Samsung Spells Smartphone Success in Q2, But Apple’s iPhone 5 Still Looms

Samsung Galaxy S3, Tokyo launch

Samsung’s Galaxy has reportedly sold more than 6.5 million units since its launch six weeks back. The flagship handset from Korean manufacturer Samsung (005930:KS) is in high demand, and according to a Reuters report today, it could mean unprecedented quarterly numbers in mobile shipments for the company.

The report says that Samsung may have sold as many as 50 million smartphones in the quarter, led by the Galaxy S3 and its predecessor the Galaxy S2. In contrast, Apple is expected to sell 30.5 million iPhones, although the iPhone is late in its product cycle, and a dip before a refresh is to be expected. As you can see in the interactive chart below, the rise of both Apple and Samsung in the smartphone space has been pretty remarkable when compared to other prominent competitors [1].

In Japan the S3 went on sale on June 28, and since then has sold over 200,000 units according to local carrier Docomo (NYSE:DCM), with hopes to sell over a million this year.

Meanwhile in China, the company has targeted the entry-level smartphone market with a couple of low-cost handsets, following a market trend that is becoming ever more intriguing as more companies put forth budget smartphone offerings.

[Download image version of this chart]

---

1. All data from IDC: 1Q2012, 4Q2011, 3Q2011, 2Q2011.  ↩

The post Samsung Spells Smartphone Success in Q2, But Apple’s iPhone 5 Still Looms appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Link to full article

Read More

Service Un-Accessible, Fine! but Good Service Un-Available, Sucks!

English tech media, sometime including us, always love to report this type of news: XXX site(s) is/are blocked in China. I found it’s really boring, as the majority of Chinese Internet users actually dose NOT care about the existence of any of them, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook whatever. So services are not accessible from China, fine, not big deal?! We understand People who are reporting or reading this may expect some change, but be realistic, the situation could be like this for another long while, I am sure.

However, when you think over about this from another angle. It’s been years, none of the replacements of these un-accessible services is Good enough and make us proud. I mean, it’s fine even if we don’t have Google, Facebook etc, as long as we can develop some similar service with the same quality. But so far we don’t have any, that sucks and we should feel embarrassing!

I am a big fan of Google, I am still using Google for web search in China, and am even a paid user of gmail even though I have to suffer its unstability from time to time. But that’s just a small piece of Google offers to the human being. When I am in San Francisco, I see friends using Google NOW and Voice search which is accurate and efficient; using Google map to find places and direction,  and Google Navigation for free navigation; using Google plus and Google Calendar to share and organize your life moments; and using Google Drive to collaborate with colleagues on work; using Google Wallet to check-out at street shop. Google is so powerful, and so useful.

But look at what Baidu’s doing? Baidu’s the No.1 in web search and operating like money machine because Google’s out, but for the consumer, what else impact it is bringing to our daily life? I am not aware of any. RenRen, the so-called Chinese Facebook, seems completely losing its way since its IPO, a company lives with no dream!

Google, Facebook is changing the world, but no one can change China. Give us some service which are good enough to make us forget about Google, Facebook etc.

Only Apple is avalable in China, it may has great chance, but it changes China from totally different way, the Apple’s hardware, is definitely changing the way of how chinese spend the money on digital life.

Related posts:

1. Localisation Sometimes just Sucks, For Facebook in China 2011
2. 2009 ChinaMode Report (Part I) – Twitter Voted Most Recognized International Service in China
3. M & A: Good Solution for China Video Sites, For Now

Link to full article

Read More

Never go it alone again: List of women business, tech, and networking groups in Asia

Would you risk your stable career, current comfortable lifestyle and family on a business venture that could potentially fail? A man might say, “Let’s do this!” but a woman might say, “What? Are you kidding me?”

Female entrepreneurs are rare. According to the New York Times, only eight percent of American venture-backed tech startups in 2010 were founded by women. The most common explanation given is that women are generally unwilling to bet all that she has on something that contains high risk, knowing at the back of her mind that she has other traditional heavyweight roles to fulfill such as raising families.

But more often than not, what they need is support and encouragement.

This call for solidarity has been answered: In Southeast Asia, many new female-powered groups have arisen. Such communities pave the way for females to collaborate together and learn how to translate ideas into real business solutions. Here is a list of female networking groups in Asia with a short description on why they’re awesome:

Singapore

Athena: With its expansion to Asia-Pacific and the United States in 2012, The Athena Network provides members with international collaboration opportunities and a rapidly growing online community where women can interact and share information, skills and business contacts. Contact them.

SG Geek Girls: Empowers the next generation of women in technology through fun, informal and interactive activities, such as Squad Drills: Practical Web Design Course for Beginners.

Girls In Tech (GIT) Singapore aims to inspire young women through focusing on the collaboration, promotion, growth and success of women in the technology sector. Girls in Tech also has chapters in other countries including Indonesia. Contact them here.

Singapore Business & Professional Women’s Association (SBPWA): Being a member of Singapore Council of Women’s Organisation enables SBPWA to form close partnerships with other women’s clubs in Singapore as well as those from other countries to give members a wider exposure in the business and professional arenas. Contact them.

Indian Women’s Association of Singapore (IWA): A non-profit organization, IWA members participate in social, cultural, educational and philanthropic activities. IWA’s mission is not only to present a cultural platform, but also to provide a networking interface to its working members. Contact them.

The International Women’s Federation of Commerce and Industry (IWFCI): Being a global business network made up of international trade opportunities of over 2 million affiliated members worldwide, IWFCI grants businesswomen access to global markets through this unique chamber of commerce platform. Contact them here.

PrimeTime Business and Professional Women’s Association: The PrimeTime community provides a unique experience for women looking for professional, social and community fulfillment with a international group in a convivial environment. The association has around 400 members represented by over 30 nationalities. Contact them.

Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations (SCWO): One of its initiatives include The Women’s Register (WR), a platform for networking, education, mentorship, inspiration and the promotion of directorships for an extensive group of women of all ages. Contact them.

Malaysia

National Association for Women Entrepreneurs of Malaysia (NAWEM): This association that firmly believes in providing leadership and support to all Malaysians in realising their full potentials whilst upholding the values of mutual respect and caring. Contact them.

International Women’s Association of Kuala Lumpur: One of the important aims of the organization is to promote cultural exchange, address women issues and raise funds for various deserving charities. Contact them here.

The Association of British Women in Malaysia: The association provides a support framework and network of contacts and information for people who have recently arrived in Malaysia and, through this website, for those planning to come here. Contact them here.

Philippines

The Women’s Business Council of the Philippines: It organizes women-to-women mentoring sessions, as well as the W2W Summit Conference. Contact them here.

Indonesia

American Women’s Association of Indonesia: It has grown into a vibrant organization that connects more than 200 women with a supportive network of fellow expatriates, cultural integration, charitable works and, plenty of fun activities. Contact them here.

Athena: With its expansion to Asia-Pacific and USA in 2012, The Athena Network provides members with international collaboration opportunities and a rapidly growing online community where women can interact and share information, skills and business contacts. Contact them.

British Women’s Association Jakarta: The BWA Jakarta has been offering friendship and support for women living in Jakarta since 1970 and has members from all over the UK and many other nations too. Contact them.

Professional Women at BritCham: Working cooperatively with the British Embassy (UKTI) and the British Council, whose senior representatives sit on its Board of Management, BritCham is committed to developing a services infrastructure that supports all stages of business development right from their inception in Indonesia. Contact them here.

Canadian Women’s Association Jakarta: This association aims to provide a link through which members would feel more connected to the Canadian Women’s Association and to the greater Canadian community in Indonesia. Contact them here.

Vietnam

International Ladies in Vietnam: Highly active in sports, International Ladies in Vietnam encourages women to partake in activities such as golf. Contact them here.

Thailand

The Business and Professional Women’s Association of Thailand-Bangkok: A notable association in the country for women to connect and network with one another. Contact them here.

Bangkok Now – Bangkok’s Networking Community: The group’s aim is to create a forum that can help and connect professional business women living and working in Bangkok. Contact them.

South Korea

Seoul International Women’s Association (SIWA): This association serves up its very own Discovery Magazine, a bi-monthly magazine with articles written by SIWA members. It is a good way for members to share experiences & information about Korean culture, lifestyle as well as updated information on past and upcoming SIWA activities. Contact them here.

The American Women’s Club of Korea: The club consists of a group of women who gather for friendship and social activities, as well as raise funds for general welfare purposes focusing on local Korean and American communities. Contact them here.

Japan

For Empowering Women in Japan (FEW): Members include a broad cross section of professionals from marketers, journalists, entertainment specialists, attorneys and bankers to freelance photographers, translators and entrepreneurs in a variety of industries. Contact them here.

College Women’s Association of Japan (CWAJ): The Scholarship and Education programs are funded by donations and the internationally-renowned annual CWAJ Print Show, an exhibition and sale of Japanese prints.  Every year scholarships are awarded to women graduates, some from other countries wanting to further their studies in Japan. Contact them here.

Japan Australia New Zealand (JANZ) Ladies: JANZ Ladies’ Group is a Tokyo based association where friendship is shared and understanding promoted among the women of Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Contact them here.

The Tokyo American Club Women’s Group: The association is committed to enhancing life in Tokyo for members by offering classes, information programs, social activities, travel opportunities, creative outlets and survival skills for newcomers. Contact them here.

Hong Kong

Women in Charge: A ugroup that helps market its members’ businesses via its website, monthly Newsletters, eDMs, the WiCtv Channel, a Business Directory and numerous Social Media channels. Contact them here.

The Hong Kong Women’s Forum: Established in 1996, this association was formed to provide women in Hong Kong with the opportunity to gather together and network. The Forum has developed into a database of over 2000 women, from varying nationalities and careers.

Know of more groups we should add? Tell us below!

Link to full article

Read More

NLPCaptcha launches N-Gage, takes captcha engagement to new level

Noida based NLPCaptcha has launched its new line of action based Captchas – “N-Gage”, that takes captcha engagement to a new level.

The N-Gage line of captchas follows a completely different format for spam verification. Rather than a traditional type-in captcha, wherein a user has to first interpret the tricky, distorted alphabets and then type them in for verification; N-Gage plays on the principle of action. The user will see an interactive graphic/ video in the captcha which asks the user to perform a specific action e.g. he will have to simply click on something or drag the cursor. This action will complete the verification process and the user in the process gets a chance to experience new product launches/ messages, which the advertiser wants to communicate.

This new format offers multiple advantages. For the end user, it is simple and hassle free, there is no need for him/her to stress out while trying to interpret the distorted captcha figures. Filling a captcha rather becomes a fun experience (try out a demo here).

For a publisher, NLPCaptcha provides a revenue earning opportunity (the Noida based startup has clients like Sify, Indian Express, India Today, Dainik Jagran, Deccan Chronicle, Oneindia, Surfindia etc) and importantly, for an advertiser, N-Gage Captchas creates better a user engagement/brand recall mechanism.

What’s interesting about Noida based NLPCaptcha is that it charges advertisers on ‘cost-per-recall’, which means you pay only when the customer actually types your brand message (read our earlier profiling here).

Link to full article

Read More

Aryaka secures $25mn Series C funding, led by InterWest Partners

Aryaka, cloud-based WAN optimization as-a-Service has raised $25 million Series C funding round led by InterWest Partners, with participation from Presidio Ventures, a Sumitomo Corporation Company, and existing investors Nexus Venture Partners,Trinity Ventures and Mohr Davidow Ventures.

The funding will be used to support Aryaka’s market penetration and global reach as the company continues to redefine the multi-billion-dollar global WAN optimization market and change the way enterprises consume this technology.

Aryaka has more than 60 global customers within its first year of launch including global brands like InMobi, STATS ChipPAC, Aruba Networks, ThoughtWorks, Radware, Calypso, Strauss and Symphony-Teleca. The company has 1 Gbps of customer commitments across enterprise networks.

“What impressed us most about Aryaka is how this unique WAN optimization as-a-Service solution overcomes the problems caused by the distributed nature of today’s enterprise as well as integrated access to the Cloud with a very simple and elegant solution,” said Khaled Nasr, Partner, InterWest Partners. “Unlike conventional WAN optimization approaches, Aryaka liberates the enterprise by providing a secure, scalable and highly intelligent network in the cloud. ”

Watch this intro video from Aryaka

Link to full article

Read More

Suning Shares Plunge After Warning of 30% Slump in Profits

Chinese electronics retailer and e-tailer Suning (SHE:002024) is having a nightmare time with its stock down 15 percent from this point last week on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The plunge began on Monday morning local time, after Suning issued a warning after close of trading on Friday saying that 2012 H1 profit looks set to drop as much as 30 percent to 1.73 billion RMB ($274.24 million), down from 2.47 billion RMB ($391.55 million) for the same period last year.

Suning’s shares are currenlty trading at $7.25 a piece, a trough that they haven’t crashed into since the beginning of 2009. The company – which has over 1,300 stores across China and is now pushing hard into the e-commerce sector – did not indicate why the anticipated slump was happening. But Suning’s announcement did state that 2012 H1 saw 5.28 billion RMB ($837 million) in sold items, which is not down too much from 2011 H1’s 5.9 billion RMB. It’s not clear how much of that is from Suning’s rapidly expanding e-commerce operations, which have also diversified into online travel bookings and several other areas.

The expansion into China’s well-developed e-commerce scene has also brought new challenges for Suning, with rivals like market leading e-tailer Tmall and second-placed 360Buy already well established – including in the sales of electronics.

Suning is not the only Chinese giant having pre-report jitters this week. Earlier today we looked at how telecoms firm ZTE (HKG:0763; SHE:000063) is bracing itself for profits being down as much as 80 percent.

[Source: Techweb - article in Chinese]

The post Suning Shares Plunge After Warning of 30% Slump in Profits appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Link to full article

Read More

Ayojak launches Facebook Ticketing App : Sell event tickets on Facebook

Online ticketing platform, Ayojak has launched Facebook ticketing app that enables event organizers to sell event tickets via Facebook.

Here is how it works -  simply add Ayojak’s ticketing app (the tab will be added in a page of your choice) and event organizers can simply share the page app URL (https://www.facebook.com/{your_facebook_page}/{app id}) to their audience.

Event managers need to simply login to their Ayojak account and select the event to setup and start selling tickets. However, the transaction is not completed inside Facebook and the payment/checkout happens in a new browser tab.

If you are an event manager, do give the ticketing app a spin and share your comments. For sure, this is a much better mechanism to engage one’s brand audience and convert the generated leads.

Link to full article

Read More

Digital marketing, customer engagement startup Mobikon gets US$1.7M from Jungle Ventures and others

Mobikon, a Singapore and India-based startup that offers a suite of services for businesses to make customer feedback, engagement, and analysis more efficient, announced last week that it has closed US$1.7M in Series A investments led by Singapore-based Jungle Ventures.

This round is supported by a group of angel investors, including Ravi Mantha, member of the Board of Trustees at The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE).

The B2B startup was founded in 2009 by Samir Khadepaun (CEO) and Salil Khamkar (COO), and has since grown to a team of 30. Their flagship product is KONEKT – an integrated suite of digital marketing, analytics and customer engagement apps now used by over 100 customers in hospitality and retail sectors in India and Southeast Asia.

Mobikon’s cloud-based solutions hold the promise of delivering higher direct revenues and greater customer retention and satisfaction to businesses at lower cost and improved efficiency.

Jungle Ventures is a VC firm that invests in early-stage startups and business-building infrastructure in Singapore, India, Southeast Asia, and other regional hotbeds of innovation.

Since Jungle Ventures is a participant in the Singapore government’s NRF TIS and SPRING SEEDS programs, it can receive co-investments from the government to boost startups under its wings.

Last year, the firm led a US$780k investment in mobile media solutions provider Cinemacraft (full portfolio).

Link to full article

Read More

Qiito makes travel itinerary easy and visual with its public beta launch

Qiito (Quick Interesting Interactive Travel Organizer), an online travel itinerary planner, has just launched its public beta, and might just put travel agents out of job soon.

Founded by Chuang Pei Han in 2011 which was later joined by Leong Jia Yong and Clement Tan, the website launched its Alpha version in April 2012 after a seed funding of SGD2.2million from Lunar Asia Investment Pte Ltd. After several rounds of iteration, the team launches its public beta last week. The website is current ranked 19778 globally and 63 in Singapore, according to Alexa (as of 13th July 2012), with its contents and recommendations contributed largely by users for users.

How the cofounder describes Qiito

Essentially, Qiito (pronounced as “Key-Tow”) wants to remove the pain point of scouring websites after websites for places to visit in a particular country. Cofounder Pei Han shared that “ Most of Gen X and Gen Y are no longer looking to engage travel agencies when we travel. We want an unique experience with full control over our travel itineraries. Most users turn to Google for places to go. However it is not the efficient way, and in fact it is still very tedious. Let say we do a specific search on ‘‘Top 10 places to go in Taiwan’, there will be thousands of sites for you to go through. And after you go through what do you do? You then take few hours to compile in your excel spreadsheet and it looks messy and ugly. Things do not stop here, you have to find out the address, map location, transportation and more, then try to make sense which place is near which. The whole process is just too much hassle to get something that you want. Qiito is designed and built to solve these problems, and we are proud to say that we are the only site that is built this way. We believe in visual, crowdsource contents, as well as instant planning. We are currently working on growing users’ interest.”

Features of the Qiito Website

Qiito features a highly visual website where users can browse travel itineraries created by other users and customize them into their own travel itineraries. One can also navigate through the various photo albums or travelogues to discover new places. Currently, some of the featured countries are Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong kong. The website also uses the popular masonry design and features a infinity scroll, a layout made popular by social pinboard website, Pinterest.

How Qiito differentiates from other travel websites

So how does Qiito differentiates from other travel site which seemed to be gaining its popularity? Unlike most startups which only focus on planning stage, Qiito took a step further by focusing not only on planning but also for discovery. “Websites which focus on planning might have a low traffic because users only come when they go for trips, but we are building a site that is visually inspiring so that travel lovers will not only visit us when they are planning for their trips, but also whenever they want to find out more about other places and to learn something that they never knew. Achieving vicarious travel is our aim and planning for a trip should be pleasing from the start, even you have no intention of traveling; Qiito is still a good place to kill time,” adds cofounder Pei Han.

From idea to funding to product development, and then revenue model

When the team secured its first round of funding from Lunar Asia back in July last year, cofounder Pei Han had no product, only a vision to sell. He managed to sell that vision for a good $2.2million dollars, which he used to hire a team of developers and designers. The funding sustained the team for more than one year without revenue. Throughout the year, Qiito has been focusing on product development and studying its competitor. After rounds of iteration, Qiito is now confident of its product, and is looking for revenue models. They are probably the few lucky ones who can enjoy the luxury of focusing on product development, and then move on to figure out how to monetize it.

Link to full article

Read More