china

Acer has inked a deal with China's largest e-commerce company, Alibaba, to use its mobile operating system in an upcoming smartphone.

Dubbed the CloudMobile A800, Acer's new smartphone will run Alibaba's Aliyun operating system. The cloud mention fits with Aliyun's deep Web integration, offering everything from Internet-based e-mail, Web search, weather updates, and GPS navigation tools. In addition, Aliyun synchronizes and stores call data, text messages, and photos in the cloud for access across other devices, including PCs.

Alibaba made some waves in the mobile space earlier this week after its chief strategy officer, Zeng Ming, … Read more

Chinese telecom giant Huawei has pledged to invest $2 billion (£1.3 billion) in the U.K. economy, in an apparent bid for goodwill as the U.S. Congress opens a probe of the company's relationship with the Chinese government. (See the embedded press release below.)

Huawei will plow $1 billion (£650m) into its U.K. research and development efforts. It said  that will generate more than 700 jobs in the country, and pledged to spend a further $1 billion on U.K. procurement over the next five years.

The telecom giant, which already employs 800 … Read more

Alibaba, China's top e-commerce company, has Android firmly in its sights.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal in an interview published yesterday, Alibaba Chief Strategy Officer Zeng Ming said his company hopes to be "as strong as Android in China" with its own mobile operating system, Aliyun. In order to achieve that, however, Zeng needs some help from vendors.

Luckily for Alibaba, Zeng says that the company has added "quite a few [new handset partners]." However, he wouldn't say which companies have signed deals to use Aliyun.

Alibaba launched its Aliyun operating system last summer. … Read more

Interns at Chinese electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn are not being forced to work on the production line of iPhone accessories. How do we know? Foxconn, for its part, says so.

Responding to reports in the Chinese publications Beijing News and China Daily and elsewhere that some students in Jiangsu province were being pressured to work long hours at Foxconn making things like iPhone USB cables, the company -- which makes iPhones and iPads for Apple -- told Bloomberg today that an audit by the Fair Labor Association "found no evidence that any interns were pressured to participate."

The … Read more

A Facebook executive has said at a social media conference in Hong Kong that there are no plans for the social network to hit the Chinese market.

Facebook's North Asia director, Jayne Leung, told conference attendees that the social network would not launch in the region any time soon, according to Meld Magazine editor Karen Poh on Twitter.

That statement comes nearly a year after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg expressed similar sentiments. Of course, at that time Zuckerberg also said that Facebook was in no hurry to make a bid for the stock exchange.

Less than six months later, … Read more

Microsoft will go on a hiring spree in China, the company's chief in that country said today.

Speaking to reporters, Microsoft's Greater China chief, Ralph Haupter, said his company plans to hire 1,000 new workers in China across research and development; marketing and services; and sales. Microsoft currently employs about 4,500 people across China.

Reuters, which was in attendance at the announcement, was first to report the news.

China has become a key component in nearly every technology company's plans for the coming years. And why not? The country's consumer market is booming as … Read more

Pinterest is sounding its battle cry -- it's had enough of one certain alleged Chinese cybersquatter.

The social network filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco last week against Qian Jin, who is from Nanjing, China. Pinterest claimed that Jin partook in cyberpiracy, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and more. According to the complaint, Jin has snatched dozens of domain names that are strikingly similar to pinterest.com, including pintesrest.com and pinterest.es.

"This action arises from Defendant's bad-faith registration and use of numerous domain names containing, or confusingly similar to, Pinterest's … Read more

"Serious legal violations and labor abuses" have been found at Samsung factories, according to a U.S.-based labor group.

The organization, China Labor Watch, released a report today detailing its investigations into eight factories in China, six of which were directly operated by Samsung, two of which made products for the electronics company but were run by suppliers.

Among the abuses found by China Labor Watch (CLW) at the factories were staff being "forced" to work 100 hours of overtime a month, unpaid hours and unsafe conditions.

The report says that workers at the eight … Read more

After Samsung was criticized last month for partnering with an electronics manufacturer that allegedly employed child workers, it announced today that all employees at the manufacturing factory are of a legal working age.

"Samsung holds itself and its supplier companies to the highest standards," Samsung said in a statement. "We have a zero tolerance policy on child labor violations and are therefore conducting field audits to ensure all our facilities in China, whether supplier facilities or fully-owned facilities, are compliant with applicable labor laws and Samsung's labor and employment right policies."

When watchdog group China … Read more