Shenzhen and Hong Kong are two major economic powerhouses just twenty miles apart. Thousands of cars and people cross their borders every day. But their close relationship belies inequalities that still exist between the city of Shenzhen and the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong.
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Last year, Huawei’s Device Business Group set an ambitious goal of shipping 60 million smartphones, but managed only 32 million, keeping it out of IDC’s top five smartphone vendors in 2012. That said, for Q4 that same year Huawei did finally break into top three, but it didn’t change the fact that it had been a tough period for Huawei’s smartphone division, especially for its CMO Shao Yang (pictured above with his 6.1-inch Ascend Mate). At the 2013 Huawei Global Analyst Summit in Shenzhen yesterday, the exec was kind enough to share his side of the story about the hurdles his team faced last year — the period when Huawei was transforming from an original design manufacturer (ODM) to serve others, to an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) in order to build devices according to its own specifications.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Financial institutions—and stock exchanges in particular—are usually designed to project an image of stability. Not so in Shenzhen, where OMA‘s new Stock Exchange is set to open in a few weeks. Unlike the staid Neoclassicism of Wall Street, Shenzhen is getting one of the most structurally daring buildings of the century: an 820-foot tower than anchors one of the largest architectural cantilevers ever built. More »
It looks like China Mobile is making good on its promise to carry out TD-LTE trials this year: the carrier is launching test programs in both Guangzhou and Shenzen, according to a report from the Chinese news site Guangming Online. As it happens, this isn’t technically the first time China Mobile has invited users to test its LTE network, but it is the first time people can access it via smartphones (as opposed to routers and MiFi devices).
Curiously, the trial will initially work only on the TD-LTE-capable Galaxy S III, which is strange because China Mobile just unveiled a handful of LTE handsets at MWC, and didn’t even mention the GSIII at its press conference. Once you’ve got that phone in hand, you’ll need to preload it with 4,699 yuan worth of credits and sign a two-year agreement, with 388 yuan to be deducted each month. Already signed up for 2G or 3G service with China Mobile? You can add 1,500 yuan to receive a 4G device, USIM card and 15 gigs of LTE data (free for the first three months).
Filed under: Wireless, Mobile, Samsung
Via: ZDNet
Source: Guangming Online
At today’s Qualcomm QRD Summit in Shenzhen, China Mobile sent its Deputy General Manager of Products Wang Hengjiang to share some hardware stats. In 2012, over 60 million TD-SCDMA devices were sold, with December alone pumping out over seven million units. To put that into perspective, there are now over 220 million 3G phone users in China (as of end of November), meaning the carrier still has plenty of catching up to do as it had a late start in the 3G game. That said, Wang also announced that China Mobile aims to sell twice as many TD-SCDMA devices this year, with smartphones expected to take up over 80 percent of that segment — hardly a challenge considering they already reached 94.4 percent in the last quarter. Wang added that out of the 120 million units to be sold this year, half of them will be customized by China Mobile — presumably so that it can choose its own bloatware, right?
As for TD-LTE, China Mobile expects its 4G technology to bloom in China some time between 2014 and 2015, as it continues to help the development of devices that natively support five modes (GSM, TD-SCDMA, UMTS, FD-LTE and TD-LTE) along with 10 to 12 bands. Obviously this is the very reason why China Mobile is getting cosy with Qualcomm, the company who has SoCs that support all these radios. Wang added that ahead of the full launch of TD-LTE, his company will be initiating user trials for TD-LTE data devices and phones throughout 2013 — the first half of the year for the former, and the second half for the latter. Well, we only have three words for China Mobile: hurry up already!
Gallery: China Mobile says over 60 million TD-SCDMA devices sold in 2012, aiming for twice as many this year
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless
Getting an iPhone in China has always been hard. For most of its life-cycle, the phone has been unavailable in the Mainland except through the grey market. Now that Apple is allowed to sell units in Shenzhen, however, it’s gotten amazingly strict on sales per-person.
The primary limit is on walk-in sales. Users cannot buy iPhones at the store and instead are limited to picking one up per-day, per-customer. You can also only buy ten iPhones per credit card and you can buy limited amounts using gift cards, a loophole the grey market discovered early on.
Apple’s Chinese website also controls the numbers of orders coming in at once, effectively reducing the possibility that hundreds of consumers walk in to pick up the iPhone after a massive flood of orders. Apple also forced buyers to have their phones activated on the spot by employees and there are a number of safeguards in place to prevent repeat offenders from shopping.
Not surprisingly, little of this really works. Pallets of Apple products still flood the grey market and, like most normal consumers, the Chinese buyers resent this intrusion, thereby giving more power to the markets. It’s an endless, clever circle that often involves older Chinese ladies standing outside of Apple stores in New York waiting for iPads Mini while smugglers shoot iPads across rivers into the Mainland with a crossbow.
Arguably, I doubt there’s much grey market demand for, say, the Lenovo Yoga so it may be worth the effort just to keep demand high.
Huawei’s boss must have been a Boy Scout, since he’s taken its “be prepared’ motto deeply to his heart. CEO Wan Biao has told Reuters that his company is working on its own mobile OS just in case its partners “won’t let us use their system[s] one day.” We don’t expect to ever see the software, but given the fractious nature of the business, it’s more likely to be a barbed hint at Google and Microsoft to keep sending flowers and chocolates to Shenzhen. That said, given that local rival ZTE is building phones with Firefox’s OS, we’d politely suggest that it rescues another beloved OS from the clutches of HP’s indifference.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile
Huawei’s building its own mobile operating system ‘just in case’ there’s trouble ahead originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Sep 2012 07:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Over the years we’ve come across a few signs that pointed to the possibility of touchscreen-enabled iMacs, but Steve Jobs had already dismissed this as a possibility for current Mac form factors. Quoting the man at the “Back to the Mac” keynote from two years ago: “It gives great demo, but after a while your arm feels like it’s going to fall off. Touch surfaces want to be horizontal.”
So perhaps our fantasy’s still stuck in the “research project” phase.
Luckily, the more adventurous touchscreen lovers can look to third-party solutions. For MacBooks you have Axiotron’s Modbook, except you lose the keyboard and you can’t perform the modification yourself. As for iMacs and Cinema Displays, we’ve been following Troll Touch for its resistive touchscreen replacement panels, but they aren’t exactly affordable and most of them have to be installed by the company. Even its user-installable SlipCover series starts from $899, anyway.
This leaves us with the Zorro Macsk, a cheekily named iMac accessory hailing from TMDtouch of Shenzhen, China. The 21.5-inch model is priced at just $199 on Amazon with no modifications required. Plus, it supports multitouch — a glaring omission from Troll Touch’s Mac lineup. So is this truly a bargain? Or is it just a case of “you get what you pay for?” Follow past the break to see how we got on with the Zorro Macsk.
Gallery: Zorro Macsk review
Continue reading Zorro Macsk review: instantly add touchscreen functionality to your 21.5-inch iMac
Filed under: Peripherals
Zorro Macsk review: instantly add touchscreen functionality to your 21.5-inch iMac originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Sep 2012 15:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Manufacturing behemoth Foxconn (Hon Hai) has announced a record net loss of $226 million on turnover of $2 billion for the first half of the year. Unsurprisingly, it attributed the loss to the European debt crisis, global economic slowdown and its customers “continuous struggle” for market share. While it made a big push to encourage new customers, capacity far outstripped demand. In order to stem the tide, it’s relocating some of its Shenzhen-based facilities to sites in Northern China — and it’s also in talks with carriers to become an ODM, building white-label smartphones in the same way that Huawei and ZTE do. While the loss isn’t a rosy picture, the company does have nearly $2 billion stashed in the bank, so it shouldn’t be worrying too much.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile
Foxconn announces $226 million half-year net loss, blames usual suspects originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Aug 2012 06:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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