Adam Guli, a 35-year-old social media entrepreneur who commutes across Beijing on a Vespa scooter, is giving Nokia Oyj a ride in its race against Android handsets and Apple Inc’s iPhone in China.
With a directory of 1 million restaurants, clubs and other consumer businesses in the country, Guli’s Let’s Powwow is among content providers Nokia is counting on to attract users in the world’s biggest wireless market. Espoo, Finland-based Nokia is paying the two-year-old startup to create a Windows Phone application that Guli says is on a recommended software list as Nokia’s Lumia handset made its debut in China.
“We have, I’m quite sure, the largest force of people who work with developers here in China over any of the other ecosystems,” Nokia chief executive officer Stephen Elop said on Wednesday in Beijing, where he unveiled versions of Lumia based on Microsoft Corp’s software. “We have been focused on making sure the locally relevant applications get a lot of attention.”
As many as 140 million smartphones will be sold in China this year, an increase of more than 80 percent, pushing the country past the US as the world’s largest market for the devices, according to researcher Gartner Inc. Local directory services integrated with maps are among applications that may give Lumia phones an edge and justify a higher price, particularly in sprawling cities such as Beijing.
“In China, the game is far from over,” said Derek Ling, who runs Tianji, China’s biggest professional networking site, with 9 million users. “The iPhone is not nearly as dominant in China as it is in the US.”
Apple has been “having difficulty negotiating the right terms with the biggest provider in China, which is China Mobile, so everything is up for grabs.”
Nokia yesterday showed versions of Lumia 800 and Lumia 610 to run on China Telecom Corp’s network. It is also working on phones for networks operated by China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd and China Mobile Ltd.
Nokia and Microsoft said this week they will offer grants for Windows Phone app startups through Finland’s Aalto University.
“We’re doing the same type of thing here in China,” Elop said.
Under the agreement with Let’s Powwow, data about restaurants and clubs will be pushed to Nokia’s map database for use in other apps, Guli said after an evening ride in Beijing, where his company is based.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”