Advances based or executed in China
The month of May saw a month-long crackdown on Internet porn in China. The combined forces of 10 ministries lead the closing of 300 domestic porn and ‘salacious’ sites being closed down.
Li Baozhong, head of the official press watchdog and deputy director of the national anti-porn and anti-piracy office also reported that they’d blocked 4,000 links to porn sites and filtered out more than 10,000 ‘online porn games’ – we’ve no idea what these porn games could be.
The DSL Forum today announced that the total number of DSL connections worldwide has exceeded 200 million at the World Broadband Forum in Beijing.
It’s estimated that this significant milestone was passed in April this year (2007), less than a year since the announcement of the passing of the 150m level.
Continue reading 200m DSL Customers Worldwide: China Broadband Numbers Huge
In 2004 the networking giant Cisco sued a little-known Chinese company called Huawei for IP (Intellectual Property) theft. Some two months later the case was dropped and settled out of court. Huawei promised to modify their designs, change their software and manuals. Rumours circulating at the time alleged that the Chinese government got involved and told Cisco that if they wanted to operate in China, they should leave Huawei alone.
Huawei was started by People’s Liberation Army officer Ren Zhengfei in 1988, specialising in the research and development of communications systems.
In the west the initial push has been towards core networking equipment for carriers and ISPs (markets which have historically been dominated by Cisco). In this market, Cisco’s normal approach was to offer a base product, then charge extra for additional software feature sets. Huawei’s approach is …. more generous, they include the all of the ‘extras’, while pricing the system around 60% of what Cisco charges for the base platform alone.
Support – throwing people at it
Low, all-inclusive pricing isn’t Huawei’s only winning approach.
If a large customer of Cisco reports a problem, it goes into their tracking system and the customer might be lucky if it’s looked at in a few days. If it’s identified as a bug, it might take a few weeks to isolate and fix.
In China engineering talent is relatively cheap and their universities produce very high class students (and lots of them). This brings Huawei another advantage – huge manpower. When bugs are passed to Huawei, they go to their pool of, something like, 20,000 engineers, leading to the faults being tracked and fixed extremely quickly.
The Big Boys are buying Huawei too
Slowly Huawei started to make big inroads into the high-end markets. BT has even selected them as part of their 21st Century Network, (21CN). It’s rumoured in the market, that this will lead to the demise of Marconi (who failed to be selected, even though they’d been a partner of BT for decades).
Cisco – that’s just the start
If you’re in any form of communication business, don’t kick back and think, “Well Cisco needs a competitor. We should be OK.” Huawei’s plans extend far beyond merely eating Cisco’s lunch.
If you get a chance to wander into Huawei’s showroom in China, you may be lucky enough to get taken into a hangar the size of a football field. In one small area there’s the ISP/Telcocore kit, we’ve mentioneed. The rest of the space is filled with other technologies such as IN (Intelligent Network – the brains behind telco voice networks), GSM, GPRS, Edge, 3G, NGN (Next Generation Networks i.e. IP-based voice and data networks like BT’s 21CN), xDSL (both end-user and network), optical (driving fibres), routers and LAN switches and of course consumer devices for it all.
Huawei are currently supplying all sorts of companies. Ever wondered who makes the new USB 3G datacard for Vodafone (the USB one that works on Windows, Mac and Linux)? Huawei.
Initially Huawei picked a ‘small’ market to concentrate on, but now they’re ready to attack the bigger ones. They have the equipment, and the resources to make a huge dent into the existing players markets of all sorts. It won’t just be Cisco suffering.
We have to say that if we strutted down the local boozer with an MP3 player strapped on around our neck, we’d most likely be called a lot of things – some of which might just rhyme with ‘Anchor’ – but, hey! – what do we know about yoof product design?!
Someone who does know a bit about design is Korean MP3 specialists iRiver, and judging by the way they’re bigging up their new N12 player on their Website, MP3 necklaces are, like, way down with the kids.
The form factor may not rock our world, but there’s no denying the diminutive players look very attractive in their shiny red or black finish, even if the headphone attachments look well odd – imagine trying to unravel that lot after five pints of Old Arkensall’s Badgerbait.
Dominating the iRiver is a large, 4 Line, 16 tone greyscale OLED screen, which displays EQ settings, track listings and folder views, and also doubles up as a clock/alarm clock.
The spec list looks pretty reasonable too, with the N12 offering 1GB of flash storage, USB 2.0 connectivity and the player supporting MP3 (MPEG 1/2/2.5 Layer 3), WMA, OGG Vorbis (Q1~10), ASF formats.
There’s also an FM radio onboard – pretty crucial, that – with iRiver quoting a MP3 playback battery life of around 13 hours per charge (128kbps, MP3, volume level 20, EQ Normal, LCD Off).
Weighing just 22 grams and measuring 49.8(D) x 27.2(W) x 13.3(H) mm, the N12 is small and light enough to wear all day.There’s no news of a UK release or pricing yet, but over there in Europeland, it’s to retail for around €170.
Details of a snazzy new range of Sony flash memory MP3 player/FM radios with a colour display have appeared on Sony’s Chinese site.
As our Chinese translation skills are up there with our ability to understand advanced quantum physics explained in Latin, we may not be 100% accurate here, but it appears that Sony China is introducing a new range of flash memory multimedia players, under the name of the CE-P series.
Sporting attractively bijou dimensions of 75.5mm x 45.5mm, the CE-P is smaller than a credit card (but not as thin, natch) and is designed for carrying around your neck, gangsta-stylee.
The first model to be designed by the Sony China Creative Centre in Shanghai, the front of the display is dominated by a 1.5″ 260K color OLED display.
Sony’s designers have turned up the feature set to eleven, with the unit ramming in MP3/WMA playback, a built-in 87.5-108MHz FM tuner and FM radio recording, voice recording, BMP/JPEG picture display and USB 2.0 for file transfer.
The CE-P series will come in three flavours, offering storage capacity from 256MB to a 1GB.
We’ve no idea about availability in Europe and America, but pricing should be somewhere in the region of $150 (E124, £86) for the 1GB model, $125 (E103, £72)for the 512MB and $100 for the bottom-of-the-range 256MB unit.
It was with great disappointment and a heavy heart that we heard that Google had compromised their search results in China, excluding results the Chinese government didn’t find acceptable. In effect becoming the government’s censor.
Why would a company whose strap-line was Don’t be Evil do this? The draw of the potential of huge amounts of income in the future has to figure large. The business logic being, if you’re not in China (they’ve been blocked by the Chinese for years), your global future looks less assured.
We suspect that the public reaction around the world, won’t be quite as accepting, as was signaled in the Radio 4’s business interview this morning with Google‘s Senior Policy Counsel, Andrew McLaughlin.
McLaughlin’s attempt to draw parallels between the censorships that they’re required to carry out in Germany for terms around the Nazi’s and their actions in China were slapped down by Greg Wood, the interviewer.
“The situation is different in those countries, because the users of your Web services in countries like Germany, also have some influence in drafting the laws that ban access to Nazi-realted sites, and that’s not the case in China – is It?
McLaughlin’s tell us that they’ve taken a year to develop the idea. We suspect a good deal of that time has been spent trying to figure out how to sell this terrible compromise to their current customers/believers.
We feel this single action has marked the start of the end of the Google-fanatics relationship with the company.
It’s not that we think that people will stop searching on Google, it’s just that they won’t trust Google implicitly any more
Importantly, we feel that if another company came along offering a similar service – which isn’t beyond the bounds of possibility – current Google users will feel a lot less concerned about making the switch.
It’s not like people haven’t change search engines before – remember when nothing but AltaVista existed for search?
It appears that Google now feel that they are so vital to the world that they can act against the wishes of the vast majority of their users. We can’t help but to draw strong parallels to many Western governments of late.
We hate to burst your bubble Google, but the reality is that the World could live with a similar service, and not notice the loss of Google.
Those who don’t like what Google has done, and really want to change their mind have an easy means at their disposal – take away their income.
Where Google would really start to suffer is by Web sites removing their Google TextAds from their sites – and bloggers seem like an ideal start for this.
After all, from their China/censorship actions, it’s clear that Google’s really driven by income. Added to this, we also know that Google isn’t primarily a search engine company, it’s an advertising company. Removing their adverts means to removing their income.
The big news late yesterday was that Google announced a second round share offer – on the first anniversary of their IPO.
In their now-to-be-expected kooky way, their planning to sell 14,159,265 shares, which of course is derived from the value of pi.
At the current valuation for their stock, this would bring in another $4Bn, on top of the approximately $3Bn they have sitting in the bank currently.
Why do they need that money? Is the question on many lips. There’s been many project been floating around with Google’s name attached, among them, becoming a WiFi provider.
S&P analyst Scott Kessler view is that with Microsoft ($37.8 billion in cash) and Yahoo ($3.4 billion) having a ton of cash in the bank, Google needs the money to be able to compete in the global Internet market, in an “arms race” as he puts it.
Acquisitions would appear to be an obvious use of the money. To date Google hasn’t had to spent that much when it’s brought companies in to its fold, as it’s bought them at early stages, but perhaps their future targets are larger now.
Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley clearly feels the same, “this cash balance could allow the company increased flexibility to consider large strategic acquisitions.”
Of the names that we’ve heard being knocked around as possible targets for a Google purchase including Tivo and Infospace and a number of Chinese companies.
Interesting extracts from the S-3 filing reveal some areas that they think are threats.
We face significant competition from Microsoft and Yahoo.
We face formidable competition in every aspect of our business, and particularly from other companies that seek to connect people with information on the web and provide them with relevant advertising. Currently, we consider our primary competitors to be Microsoft Corporation and Yahoo! Inc. Microsoft recently introduced a new search engine and has announced plans to develop features that make web search a more integrated part of its Windows operating system or other desktop software products. We expect that Microsoft will increasingly use its financial and engineering resources to compete with us. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have more employees than we do (in Microsoft’s case, currently nearly 14 times as many). Microsoft also has significantly more cash resources than we do. Both of these companies also have longer operating histories and more established relationships with customers and end users. They can use their experience and resources against us in a variety of competitive ways, including by making acquisitions, investing more aggressively in research and development and competing more aggressively for advertisers and web sites. Microsoft and Yahoo also may have a greater ability to attract and retain users than we do because they operate Internet portals with a broad range of content products and services. If Microsoft or Yahoo are successful in providing similar or better web search results compared to ours or leverage their platforms to make their web search services easier to access than ours, we could experience a significant decline in user traffic. Any such decline in traffic could negatively affect our revenues.
Other headline include
We expect our revenue growth rate to decline and anticipate downward pressure on our operating margin in the future.
We rely on our Google Network members for a significant portion of our revenues, and we benefit from our association with them. The loss of these members could adversely affect our business.
New technologies could block our ads, which would harm our business.
China has opened its first officially licensed clinic for Internet addiction as State media reports growing cases of obsessed Internet gamers whose addiction has caused them to quit school, commit suicide or even murder fellow gamers.
Dr. Tao Ran, the clinic’s director reports that his patients suffer from a series of maladies including depression, nervousness, fear, panic, agitation and an unwillingness to interact with others (to be honest, that sounds like a lot of normal teenagers we know).
Their Internet addiction also manifests itself in sleep disorders, the shakes and numbness in their hands from a surfeit of fragging, clicking and scrolling.
The government-owned clinic opened for business in March this year, and is situated within the Beijing Military Region Central Hospital, with the patients – mainly aged between 14 to 24 – looked after by a team of a dozen nurses and 11 doctors.
Most report losing sleep, weight and friends after spending countless grimly hours glued to their PCs, with one 12-year-old reported to have spent four days in an Internet cafe, barely eating or sleeping.
The Web addicts claim that their online obsession helped them to escape everyday stress, with many older kids becoming fixated by online chats with the opposite sex.
Tao estimates that up to 2.5 million Chinese suffer from Internet addiction, although Kuang Wenbo, a professor of mass media at Beijing’s Renmin University, thinks the problem is being overstated:
“As the number of the Netizens grows, the number of the addicted people will grow as well, but we should not worry about the issue too much. The young men at the age of growing up have their own problems. Even if there was no Internet they will get addicted to other things.”
Patients diagnosed as Internet-addicted by Tao’s diagnostic test are presented with a combination of therapy sessions, medication, acupuncture and sports exercise, with the courses lasting around 10 to 15 days.
Treatment is not cheap, with the daily US$48 (~£27 ~€40) charge working out at more than double the average city dweller’s weekly income in China.
Some of Tao’s treatment sounds a bit medieval with one session involving a machine that stimulates nerve impulses by delivering 30-volt charges to pressure points.
Another treatment is reported to involve a clear fluid delivered via an intravenous drip to “adjust the unbalanced status of brain secretions.” Eek!
Although Tao claims that the long-term effects of treatment are generally successful, not all patients are available to resist the temptation to log on.
A coalition of government policy makers, technology and broadband companies from China have rocked up to the NAB2005 Media Show in Las Vegas.
They’re in town to invite opportunity-seeking US companies to supply programming and interactive content to the Chinese coalition-backed IDV Global Media On-Demand platform, expected to launch in China early next year.
Developed by California-based IDV, the platform was a top-secret project until premiered at the China Media-on-Demand Coalition press conference last week in Beijing, and reflects China’s eagerness to create new technologies for the Internet and telecom.
IDV-Global Media – headed by ex-Microsoft’s Xbox game console designer, Kevin Bachus – expects the new technology to allow Chinese media companies to securely distribute programs worldwide, direct from publisher to consumer.
Bachus rose to media attention when he left Microsoft to start a rival games console business, Infinium Labs. Their product, the Phantom Game Service, downloaded game content directly over an Internet connection. Digital-Lifestyles has been covering the Phantom since the start of 2004, from its first demo, through the announcement of its launch, to them receiving a $50 million credit investment.
Some of the press had speculate that Bachus had left Infinium. At the start of this week he issued a statement denying that he had left Infinium for IDV Global Media.
Duncan Clark, managing director of the Beijing-based consulting firm BDA China Ltd., warned that IDV-Global Media will need support from a range of participants, including telecoms, media and electronics companies (and the government agencies that regulate them) for the project to work.
“What this initiative claims to attain, aligning the interests of many different players in the value chain, is something that has eluded many a media mogul outside China,” Clark sagely added.
IDV GMOD’s platform is an end-to-end solution that includes a second generation PC with a 3D “platform-on-platform” architecture developed by IDV – the first system to receive certification from China as the standard for second generation PCs.
Content will be delivered to consumers by digital feeds from global sources, including a next generation Internet, based on the IPv6 technology, with revenue sharing arrangements for partners.
This system will supply sports events, movies, TV shows, next gen games and other interactive entertainment direct to private residences or hotel rooms worldwide, with the same interface, in High Definition (HD) quality video.
The wonderfully named Dr Fan Yeqiang, deputy director of the China Institute of Policy Studies (CIPS), said in a statement, “Now US media publishers and distributors have a direct platform on which to earn millions of dollars in incremental revenues from their content in the China market. We are offering a safe, certified delivery system never available to US media companies before.”
In a shocking example of virtual life crashing into real life, a Shanghai online game player stabbed his gaming pal in the chest multiple times after he learned that he had stolen approximately US$870 (£462/€671) from the sale of a powerful “dragon sabre”, jointly owned by both players.
The “dragon sabre” sword didn’t actually exist in real life – it was an artifact used in the popular online fantasy game, “Legend of Mir 3”, featuring heroes and villains, sorcerers and warriors, many of whom wield enormous swords.
Qiu Chengwei, 41, stabbed competitor Zhu Caoyuan repeatedly in the chest after learning that he had sold his “dragon sabre.”
Chengwei and a friend jointly won their weapon last February, and lent it to Zhu who then sold it for 7,200 yuan (£464/US$872/€673), according to the China Daily.
Qui went to the police to report the “theft” but we can only assume the desk sergeant couldn’t get his head around the notion of something that doesn’t exist being stolen. If you get our drift.
Still fuming, Chengwei popped around to have a word with Caoyuan who didn’t convince with his promises to pay him for the sword.
Eventually, Chengwei lost patience and let rip with a real-life knife that was most definitely sharp and very pointy, killing Caoyuan with stab wounds to the chest.
Chengwei gave himself up to police and has already pleaded guilty to intentional injury.
No verdict has yet been announced.
This tragic incident highlights the problems online gamers are having protecting their online property, with some experts suggesting that cyber armour and swords in games should be deemed as private property as they cost players both money and time.
But some legal experts aren’t impressed: “The ‘assets’ of one player could mean nothing to others as they are by nature just data created by game providers,” a lawyer for a Shanghai-based Internet game company was quoted as saying.
However, online game companies in Shanghai – the city with the most players – are planning to set up a dispute system where aggrieved players can find recourse.
Shang Jiangang, a lawyer with the newly established Shanghai Online Game Association, commented that “the association has drafted some measures to facilitate the settlement of disputes over virtual assets”, adding, “once any cyberweapon stealing occurs, players can report to the operator, which will then sort it out according to the circumstances.”