French music streaming service, Deezer, is rumoured to be closing a partnership with Malaysian carrier DiGi. According to e27′s source in the music industry, Deezer is looking to formalise a partnership with Malaysian carrier DiGi Telecommunications Sdn. Bhd. The partnership, expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2013, would most likely see the...
The post Deezer to possibly partner Malaysian telco DiGi appeared first on e27.
French music streaming service, Deezer, is rumoured to be closing a partnership with Malaysian carrier DiGi. According to e27′s source in the music industry, Deezer is looking to formalise a partnership with Malaysian carrier DiGi Telecommunications Sdn. Bhd. The partnership, expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2013, would most likely see the...
The post Deezer to possibly partner Malaysian telco DiGi appeared first on e27.
Xiaomi is today capitalizing on the success of its Android-based smartphones by launching a stream-to-TV box, also based on Android, called the Xiaomi Box. It’ll stream media from your phone, tablet, or laptop over your home’s wifi network, bringing your movies or music onto the big-screen just like with similar set-top products from Apple and Google. The Xiaomi Box will cost 399 RMB (US$63), or a mere 299 RMB ($48) for owners of Xiaomi phones.
Xiaomi’s new toy goes on order at 9pm tonight (Beijing time) via its website in limited numbers. the Xiaomi.com site has just been updated with some promotional videos and images.
Image from official @小米盒子 Weibo page. Click to enlarge.
The Xiaomi Box was given a very low-key launch this afternoon in Beijing, with Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun (pictured right) giving a hands-on demo. The gizmo supports Apple’s Airplay for streaming media, as well as the industry-backed DLNA and Miracast protocols, and of course allows for full 1080p HD playback. It’ll run the same MIUI-themed Android OS that Xiaomi first created back in 2010, and will get regular over-the-air updates in the same way that the company’s phones do.
Users of the set-top box can use their Xiaomi phones as a remote control for their zapped-to-TV content, thanks to Xiaomi’s new video app which we previewed earlier this month. The company promises that the support for Airplay means that the same applies to iPhone and iPad owners.
Developing story…
Here’s the interface on a TV:
The post Xiaomi Launches Streaming Media Box for Just $60, Will Support Apple’s Airplay Too appeared first on Tech in Asia.
As anticipated, the US auctions site eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) has made a return, in a very low-key but stylish way, to the China market. On Monday it launched a joint-venture e-commerce store at ebay.xiu.com – dubbed “eBay Style” – that focuses on mid-range to high-end clothing, handbags, and accessories.
It features brands like Banana Republic and Clinique, right up to couture labels such as Guess and Coach. In total, there are already 5,000 brands on-board. eBay Style feels similar to the FashionVault market on its US website.
For this new attempt at the China market, eBay has partnered with the experienced local B2C e-tailer Xiu.com, which itself specializes in luxury brand clothing. Here’s the new frontpage for Chinese shoppers:
Click to enlarge.
In many respects, eBay Style is a very late entrant to China’s luxury e-commerce segment, where it’s up against a wealth of competitors, from UK e-tailer Net-A-Porter, to high-end stores backed by major portals such as 360Top, to Xiu itself.
The company says that its items come from eBay’s top merchants, which is different to the usual B2C model among China’s top specialist e-commerce sites.
To ensure that this is all available when mobile, eBay Style has launched its own iPad app, which can be found here.
eBay’s original auction site began to fail in China soon after it entered the market in 2004. It eventually lost the battle to the local newcomer, Taobao, which enabled people to open up virtual stores.
[Source: QQ Tech - article in Chinese]
The post eBay Returns to China in ‘Style’, Focuses on Luxury Clothing appeared first on Tech in Asia.
The GameMaki team had a turbulent 2011, but their circumstances has improved. From left: Jesslyn, Keith, Damon, and Brenda. Photo: GameMaki.
Startups in Singapore are caught in a bind. While located in the heart of Asia, the city has a minuscule domestic market and is surrounded by countries with varying levels of internet adoption.
Developed economies like Japan and South Korea, while tech-savvy, pose language challenges. China, meanwhile, plays by its own set of rules. US and Europe aren’t a walk in the park either.
Nonetheless, Singapore-based startups aiming at developed markets do have several possible paths to pursue.
Gamemaki offers one blueprint. It looks like a Silicon Valley style startup on the surface. It’s most visible product is a mobile social network where denizens earn points for completing fun, real-life challenges. Not exactly a certain money maker.
But while it has a fun ad youthful image, it possesses a serious side too: It offers a gamification platform for large corporations. Limiting labels like B2B and B2C don’t quite apply to GameMaki. The company straddles both spheres in an interesting way.
Singapore is its cash cow, one that it is milking to good effect through personal connections. On the other hand, the fun stuff, GameMaki’s reason for being, largely happens in the United States. It’s sort of like an office worker who does all his fun stuff outside his 9-to-5 daily routine.
That’s not a bad thing. Consider the alternative: It could take its funding from investors and burn it on a social network that may never take off. It’s what Silicon Valley startups do: Raise cash, burn it, pivot, raise some more. Rinse and repeat.
But GameMaki’s approach is sensible and works well in the Asian context.
I bumped into Keith Ng, co-founder of GameMaki, at a quiet corner in a shopping mall. While he was earning a respite from hyper-energetic kids at a youth innovation event organized by ACE, an organization that promotes entrepreneurship in Singapore, his platform was powering the gamification element of the event app: Kids answer quizzes and play scavenger hunts to win real-world incentives.
The reception to the game has been positive: Over 1,000 signups and 3,000 completed challenges were registered.
2012 has been great for GameMaki, a dramatic turnaround from the previous year where they were on the verge of collapse.
An investor had pulled out of a deal at the last minute, causing Keith to apply for three credit cards just to do balance transfer to keep the startup afloat. The same investor even defaulted on paying for GameMaki’s office, and they almost had their water and electricity cut off.
Keith, who flirted with depression, was even forced to source for personal loans while his company did some service work to ensure that it had operating capital. The staff, meanwhile took a voluntary pay cut.
Faced with desperate circumstances, GameMaki went for broke on entrepreneurial reality show Angel’s Gate, and it paid off.
“Crystal Horse and Angel’s Gate were our saviors,” says Keith, adding that Crystal Horse Investments threw them a lifeline with a USD100,000 investment. The business deals then started flowing in.
In addition to campaigns it’s been running for Ideate.sg and F&B establishments like The Lawn, Standing Sushi Bar, and Broadway Cafe, GameMaki scored a deal this year with Digital Life, a prominent consumer tech magazine in Singapore, to run a Diablo 3 competition.
It powered the Ideas.Inc Business Challenge app held in October, which engaged 350 participants who took part in 19 challenges. It also licensed its technology to DBS, a top consumer bank in Singapore, to run a design-a-credit-card contest on its Facebook Page.
Keith points out that GameMaki has been generating revenue from all these projects, and these leads are generated without much government assistance. Of course, the big question is whether the company is generating enough from these campaigns to be financially self-sufficient. Turns out that it is.
“We’re making enough revenue to cover expenditure,” he says, “and we’re able to afford a reasonably comfortable life. But it’s definitely not enough for us to expand aggressively.”
With growth in mind, GameMaki is already raising another round. But they’re not in a hurry.
The startup is entering the market at the right time, where it is benefiting from the private sector’s embrace of gamification. It is working on the impending launches of a few more white-label games in verticals like food and travel — ensuring a positive cashflow for the near future. It also has a new consumer-focused app in the works.
“We do the unsexy stuff to switch on the lights, and working out of those lights to develop something consumerish… the end goal of doing the unsexy stuff and consumerish stuff is the same — to make life a lot more fun and interesting for everyone,” he says.
Read: GameMaki’s blog post in 2011 which narrated the rough year they had.
The post How GameMaki came back from the brink to become a blueprint for Singapore’s startups appeared first on SGE.
Working with a music industry source, e27 looks to give an overview of music streaming services in Asia. With a huge range of music streaming services available worldwide, we thought it would be a good thing to breakdown some of the key services in Asia and potential entrants. While Spotify is not yet available, the...
The post Music streaming services in Asia, the breakdown appeared first on e27.
Working with a music industry source, e27 looks to give an overview of music streaming services in Asia. With a huge range of music streaming services available worldwide, we thought it would be a good thing to breakdown some of the key services in Asia and potential entrants. While Spotify is not yet available, the...
The post Music streaming services in Asia, the breakdown appeared first on e27.
The big news today from GREE, the Japan-based social gaming platform, is that it’s now accepting mobile games built in HTML5. The now-HTML5-compatible social gaming platform will roll out in beta starting this month.
Of course, GREE still publishes and hosts games made for iOS and Android. But having mobile browser-based games ensures compatibility across all types of smartphones. All you need is a HTML5 compatible mobile browser to play. On top of that, GREE has also increased its language support from just Japanese and English to include 14 other languages. Plus, the company notes that it “also plans to launch its own in-house social games as web apps.” As for payments, the gaming platform is adding support for Paypal alongside the usual array of credit cards; there’ll also be a total of 166 mobile carriers supporting gaming payments via telco billing.
HTML5 gaming was a major aspect of the serious deal earlier today between GREE and SingTel.
The other part of the story is simple percentages. GREE wishes to escape paying 30 percent of its app revenue to Apple and Google (both companies take around 30 percent of the income generated by app sales in their stores). It’s a logical route to take – delivering games straight into consumers’ hands – and I’m excited to see how it pans out.
GREE isn’t unfamiliar with mobile browser games. In Japan, many games are still played on mobile browsers. But HTML5 gives developers more room to breathe. Noritaka Kobayashi, VP of the Business Development Department at GREE Singapore, tells me:
We have talked to our third-party partners. Most of them are very interested in building HTML5 games. The competition in app stores is too tough and it’s hard to maintain the ranking. So once HTML5 works, [developers] might shift easily.
So far there is only one title in HTML5 — Cerberus Age — for this open beta launch. But more proven titles on the app stores will soon be converted to HTML5 soon.
The post Escaping from Apple and Google, GREE Launches Push for Games in HTML5 appeared first on Tech in Asia.
GREE announces its plans to support HTML5 web apps on its global gaming platform and will roll out the beta this November. GREE announced today that it is expanding its global gaming platform’s compatibility with HTML5. The leading mobile social platform, reaching over 169 countries or regions, will roll out the enhanced HTML5 functionality globally...
The post GREE expands gaming platform compatibility to HTML5 web apps appeared first on e27.
GREE announces its plans to support HTML5 web apps on its global gaming platform and will roll out the beta this November. GREE announced today that it is expanding its global gaming platform’s compatibility with HTML5. The leading mobile social platform, reaching over 169 countries or regions, will roll out the enhanced HTML5 functionality globally...
The post GREE expands gaming platform compatibility to HTML5 web apps appeared first on e27.
Today, mobile gaming giant GREE announced that it has exclusively partnered up with SingTel to promote its mobile games in Singapore. Besides promoting games, the partnership will allow subscribers to pay for games or virtual items through SingTel direct carrier billing. This partnership, for now, is limited to the Singapore market.
Many folks (myself included) might be surprised and wondering why GREE is focusing so much on Singapore, which just has 5 million inhabitants. Noritaka Kobayashi, VP, Business Development Department of GREE Singapore office, explains that Singapore has a high smartphone penetration rate. According to IDA’s statistics for Q1 2012, there are more than 5.9 million 3G users in Singapore.
Contrary to what Singaporeans might think, Kobayashi explains that Singaporean gamers are actually willing to pay for mobile games and in-app items. He tells me:
Compared to the U.S., Singapore’s average revenue per user (ARPU) is very close. It depends on the games and weeks. Sometimes, Singapore [could be] higher than the US or even Japan.
I was also pointed to the game Cerberus Age, which generates ridiculous amounts of ARPU in Singapore. In terms of growth forecast, GREE hopes to grow 500 percent a year in revenue from today onwards across APAC, excluding Japan, China, and Korea.
Besides Singapore, GREE is also targeting strong partnerships in five particular markets: Singapore, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, and India. So if the SingTel partnership works well in Singapore, there’s a good chance that the Japanese company will extend this SingTel partnership to Philippines, Australia, India, and Indonesia. Yes, SingTel has subsidiaries in each market.
This SingTel partnership is set up to promote just HTML5 games. So I expressed the assumption to GREE’s APAC head that SingTel is likely taking less than 30 percent revenue share from this partnership. But Kobayashi didn’t deny or confirm if my assumption was right.
Cheong Hai Thoo, Head of Multimedia, Group Digital L!fe, SingTel said in the statement:
We are delighted to be the first to offer web-based GREE games with direct billing to our customers on their smartphones. There has been a huge increase in the number of people playing games on their phones and the convenience of paying and receiving one bill while playing GREE’s great range of games is a definite selling point.
The post GREE Partners With SingTel For Mobile Games Promotion and Billing in Singapore appeared first on Tech in Asia.
GREE and SingTel signs partnership to offer direct carrier billing for GREE’s mobile social games on SingTel’s network in Singapore. GREE today announced its exclusive partnership with Singapore Telecommunications, SingTel. The partnership enables direct carrier billing for GREE mobile social games distributed on SingTel’s network in Singapore, GREE’s first of such outside of Japan. This news comes...
The post GREE inks first partnership outside of Japan with SingTel appeared first on e27.
GREE and SingTel signs partnership to offer direct carrier billing for GREE’s mobile social games on SingTel’s network in Singapore. GREE today announced its exclusive partnership with Singapore Telecommunications, SingTel. The partnership enables direct carrier billing for GREE mobile social games distributed on SingTel’s network in Singapore, GREE’s first of such outside of Japan. This news comes...
The post GREE inks first partnership outside of Japan with SingTel appeared first on e27.
The business of cloud computing is projected to generate more than 14 million jobs around the globe in the next three years, including 10 million in the Asia Pacific region [1]. So which Asian nations are poised to capitalize on that? According to a report from the Asia Cloud Computing Association, no Asian nation is better prepared than Japan.
The group’s Cloud Readiness Index tracks the development of infrastructure and environments in the Asia region, and its latest report gives us an interesting breakdown of how Asian countries compare, as you can see in the chart below.
According to the report, Japan had an overall CRI score of 78.8, and was the only country to score a 10 in internet connectivity – so it’s especially well-prepared for cloud computing in comparison to most of its Asian neighbors. The report also points out that the country is faring well despite recent challenges:
Even the power shortages that have followed since the March 2011 earthquake have been managed well by the data centre industry. We believe Japan has the optimum mix of policies, business and infrastructure to continue and drive growth and adoption of cloud computing.
It further notes that Japan could further improve in the area of data sovereignty, where it scored TK, but still high above the average of score of 5.3.
As you might expect, other mature technology markets in the region also scored well, with Korea (with a score of 76.3) overtaking Hong Kong (75.9) for second place. Rounding out the top five were Singapore (72.8) and Taiwan (72.4).
Comparing the two mega-markets of India and China, those nations fared similarly in 9th (52.7) and 10th positions (51.2) respectively.
If you’d like to check out the report in full, you can find it here.
According to a study by IDC. ↩
The post Japan is Best Prepared to Capitalize on Cloud Computing appeared first on Tech in Asia.