of world-class local processing power; though Taiwan’s Mediatek (TPE:2454), or China’s Rockchip could grow in-line with strengthening local manufacturers (to truly maximize lower costs).

It’ll be interesting to see how keen – or resistant – western and pan-Asian consumers are to buying Chinese phones.

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ChinaStars, Turning Students into Entrepreneurial Stars

There are a growing number of incubators, accelerators and programs designed to help propel start-ups to success. There is Innovation Works, YuenfenFlow, Start-up Leadership Program in Beijing; China Accelerator in Dalian, TiSiWi in Hangzhou. All are trying to emulate the success of their U.S counterparts like Y Combinator and TechStars to produce billion dollar companies like Airbnb or Dropbox.

Trilogy Ventures launches ChinaStars

A new kid on the block called ChinaStars is entering the mix. Led by Steven Bell of Trilogy Ventures, ChinaStars is transposing itsmodel of focusing on top students from top Chinese universities into an acceleration program. This is a move away from Trilogy’s typical university campus visits to find students entrepreneurs. The difference between Trilogy’s approach and other investors, is that they go the the super early stage – university students. It’s harder to get more early stage unless they target 10 year old kids!

72 crazy hours of hacking, 90 days of hustling

Firstly ChinaStars holds a crazy energy charged 72 hour hackathon to build a demo of a super cool social mobile app on the exponentially growing Weibo platform. Following the hackathon, the most promising teams will be invited to enter a 90 day acceleration program with 24,000 RMB and mentor support to help them focus on cranking out a killer app. Not only are they meant to build the app, they need to attract users and mindshare.  At the end of 90 days, ChinaStars will hold a demo day and invite a group of investors to potentially fund the best teams.

Beijing and Shanghai shoot for the stars (Shanghai hackathon is tomorrow!)

The Beijing hackathon was held on October 21^st and Melody He of Trilogy Ventures said they were “blown away by their innovative ideas and ability to execute!” Six teams were selected to enter the 90 Day phase. Shanghai students will get their turn to impress tomorrow at Shanghai Jiaotong University Training Center. To check out the format of the hackathon, read here. To generate excitement, ChinaStars has invited impressive keynote speakers Peter Verstabacka of Rovio, the people behind Angry Birds and Leo Wang, Founder of Mobile 2.0.

Giving students a dream

ChinaStars are giving students a great opportunity to put their ideas into action and more importantly realize their potential. For a long time, Steven Bell has believed the hunger and low risk of stellar students in China is a great recipe for a hit start-up. More importantly giving students confidence and an ability to believe in themselves is priceless.

 

Related posts:

1. Investing in Student Entrepreneurs, Stephen Bell of Trilogy VC
2. Bill Gates Encourages Peking University Students to Think Early about Charity
3. China’s Top Angels Share With Stanford Students: How to Cooperate with China’s Investors

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Huawei Honor Shipping This December, Just In Time For Christmas [PHOTOS]

We just learned from Huawei today that the company has ‘honored’ its promise that its Android-based smartphone, the Huawei Honor, will be shipping in December, just in time for the holiday season.

The phone will be available in Russia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, and China from December, with other markets to follow. The pricing hasn’t been announced yet though. The photos we received look pretty good, as you can see in the slideshow below. A few quick points about the Huawei Honor:

• Exclusively designed icons, widgets, and 3D transitions. Huawei-customized Android 2.3.5 user interface (UI).
• Backs up data like messages, contacts, and call logs on its SD card. Data traffic manager included.
• Social media aggregation. Users can view all newsfeed (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) in a single page.
• Allows users to close all running applications in one touch, thus saving on battery life.
• Huawei Guard scans and eliminates viruses, spam calls, and unwanted messages. It also has password-protect for private content such as contacts, messages, and call logs.

With Christmas – and Chinese New Year – coming up, we can expect more gadgets to be released over the next few weeks. Before you move on to our next post, let us know via the short poll below if you would be interested to buy the Huawei Honor this holiday season.

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Traveling to Beijing or Taipei? Try The Citipad iPad App

If you’re heading over to Beijing or Taipei during the upcoming festive season, you may want to consider downloading Citipad (iTunes link) on your iPad.

This app is basically a detailed travel guide within an app – but unfortunately it showcases just two cities, Beijing and Taipei. Nonetheless, I’m pretty impressed by how detailed the information is.

Plus, all this information comes with a map to ensure you know where you’re heading to. Scroll down to my screenshot review:

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Choosing your city

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Choose between Beijing or Taipei:

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Exploring tourist attractions

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The side bar has a comprehensive list of tourist attractions:

Tapping on one of the attractions — say, the Forbidden City — will bring you to the attraction point on the map. You can click ‘read more’ to uh… read more about the place. If you like what you’re reading, you can add it as your “My-to-go-place”.

You can also find tourist attractions based on your interest/purpose — say shopping, hanging out with family, or dating.

If time is of the essence, you can go for the package recommendation which is neatly put into chronological order:

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Some Thoughts

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The app, as I said, is neat. But I do have doubts if foreigners or locals would want to bring an iPad out while they tour around the city (I wouldn’t). Even if they do, I also doubt that many of these folks would want to turn on their data roaming just to access the app.

So while Citipad has good content (which made me realize how much I have missed even though I visit Beijing and Taipei frequently), accessing it on the go feels a bit unwieldy.

A phone version of the app could solve the mobility issue but most tourist still wouldn’t turn on their data roaming. The only way to access 3G cheaply is to get a local SIM card. But for a foreigner, it could be a nightmare to find one of these phone shops unless you have been to the city a couple of times before.

There’s no conclusion to this argument. And that is why a travel guide in book form is arguably still the favorite among travelers.

[Hat tip: Wen Fei Xiang, Toumingti]

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