"Shanzhaiji"—Chinese handsets produced by unauthorized or small-scale domestic manufacturers—now account for 25 percent of China's handset market. The export market to places such as Africa is even bigger than the domestic market...

Oak Pacific Interactive has raised US$430 million for a 35 percent stake in the company from Softbank, JOHO Capital and SBI. This investment effectively values Xiaonei, Oak Pacific’s “Chinese Facebook” site, at over US$1 billion (this Caijing article says 90 percent of Oak Pacific’s slides shown to investors were about Xiaonei)...

Below are pictures of the street signs for two Chinese economy hotels; the hotels are located within a block of each other in Hangzhou.



The one on the top is for Home Inns (Nasdaq: HMIN), China’s largest economy hotel chain...

Update: Oak Pacific has raised a total of US$430 million from Softbank, JOHO Capital and SBI Group for 35 percent of the company.

The original post:
Bloomberg reports that Softbank has acquired a 14 percent stake in Chinese Internet company Oak Pacific Interactive, confirming rumors of a new investment in the company that we first saw in January...

I attended a mini-conference in Hangzhou Monday held by local company Vobile to discuss media rights management in China and Vobile’s partnerships with NBC Universal (an investor in Vobile, along with AT&T and Disney affiliate Steamboat Ventures) and CCTV International (CCTV.com)...

Alibaba Group's new B2C platform "Taobao Mall" is ready for shopping now. Its URL is http://mall.taobao.com/

When we click the old B2C channel link on Taobao's front page, it still links us to the old B2C platform...

Motorola announced plans to spin-off its mobile phone business last week, which reminded me of a funny site about China's domestic cell phones: Shanzhaiji.cn ("shanzhaiji" refers to handsets produced by some illegal or small domestic enterprise).This article on the site illustrates the current state of the low-end handset market and why "Moto's" offerings, as well as other foreign brands, aren't meeting demand...

In March 2007, the Chinese government announced its Enterprise Income Tax Law. This law went into effect at the beginning of this year. Once a while, we still receive inquiries from our clients and friends on this topic so I thought I'd take a moment to explain the main points of the legislation...

Menlo Park and Shanghai-based venture capital company Granite Global Ventures (GGV), whose China investments include Alibaba, Hurray! and Tudou, has significantly increased its presence in China through a strategic partnership with Shanghai venture firm SIG...

In China Mobile's 2007 annual report, each of the company's data points were up or stable year-on-year, with only the growth rate of the company's wireless value added service (WVAS) revenue showing a distinct downward trend...

Because Tencent (0700.HK) breaks down its quarterly earnings between Internet value-added services, mobile and telecommunications value-added services, online advertising and "other", people do not usually think of the company as an online game company...

Last week Piper Jaffray managing director Safa Rashtchy highlighted the argument that Facebook's over 15,000 applications have been able to attract new users momentarily, but have little ability keep users entertained......[more]

I lend a mobile phone SIM card to a colleagues yesterday because her parents will come to visit her from US today and will need a Chinese SIM card to replace their US SIM card during the visit.

Since the SIM card I lend to her has not been in use for over a year, I told her the number should be suspended until you recharge the card to activate the number...

Is China only a piece of cake in the world console market?...[more]

Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) chairman and CEO Robin Li led keynote speeches at the Piper Jaffray & ChinaVenture Investment Conference on Tuesday. Starting off with a few statistics to show stable ARPU growth rates, Li changed into discussion of the company's latest products: telephone-based voice search and instant messenger service....[more]