China

China Mobile will start requiring prepaid phone customers to show ID when buying SIM (subscriber identity module) cards, the company's general manager announced.

The anonymity of phone service for Shenzhouxing (prepaid) customers, which ChinaTechNews says account for 70 percent of all users, made it important to hold on to your original SIM documentation in case you lose the phone. If you lose the SIM and its number, as far as I know, you can't get your number back.

This comes at a time when China Mobile will also begin allowing number portability among its services (but not with … Read more

What separates the mobile handset winners from the losers? The answer seems to be success in developing markets like China, India, the Middle East, and Africa.

On Thursday Nokia announced that it had sold a record 133.5 million mobile phones during the fourth quarter of 2007. This figure was up by more than a quarter from the same period a year earlier, boosting its overall market share to 40 percent.

Meanwhile, Nokia rival Motorola reported Wednesday that shipments of its handsets had fallen 38 percent during the quarter, pushing its market share down yet again to 12 percent, the … Read more

Microsoft has launched Live Search 地图, the China branch of its Virtual Earth project.

Compared with Google's ditu.google.cn and Sogou's (搜狗) map.sogou.com, the site seems about the same, if a little faster--though traffic may still be low. What Google and Microsoft have in common is that the maps contain listings for restaurants, banks, and other locations rendered as icons on the map. Sogou has no such advantage, but sometimes it resolves addresses better than Google.

But here's the interesting part: Microsoft's new service includes major highways and the locations of main cities on Taiwan. … Read more

Several news stories have noted that China's Internet user base increased by more than 70 million in 2007 to a count of 213 million at year's end. Little noted is that 23 percent of these users access the Internet from mobile devices, the remainder counted as broadband users.

The statistics, released by the China Internet Network Information Center and reported by ChinaTechNews, do not seem to specify how many of these mobile users also use broadband, and I can't find data on whether people use broadband at home or at work.

CINIC also reported (translated) that almost … Read more

The largest mobile operator in China has broken off talks with Apple over the iPhone, with one executive saying Apple wanted to share too much revenue.

From the Financial Times:

Chinese media on Monday quoted Gao Nianshu, general manager of China Mobile's data department, saying that Apple had given the impression it wanted to control the value chain and had pushed for up to 30 percent of revenues generated by locally sold iPhones.

"Of course we could not agree," Mr. Gao told a gathering of local MBA students, according to the Sina Web site. China Mobile also … Read more

DearChina.org is a new site where people can cry out to the great Chinese "other" and ask it to be more sustainable. Its sentiment is admirable. "Not about criticism," according to the introductory blurb, "It's about recognizing the fact that China will play a major role in determining the possibility for a sustainable world."

The submissions, all 19 of which as I write are in English, are translated into Chinese and displayed side-to-side. Many are heart-felt and imbued with some sort of desperate positivity:

Welcome to Sinobyte. Coming to you from Beijing, I'm Graham Webster, and I'll be bringing you news and commentary on technology and society in China.

Why China? Because China is home to one-fifth of humanity (and millions of bloggers). Because even with government controls, the internet is connecting millions of Chinese to the outside world. Because mobile phones and social networking are coming alive here as quickly as anywhere. Because my laptop was shipped directly from Suzhou to my old office in the United States. And because chances are good that if this computer gets thrown out in the United States, it'll end up being dismantled in China.… Read more

As a fellow CNET blogger found, security at the CES shooed us looky-loos away before we had time to poke around too much. There are, however, some observations to be gleaned from today's teasers. We'll all be treated with gadget after gadget starting tomorrow: I've seen devices like HDTV's that massage your back while it makes you a sandwich (no, not really), phones deaf people (yes, really), toys galore (lead-free let's hope) to name a few. But for now, out of the 700+ exhibitors, about 80+ are from, or list Shenzhen in their company's … Read more

Shawn Wang, chief financial officer for Baidu.com, the leading search engine in China, died Thursday in an accident while on vacation during the holidays, the company said in a statement.

The company did not elaborate on the details of the accident.

"We are all completely shocked and deeply saddened by this tragic news," said Robin Li, Baidu.com's chairman and chief executive.

Wang joined Baidu in 2004, four years after its founding, to lead it to a successful initial public offering on NASDAQ in August 2005. Earlier this month Baidu.com became the first Chinese company … Read more