China Biz-Tech Weekly is back! Last week’s highlight is definitely the piece by Connie Chan from Andreessen Horowitz. In her latest article, she provides detailed observations on the live-streaming industry in China. Other topics included in this issue:
- Apple investing in China
- Didi investing in the bike-sharing startup
- Tencent “upgrading” its flagship product — WeChat
- Manufacturing in China [podcast]
- … and more
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1) Apple to open first China (hardware) research center in Beijing (@wsj)
“Apple said last month that the research center will focus on developing new products and services and 'strengthening relationships with local partners and universities.'
Most of Apple’s iPhones are manufactured in China. But Chinese leaders are seeking to upgrade the economy from low-level manufacturing and have been pushing development of advanced research and internet technologies.”
2) Didi Chuxing plans to attract new talent and increase its information security by opening new research lab in Silicon Valley (@techcrunch)
“Didi Chuxing, China’s largest ride-hailing company, has hired two distinguished security experts to lead a new U.S.-based research center as part of a major push to increase its data security efforts.”
3) As the growth of new online users is slowing down, Tencent is trying very hard to engage (monetize) those existing ones and secure its dominance of the mobile-internet industry in China (@wsj)
“The new feature, which WeChat said on Sept. 22 it had started testing, provides development tools for businesses to build sub-apps within WeChat that can make all those services even simpler to use while staying within WeChat. In effect, it could turn WeChat’s app into a sort of operating system within an operating system, a one-stop app that users would rarely have to leave to use other mobile apps.”
4) Latest fundraising rounds indicate the popularity of bike-sharing (business) in China (@bloomberg)
“The fundraisings are unusually large for companies at their stage of development, and underscore growing interest in a ride-sharing arena beyond the automobile market dominated by Didi. OFo’s valuation comes just two years ago after its inception on the grounds of Beijing’s prestigious Peking University as a student project.”
5) Live-streaming in China: Monetization taken to a whole new level (@a16z)
“When a viewer buys a digital gift for a broadcaster, the revenue is split between the app store, the broadcaster, and the live-streaming platform. Gifts can range anywhere between a few cents to several hundred U.S. dollars. The top broadcasters in China make tens of thousands of dollars a month — it’s not uncommon to hear stories where someone has quit his or her full time job to pursue broadcasting because it pays so much more.”
6) Baidu believes that “automobile is the next major computing platform” (@fortune)
“Baidu, the Chinese search engine, today repeated the company’s goal of producing a driverless vehicle by 2018, and putting one into mass production by 2020, dates that rank among the most ambitious of dozens of global players.”
7) Xiaomi is going offline. Will it help? (@techinasia)
“As Xiaomi matures as a company, and as the Xiaomi branding has grown to become a household name in China, we recognized a fantastic opportunity to start expanding our Mi Home outlets. We are therefore converting these Mi Home outlets into retail stores, and we will be opening even more Mi Home stores — aiming for 60 by the end of this year.”
8) Another great example that in China it's about creating ecosystems, not individual apps (@technode)
“The acquisition of third-party payment license will help us to provide faster and safer services to user and merchants. We aim to build a comprehensive platform that opens to banks, card operators and other payment institutions in a bid to construct an O2O ecosystem for facilitating mutual development.”
9) PODCAST: China Startup Pulse podcast episode with Jacob Rothman (Platform88) about manufacturing in China (@ChinaStartupPulse)
“From his young dreams of becoming a Rabbi, to experiencing a previous exit, to owning his own factory in China that directly supplies companies like Walmart and Canadian Tire, Jacob discusses the manufacturing obstacles that start-ups often face, the evolution of manufacturing, and how factories are more willing to accept MOQs (Minimal Order Quantities) and manufacture on demand, with good quality, rather than mass produce at low quality.”
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