All change please. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for staying with blognation China for the past three months. Unfortunately, due to the recent turn of events and other related matters, blognation China is no longer able to serve you here at the blognation website, as the site has been closed down.

I do understand, however, that the audience and the interest is still there; therefore, I am still able to serve the audience from my own personal blog, Raccolta Online. Be sure to follow me there (as well as my Twitterfeed) as I continue to explore the Chinese tech world.

I apologize for this inconvenience. It has been a pleasure serving you at blognation China, and I look forward to serving you more in future. Details regarding this recent move can be found on my blog (details are available in English, Chinese, German, French and Italian).

Thank you, and I hope to see you again.

Bigger doesn’t mean bigger. That defies your grocer’s logic; after all, a 500 ml bottle of orange juice is supposed to be a bit more expensive than its 330 ml variant, but we’re talking about things that are more expensive as they get smaller.

And that, of course, refers to nothing other than the Samsung W629 mobile phone, now available only through Shenzhen Unicom. At CNY 8,888, this phone is tiny, extremely elegant, tiny, chock-full of gifts, neat features, a sight to behold — and (I think I said this before) — tiny.

And also costly.

The new phone does both CDMA and GSM networks (you’ll want this phone if you go to the US or Korea; my recent visit to South Korea, which is CDMA-only, was nothing less than mobile bloody murder), and is — in fact — the smallest mobile phone to do both CDMA and GSM networks.

Despite the exorbitant price tag (raised to CNY 9,800 or CNY 13,800 if you buy a “combo set”, which includes neat extras like credits or a “super-cool” mobile number), this phone is already in heavy demand. I’ve seen local ladies with miniscule phones before, so it kind of shocked me when the Shenzhen Business Today report told everyone that of the buyers that nabbed the whole first load — 100 phones in all — the majority of these people were gents. (But then again, I’d grab the phone if I wanted to anyway!)

The average farmer in the field, though, is not going to be the ideal buyer. Nope, this phone is reserved for “the privileged”; extras like golf club membership, one-to-one services and other VIP services are part of the deal.

Expensive? Sure. Here’s the other deal, though: Shenzhen Unicom is thinking of cutting call rates. However, Shenzhen Unicom can get terse when asked: a Q of “so will we see lower prices?” yielded a terse A of “I think so”.

So here you have it — one of those super-expensive phones that’s also super-tiny. Now that you have it — don’t lose it, no matter what you do!

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, GSM, CDMA, Shenzhen Unicom

OK, here’s the More bit:

Read this post again. That’s right — read it again. You’ll want to.

Unfortunately, this post will enter into that undesired-yet-unavoidable list of endangered electronic species in the not-too-distant future. Blognation China was able to go strong for the best part of nearly 3 months, but the recent collapse of the blog network, as well as the horrifying turn of events, has lead to my decision. A decision which took time for me to digest, but is one I have to make.

With the mothership deeply in trouble, I have tried to save it, but the recent stepping down of even founder Sam Sethi has meant that blognation China has become that bit harder to maintain. Most troubling are developments that have occurred in the most recent 24 hours. It looks like that the quality and reliability of blognation China, in particular, could be seriously compromised given how things may turn out. I don’t want to go into this too deeply, but suffice it to say that I’m fully aware of how things are looking — and ladies and gentlemen, they do not look all that good.

I will not be leaving blognation for the moment (let me make that clear again: David Feng will not be leaving blognation China), but I will step aside and see if this ship has enough of what it needs to keep both itself afloat, and more importantly, the interests of the readership. This post, though, will be one of the last ones I’ll do for the time being — until things seem to twist and wiggle to the extent that an acceptable way out can be found.

It has not been that easy, and I do not wish to waste everyone’s time going into the excruciating details. If you want in on the 101, feel free to take a look at my take on my blog (if you do Chinese characters — traditional chars only! — click here instead. I know, not the most harmonious post for an age or two — and it leaves me only to say that I wish things didn’t turn out this way.

But more importantly, it leaves me to say how indebted I am to your constant support. I’ll still be kicking around, I will be doing what I’ve done so far, and I am hoping for better days for this great network.

Ladies and gentlemen, without your support, blognation China could not have hoped to be what it is now. We love the fact that you love the site, and that very David Feng principle — serving the readership with reliable and high-quality content — will continue, no matter where I’ll be.

Netease.com, known to the local population more as 163.com, has launched the official, upgraded beta of its in-house developed search engine known as Yodao. Yodao, by the way, is Chinese for “there is a way” (yes, there is indeed).

Yodao isn’t exactly visible on the Netease.com page, however. Although on its own domain, you’ll have to click Search (搜索) on the Netease page to get any mileage with Yodao.

With the new beta officially now reality, Yodao also has with itself “Yodao Read”, an online RSS reader. The service began as a test beta in late 2006, and in the course of a year, has added services including web site and blog searches, image searches, a desktop dictionary and a downloadable browser toolbar.

The interface resembles, to some extents, the simple UI that has adorned Baidu. There is, though, a somewhat hard-to-use (at least on my Mac running Safari 3) “flippy triangle” (to quote David Pogue in his Mac books). I thought that held your search history. I must have been wrong…

Oddly enough, Yodao has a cache function too. In fact, I was able to get to the Chinese Wikipedia entry about Singapore without suffering that feared connection reset! Of course, you’re safe from “sensitive contents”; type in, for example, the name of that great big square in the dead center of Beijing (in Chinese), and you get the result of the Tian’anmen Regional Management Committee as the first entry.

Well… I have to say, I liked the building better in snow. (We got snow about 3 days ago, by the way.)

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, Internet in China, Yodao

Google’s video search is now available for China, too; the main page shows a rather teensy-weensy search field, along with links to the Top 100, humor, MV, sports and anime.

Below that, you get to see selected clips — just click on them to play. Meanwhile, to the right, you get to see the top ten clips.

But ladies and gentlemen — do please remember that this is still very much Google China. As a result, there’s quite a bit of stuff that’s out of bounds if you try so in the search field. We’re not talking about the sensitive stuff; even a search in stuff as mundane as the 7 o’clock news yields a warning: In accordance with local regulations, some results were not shown in the listing. Meanwhile, there are no YouTube videos — at all.

I clicked on one of those news program links, which took me to 56.com, a local video site. Instead of being treated to what I was supposed to be treated (the all-too-famous “news show at 7 PM”), I was told that I couldn’t see the content; any attempt to check out the content resulted in flat-out failure. No what, no how.

Still, not the end of the world — glad to see a link in the “Hot” section on the Google China Video page for a Tom and Jerry clip. They’ve now dumped Mozart and “plain-vanilla subway station shots” on the Beijing Subway Line 5 station and train TVs and are showing off Tom and Jerry on the big screens, so I’m rather pleased they haven’t censored the comic duo.

Yet.

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, Internet in China, Google China

The Beijing Times reports that China Mobile may be getting very magnanimous indeed, with China’s biggest mobile telco offering a BlackBerry for free — provided that you sign up for a two-year contract.

Phones for free and gratis are rare in the People’s Republic: the vast majority buy their phones separate from their mobile subscriptions, which is why a mobile phone can get a bit on the expensive side. Nevertheless, this marks a brave new move in the Chinese mobile world.

So far, the BlackBerry 8700g is the candidate (is it just me, or does the “g” actually stand for “gratis”?). Tests are underway; if all’s well, the phone should be ready by the first month of the Olympic Year — 2008.

So how cheap is the phone? If you’re up for two years with China Mobile, it’s for the low price of zero (your subscription fees, though, may vary). If two years seems like mobile imprisonment to you, you can claim your BlackBerry for a price estimated as low as CNY 3,000 (USD 406.86, GBP 198.90, EUR 277.22) — CNY 2,000 (USD 271.24, GBP 132.60, EUR 184.81) less than the previous estimate price.

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, BlackBerry in China

Where there is growth, there must be reverse growth: in statistics released by the head of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry, Wang Xuedong, a more wired-up China is seen in terms of the number of villages getting online. By October 2007, 97% of all towns and villages on the Chinese mainland were ready for that great big Internet out there, and 92% of all towns and villages were online with broadband Internet. 99.13% of all villages were serviced by telephone services.

In the latest five-year projections, complete coverage of telephone services for all villages and total Internet access for all townships are planned. In particular, special focus is aimed at remote villages, as well as getting more and more farmers online.

That’s growth (getting more folks online); here’s the reverse growth, where the authorities are shutting down more and more sites. The statistics show a very well-organized “strike hard” campaign with the police. 14,000 websites, 490,000 postings and 16.247 porno sites outside Chinese frontiers were all shut down. Of those sites, the 14,000 shut down were sites that did not register with the Ministry (which since about two years ago became required by law).

The “strike-hard” campaign continues even closer to home, as neighboring Hebei province shut down 50 sites that went against copyright law and dealt with 73 cases of copyright infringement in November 2007. Slowly but surely, it seems like the Chinese Internet is getting “cleaner and cleaner”, although that may carry a wide variety of different connotations.

Once again, though, the “strike-hard” campaigns did not remove “suggesting content” involving ladies and parts of their bodies as tiny adverts on major Chinese sites, did not remove “sensitive” text ads about what a man and a woman did on their first night, and did not remove pictures of horror stories on Chinese-language tech sites. “Cleaner and cleaner?” You call the shots…!

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, Internet in China, strike-hard campaign

For most of us, the iPhone’s trek is incredibly well-known: Ive and Co design it, His Jobsness promotes it, and it gets made in the People’s Republic of China. The phone is sent straight back to the US, where it awaits — on must-obey orders from everyone’s favorite fruit company. China makes the iPhone, but doesn’t get it. Right?

Wrong.

A highly investigative report from the Southern Daily in southern China reveals a secret “Chinese express” for the iPhone’s 1.3 billion potential fans. Streetloads (quite essentially) of shuihuo, or “illegit goods” versions of the iPhone — the phone being exactly the same as the one the US and Europe gets — are all the rage. Shops line the street, ready to sell the iPhone to those who want Apple’s latest-and-greatest gadget.

Since the first unlocked iPhone was sold in March 2007, some shops were able to pull off sales of up to 150 iPhones; at least a sale was guaranteed virtually every day. At the start, prices of the iPhone were no less than astronomical: CNY 12,000 (USD 1,625.80, GBP 794.09, EUR 1,105.53). (The average Chinese in the city earns around CNY 5,000 on a good salary — that’s USD 677.42, GBP 330.88, EUR 460.64).

Prices have since dropped down to as low as CNY 4,300 (USD 582.58, GBP 284.56, EUR 396.15); however, they’re back up to CNY 5,500 (USD 745.16, GBP 363.97, EUR 506.69). What’s even more amazing than the ever-changing price is the interest: no matter how expensive Apple’s phone may be, there will always be someone interested in the gadget.

Step into a shop, and you’d actually — be disappointed: the iPhone is often hidden from view. Tell the shopkeeper you’re interested in Apple’s revolutionary device, however, and a quick phone call later, an iPhone appears in front of your very eyes — fresh from the storehouse.

How profitable do these cracked (and somewhat illegit) iPhones become? At CNY 3,000 (USD 406.45, GBP 198.53, EUR 276.37) a pop in profit, the iPhones are still somewhat profitable — although getting less so as the prices tumble down.

So where do they get those iPhones? These phones actually make the cross-pond (as in cross-ocean) trip twice; they’re not from the PRC itself (as in it’s not a case of grabbing it straight from the factory). Instead, the phone is sent from the US, decoded, and offered for sale to mainland customers.

And how useful are these iPhones? Remarkably, apart from not being able to do WAP or access the Web using a CDMA card, there are very few limitations. Even wifi is active (mainland-made phones designed for domestic consumption must by law have wifi off). Thanks to third-party utilities, Chinese input is possible, and even iPhone-optimized IM systems, stock trading tools and games are all the rage.

This decoding rage, in fact, has given birth to a Chinese “iPhone Research Center”. All the iPhones you see in other Asian countries have — indeed — been unlocked at this very “Research Center”.

Legit or illegit? One thing is for sure: it’s not illegal. But don’t expect help from the guys at 1 Infinite Loop if your iPhone goes kaputt. You did, after all, not play by the rules 100%…

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, iPhone in China, shuihuo

No, we can’t exactly call this one “wishful thinking”, but we’d like to get close by calling this “wish-full thinking”. Sohu IT has it that Wang Jianzhou, the CEO of China Mobile, is calling for the release — as fast as possible — of mobile phone TV standards — hopefully before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

But — here’s the other bit of the news — Wang stated that the attitude of China Mobile is to push for the promotion of mobile TV. Looking for content on mobile TV? Sorry; China Mobile isn’t in the biz to do the actual content.

It goes without saying that without content, a new media platform is as good as — dormant (or dead if you prefer the more blunt term). And while we’re sure that there’ll be quite a good load of quality content, to push for the standardization and promotion of mobile TV — and then to walk away from the content — makes me feel like this is “wish-full thinking” without much action.

They are, after all, looking for action on the (rather small) silver screen!

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, mobile TV, mobile television

Taiwan’s already one well wired-up island, and if the Taiwanese WiMAX market is any sign, it’s on the way up. The island’s United Daily News has it that they’re working with manufacturers around the World and building more and more wireless cities, like their mainland counterparts and Hong Kong. Those wireless cities aren’t slow, by the way; speeds are expected to be at least 2 Mbps.

Looking skyward, limits for WiMAX appear bigger and better. We’re talking about ranges of up 50 km and speeds up to 75 Mbps. Now that’s fast — and fast, wireless Internet has gobbled down many a Taiwanese budget, with the 2006 Taiwanese telco values at TWD 700 billion (USD 21,634,986,862.76, GBP 10,570,369,689.86, EUR 14,730,230,075.90; nobody said this was a small figure!). These include, of course, wireless networks, modems and other connectivity options, putting Taiwan way in front on the World stage.

Even the authorities on the island are getting in on the act: the island’s cabinet, the Legislative Yuan, have teamed up with a number of government organizations and research institutes to create the Taiwan WiMAX Development Blueprint Working Group. The group’s goal: develop WiMAX on the island in three stages, meeting three goals. In the end, they’ll be witness to a more wireless Taiwan.

The big telcos, including Chunghwa Telecom, are all in the act, including the handing out of WiMAX licenses. Six licenses were issued in July 2007; two more are slated for June 2009.

Blognation China take: Wireless has taken off not just in Taiwan, but also on the mainland, where even Beijing’s thinking of going wireless. (Do note, however, that Beijing — in terms of 3G — has their own standard, TD-SCDMA — and that WiMAX’s recent entry has caused quite a bit of concern for China.) And while I’ve not heard much from mainland authorities (or the Beijing city government) about building up a wifi China (or even wifi Beijing), the feeling in Beijing is more along the lines of “less officialspeak, more action”. And sometimes, that’s better than masses of officialspeak. Let’s face it: there’s nothing better or more productive than opening up your laptop in the average Beijing traffic jam — and getting online!

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, Taiwan, mobile Internet, WiMAX, wireless Internet

India and China: these two have long been considered two big software nations and software outsourcing companies are thinking about the two big time. However, according to a recent White Paper by Paul M. Denlinger, an increasing number of Indian software outsourcing companies are looking to the Middle Kingdom — the PRC — to do their software outsourcing.

Problems the White Paper believes that Indian software companies are facing include a decreasing talent pool, rising costs, and infrastructure problems, including insufficient infrastructure and not enough time to train and build the infrastructure.

The White Paper then outlines China’s strengths and how it is becoming the answer to India’s problems. It quotes the fact that China has the only talent pool large enough to compare to that of India (and it cites a still-largely-untapped local talent pool outside the capital and provincial capitals). Also, ten “software-friendly” cities, solid training and educational basic skills, and better English and communications skills are cited as other reasons behind the PRC’s strength.

Yours truly questions some of these strengths: not all second-tier cities are close to a major hub, and universities still feed relatively “dead info”, giving people limited time and opportunities to apply what they’ve learnt. However, that’s just the views from one guy; you’re more than free to browse through and throw in your own twopence.

The paper is available on the China Vortex blog, but you’ll need to register for free to become a subscriber of the blog. It could be an interesting read.

Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, India, Software, Outsourcing