5 mobile apps in Asia that give users access to cheap flights Asian consumers are now trusting online booking as a means to purchase transportation tickets and hotel accommodation. Attesting to this is the huge boom in startups and companies that offer online booking. But somehow, providing a web-based booking solution won’t be enough for Asian consumers. These people are now relying on their smartphones to do daily tasks and transactions, and they expect to do more with their smartphones. Competition is getting tighter in this space, with budget airlines joining the battle as well. So the apps need to shine and the prices have to be right.
Become a Programmer, Motherfucker If you don't know how to code, then you can learn even if you think you can't. Thousands of people have learned programming from these fine books: Learn Python The Hard Way Learn Ruby The Hard Way Why is 4G adoption in Asia’s emerging markets still so slow? As of last year, 63 percent of telcos across all Asian countries had rolled out or were developing 4G mobile data services. This proves that mobile, internet, and more specifically, LTE, are the new most important things in Asia’s telco space. But while LTE adoption in Asia is doing well in developed countries such Japan and Korea, what’s happening in emerging markets?
Haptix does away with your mouse; gives you a 3D multitouch surface anywhere How does the idea of being able to pinch to zoom on a screen, without it being a touchscreen, sound to you? Now a new device, Haptix (video above), says it has the capability to turn any surface into a multitouch screen, and the experience is supposedly close to what one would expect from smartphone and tablets. Created by Singaporean Darren Lim and Chinese Lai Xue, Haptix has 3D sensing to make users be aware of where their fingers are on the screen without actually touching the surface itself. So now users can interact with their personal computers via the 3D multitouch by – as Darren puts it – “using multitouch and a mouse at the same time”.
WeChat v5.0 Update Brings Social Gaming, Mobile Payments, and Sticker Store Steven Millward | August 5, 2013 The long awaited update to WeChat, the popular China-made messaging app, has arrived. This morning WeChat v5.0 for iOS is rolling out (to be followed by the Android iteration soon) with social gaming, mobile payments, and a proper sticker store. Yahoo's email service is now closed in China Yahoo’s (NASDAQ:YHOO) email service in China is now shut, in line with an announcement of its closure that came in April. After that four-month warning, yesterday was the final day for Yahoo China email users to login and migrate their email to an alternative service. Since Yahoo China is run by local e-commerce titan Alibaba, that company is aiming to get all Chinese Yahoo mail users onto its own Aliyun email service instead, with the added advantage of email forwarding from your old account until December 31 this year.
Sina Weibo's Failure: Why Chinese Companies Should Take the Rest of the World Seriously Last week, we reported that Sina Weibo has added Facebook login to its service to make it easier for overseas users to sign up. My response? Way too little, way too late. A couple of years ago, Weibo was buzzing. Even outside China, lots of people were talking about it.
Check out the netizens and companies behind China's $39 billion search engine market (INFOGRAPHIC) Now that China has 591 million web users and 460 million mobile netizens, it’s inevitable that the nation’s search engine market is a huge one as well. As shown in this infographic by Go-Globe that neatly summarizes the landscape, China’s search engine industry is effectively worth $39 billion this year, rising to an estimated $75 billion in 2016. As regular readers will know, Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) is China’s top search engine with just over 65 percent market share, which has been eroded in the past year by newcomer Qihoo. Google is struggling – unfairly hobbled by intermittent web blocks and throttling of its search engine and some other products – with a mere three percent share of the pie in China. Also look out for some interesting figures in the infographic about demographics, mobile search growth, and how China’s search engines make their money.
Chinese "black PR" firm controlled hundreds of verified Weibo users, raked in millions Mr. Tang, one of the bosses of the black PR firm, being questioned. As China’s war on rumors continues, it seems black PR firms — firms that spread rumors and false reports about competitors for clients — are getting busted left and right. The latest is a massive firm uncovered in Wuhan that reportedly controlled 312 verified Sina Weibo accounts, as well as hundreds of other verified accounts. The company’s total audience? A shocking 220 million followers.
Mesh networks can help Asia avoid censorship and recover from disasters A graphical representation of a mesh network connected to the regular internet through several nodes. Imagine accessing a new internet; an internet that is controlled and maintained by your neighbors instead of ISPs and the government. Does that sound appealing? That probably depends in large part on who you are and where you are, but the fact is, this isn’t just a fantasy. Old tech hands probably know all about wireless mesh networking, but I’ll admit I wasn’t too familiar with the concept before I read this recent article on Mother Jones. The basic idea is that any group of people in any geographic location can create their own network by linking together wireless routers and eschewing the physical cables that we use to connect to the “real” internet entirely.
Sign Of The Times? Investments in Asia Increase, Investments In Silicon Valley Decrease Two interesting articles just came out that shed light on the state of investment between Asia and Silicon Valley. According to BusinessWeek, “US startups raised less money from venture capitalists last quarter than in any quarter since the start of 2010.” The report also indicates that American VCs are turned off by social media investments, and are going more into fashion and home goods. In other words, e-commerce. In Asia, this space is also growing considerably. On the other hand, Asia seems to be picking up.
Inspired by Paypal, Sina Gets Into Online Banking Chinese internet giant Sina (NASDAQ:SINA) — perhaps most famous abroad now for its microblogging service Sina Weibo — is getting into banking. According to the Beijing News, Sina announced today that it has launched a new platform called WeiBank (微银行) that will allow users access to web-based banking services including investment management, bank transfers, remittances, credit card repayment, and expense management. Sina’s VP of payments Dai Geng says that the new banking platform will help Sina get a foothold in China’s finance sector. The company certainly hasn’t wasted any time with this announcement; it was just earlier this month that the government issued the company a license to operate in online and mobile payments. Of course, as yet the service has only been announced. It isn’t available yet so we don’t know exactly how the whole thing is going to work, and indeed we don’t know exactly when it’s coming.
China Unicom's WeChat Subscription Plan is Probably a Ripoff Yesterday, after continuing rumors that was about to happen, China Unicom finally announced its WeChat-specific subscription plan. The plan, as we reported yesterday, will give users unlimited access to WeChat without counting any of the app’s traffic towards their monthly data allotment (if they have a data plan at all). It’s a clever move on the part of the telecom, and one that I had previously suggested would make a lot of sense as China’s telecoms struggled to replace the revenue they’ve lost in SMS and calling fees as users switch to smartphone apps.
China Now Has 591 Million Internet Users, 460 Million Mobile Netizens In new stats from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), China now has 591 million internet users and 460 million mobile web users. Those new numbers for June 2013 show good growth from 420 million netizens in mid-2010: The mobile web number of 460 million has doubled since December 2009. Of course, a lot more people in China than that have phones, with over 1.1 billion phone subscriptions at the last count. It’s worth remembering that, as we’ve reported before, China has over 300 million 3G users, which will help push forward smartphone usage and shift even more web browsing and other activities to phones: