Shanda to Discontinue MochiMedia China Business?

Shanda Games, the online gaming subsidiary of Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited is about to discontinue MochiMedia China business after announcing closing down Ju Xin (Big Stars), an online Karaoke platform as part of a broader move to streamline and restructure its portfolio, according to people familiar with the matter.

Shanda Ju Xin has been in operation since 3 years ago, the team said on its official website that  “due largely to general market condition and the game’s status quo”, it would take down all the game’s servers and eventually shut it down by February 6th of next year.

MochiMedia, the San Francisco, CA based, Accel Partners funded company that helps game developers around the world to monetize and distribute their games was acquired by Shanda Games for $60 million in cash and $20 million in equity. Shanda had high hopes for MochiMedia as the gaming vendor was counting on the distributor to internationalize Shanda’s game pipeline. However, things didn’t pan out as Shanda hoped, MochiMedia China discontinued support service from this June on, and now is said to completely discontinue its China business.

Insane, aimless and blind expansion has characterized the Chinese online gaming giant’s growing path over the past few years, and now it is time to slow down and shed off some burden.

Related posts:

1. Rumour: Shanda is going to list another of its divisions next year
2. Shanda In Talks With Tencent About Social Games On Weibo
3. Visiting Giant Interactive and Shanda

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Baidu Japan Acquires Simeiji Mobile App Team, For Added Japanese Typing Fun

The Japanese subsidiary of Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), the Chinese search engine giant, has acquired the small startup team behind the Simeiji input method editor (IME) app for Android. The free app has been downloaded over a million times already from the Android Market.

Simeiji’s creator, Adam Rocker, promised in a tweet that both he – a San Fransico-based developer – and the usual team will continue working on the app. In an email to PO, Adam said:

We are glad to announce this acquisition, and also looking forward to
working at Baidu developing Simeji. We’re gonna work at Baidu Japan in a week’s time.

In Asian countries, third-party IMEs are an important tool, making it easier to type out characters than the usually poor standard offerings on Windows, Mac OS X, or Android. As such, web portals often battle to make the best and most popular IME apps as a service to their users. Baidu already has such an app for Windows available at ime.baidu.jp, and claims this version has 1.8 million users right now.

In a press release accompanying the Simeiji announcement, Baidu’s Allen Zhang said that Japan remained important to the company as its first international venture, and that the acquisition was a follow-up to the success of Baidu’s IME for Windows.

China’s Baidu first entered Japan in 2007 but has struggled to gain any significant search engine market share in a segment dominated by Yahoo (NASQAQ:YHOO). Indeed, earlier this year we reported how Baidu Japan had filed losses of RMB 700 million (US$108.3 million at the time) since 2008.

Check out Simeiji in the Android Market.

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Increased E-commerce Sales Putting Big Pressure on Delivery Companies

via TechWeb

China has been experiencing impressive growth in the e-commerce sector, and that growth has also been a windfall of sorts for Chinese delivery companies, who are delivering more packages than ever thanks to increased online shopping. But as orders rise, so too does the pressure, and speed expectations are high, especially for online shoppers in cities who often expect things delivered the next day (even if they didn’t choose overnight shipping).

This pressure has caused some delivery companies to raise their prices, and others to work their people harder than ever. In fact, increased pressure may even have been a factor in the sudden death of delivery company employee Huang Zuopeng yesterday. Huang was discovered dead in a company dorm, and friends and coworkers say they suspect that the constant overtime work and stress may have contributed to or even caused his death.

Of course, that’s pure speculation (for now, at least). But it’s no secret that the end of the year and the run-up to Chinese new year is often a busy time for delivery companies, and this year has been worse than ever because of the huge volume of online purchases being made.

If e-commerce growth continues — and we suspect it will — delivery companies will be forced to take steps to reduce pressure on their employees. That might entail raising their prices, which wouldn’t be popular with Chinese consumers and could hurt China’s e-commerce market. We’ll have to wait and see.

Whatever happens, we certainly hope there won’t be any more deaths caused by pressure from e-commerce (if that turns out to be what really happened here). No business’s bottom line is worth that.

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App Flights Manager Raising $15M in Series B from Matrix China and Greylock

Mobile app Flights Manager (航班管家) is raising US$ 15 million in Series B from Matrix Partners China and Greylock Partners, according to its founder Wang Jiang’s weibo posts. The company raised US$ 5 million in Series A round of funding from Sequoia China.

The app which targeting business travelers lets its users check out flights info in realtime in China, including departing time, ticket price, seat availability and so on. Better yet, it incorporates hotel booking, weather forecasting and other trip-related services.

Huo.Li (活力, translates to vitality), the company behinds the travel app is also curating several other apps such as “Hotel Manager”, similar to Flights Manager only focusing on hotels; Maopao.com, a game-centric LBS service and Maopao Paipai, an instagram like photo sharing app.

The company claims to be the first Chinese app developer that raised the concept of Scenarios-based Service. It means users are always using their app under certain scenarios, like when you want to check out the fight information, or on a business trip in a strange city and in need of a hotel room for accommodation.

As of now the company boasts a headcount of about 150.

Related posts:

1. Online Luxury Store Xiu.com Raising $100 million in Series B
2. Fishing Joy Developer Punchbox Raised US$ 14 M In Series B
3. Travel Service Lvmama Raising Over 100M Yuan In Series C

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Apple Rates Qunar’s Mobile Effort As Best Chinese-Made Travel App

Qunar, the online travel site which attracted over US$300 million of investment from Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) earlier this year, has proved to be the best Chinese travel app on iOS (pictured above) according to some end-of-year awards from Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL).

But Qunar actually snapped up only the runner-up prize in Apple China’s ‘best travel app’ category, as it got leap-frogged by the Chinese-language version of the French-made Fotopedia app (pictured below), which took the award from Apple. Nonetheless, it means that Baidu’s investment beat off a whole host of local rivals such as Ctrip (NASDAQ:CTRP), and eLong (NASDAQ:LONG).

The Qunar mobile app allows users to search, browse, and book plane tickets, hotels, and more. With more Chinese people now using smartphones, and just over 100 million 3G subscribers in the country, it’s clear that a full-featured mobile app is now vitally important. Qunar has apps for iPhone and iPad, Android, Symbian, and WP7, and claims to be China’s most popular travel mobile service with a significant number of its seven million users also making use of some of the smartphone apps.

Indeed, the company claims that search volume on the Qunar mobile apps has reached ten percent of desktop PC search volume, and airline tickets’ mobile booking grows over 100 percent every month. Qunar was founded in 2005 but only began its mobile business in 2010.

And the winner is... Fotopedia! The Chinese localization of the app won Apple China's 'best travel app' category in 2011.

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Google Archives Japan’s Disaster Zones on Street View

Google's Memories for the Future site

After initially announcing its plans back in July to digitally archive the devastation from the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) has finally made those images available for viewing via its Street View feature.

There is also a special Build the Memory website set up where you can compare before and after images of certain areas, showing the immense damage that was suffered by locales in Northeastern Japan [1]. I’ve included an example of a map view below, showing what happened in Onagawa, in Miyagi prefecture.

In their blog post, Google explains:

[We] believe that the imagery is a useful tool for anyone around the world who wants to better understand the extent of the damage. Seeing the street-level imagery of the affected areas puts the plight of these communities into perspective and ensures that the memories of the disaster remain relevant and tangible for future generations.

It’s important to note that Google services were used in many ways to help Japan’s recovery effort (see our post about that here), almost to the point where it could be considered essential communication infrastructure during disasters. In addition to Google’s own initiatives, the public took advantage of Google’s many web services to create things like radiation maps, blackout calendars, and power usage apps – all volunteer efforts with the civic good in mind.

View Larger Map

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1. On a related note, I was working on an archiving project of my own a few weeks back, making a 3/11 video archive map which allows you to browse YouTube videos taken during and after the earthquake and tsunami.  ↩

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HTC, 360Buy Execs Honored on CCTV Award List

Liu accepts his award; image via Sina Finance

Each year, CCTV — China’s state-owned television conglomerate — announces awards honoring successful businessmen and economic contributors for their achievements over the past year. It should be no surprise, then, that there are some tech companies in the mix.

Officially on this years list are HTC’s Wang Xuehong and 360Buy’s Liu Qiangdong. The former has enjoyed a year in which smartphones became more popular than ever in China, and the latter has seen a year of impressive expansion and now ranks among China’s biggest e-commerce outlets.

Other awardees came from other industries, but Vancl CEO Chen Nian did turn up on the “nominated” list. We can’t be totally sure why he didn’t make the final cut, but we’re guessing it has to do with this (and maybe this, too).

Congratulations to the winners!

[via Sina Tech]

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LiveShare Launches First International Version in Japan

We’ve been keeping tabs on CoolIris’s LiveShare photo sharing app for web and mobile, and we’re happy to hear today that its first international version has been launched in Japan. Android users in that country can now enjoy a localized Japanese language version of LiveShare, which can be downloaded from the Android Market.

We took a closer look at LiveShare earlier this year, and no doubt many of you will recognize the slick 3D wall photo display, as it got quite a bit of attention when it first went online (I believe it was called Piclens back then). Since then it has morphed to create a kind of social photo pool that multiple people can contribute towards. For example, photo collections could center around trips between friends, a concert, or a wedding.

I’ve used it on my own personal site, though that Drupal solution is a bit dated, and not as slick as the HTML5 web display on LiveShare.com (see demo video at the bottom)

CoolIris has partnered with mobile carrier KDDI (TYO:9433) in Japan to make a LiveShare shortcut available on some of their upcoming devices, which then directs to the KDDI market where users can install the LiveShare app if they choose. So if you’re on an Android handset, give Liveshare a go, and see what kinds of fun photo streams you can create with your friends! For iPhone users, you can check out the iOS app if you haven’t tried it already.

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In some cases, Singapore a better domicile than Hong Kong for China operations

If you are doing business in China, and want to set up a holding company to manage your China operations, what is the best choice?

While Hong Kong is always cited as a viable place for this purpose, Singapore should also be seriously considered, argued Chris Devonshire-Ellis, principal and founder of Dezan Shira & Associates, in an article on China Briefing.

Setting up companies in offshore jurisdictions to manage another country’s operations is a common corporate practice.

There are three reasons for this: Firstly, offshore jurisdictions often provide tax benefits and cost savings. Secondly, many offshore jurisdictions keep the identities of shareholders and directors secret. Lastly, should things go wrong in China, keeping a holding company in between China and investor limits any financial damage.

While there are many reasons to pick Hong Kong for this, and Chris’ article does a good job of summarizing them, Singapore should be the ideal location for investors in certain cases.

Chiefly, Singapore holds the advantage if the company has businesses not just in China, but also in Southeast Asia and the rest of the region.

That’s because as a ASEAN member, Singapore has free trade access with the rest of the body, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. While China (including Hong Kong) has a free trade agreement with ASEAN, the level of access they have does not quite reach Singapore’s.

ASEAN’s tax treaty with India also provides Singapore another advantage. While China does have an agreement on double taxation with India, it does not go much further than that.

SMEs have another reason to consider Singapore. While Hong Kong’s corporate tax rate is slightly lower than Singapore, the latter has a tax incentive whereby the first S$400,000 (US$312,000) is taxed at 6.375 percent, given all other criteria are met.

So, if your company is only interested to expand to China, perhaps Hong Kong remains the best choice to set up a holding company. Other than that, it’s probably time to give Singapore a serious look.

Photo: Kit Photos

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LiveShare launches Japanese version

Cooliris has just announced that their rich media communication app for web and mobile, LiveShare, is now available in Japanese. The localized version for the Japan market is the first international version of LiveShare and is available for free download on the Android Market.

Together with the launch, Cooliris is also partnering with KDDI, one of Japan’s largest mobile carrier. The partnership will allow all existing and new customers of KDDI the opportunity to download the LiveShare app directly from the home screen of their latest KDDI phones.

LiveShare by Cooliris allows groups to share photos seamlessly in one place. The app allows user-uploaded photos to flow into group photo streams in real-time. Check out the screenshot of LiveShare’s Japanese Android app.

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