A week in tech

China

Internet
• Sohu.com announced a 5-percent rise in its net profits to $6 million from $5.7 million in the first quarter last year. In a separate report, Sohu said it has entered into a cooperation agreement with Sony BMG, the official music copyright owner of the FIFA World Cup 2006 Germany. Under the agreement, Sohu has the wireless and Internet Premier Digital Release rights for the official music of the 2006 FIFA World Cup from Sony BMG. During the six-month Premier Digital Release period, Sohu.com will be able to exclusively offer a full range of music and video products of World Cup official music via Ring-Back Tone (RBT), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) to Chinese wireless users.

• Shin Satellite of Thailand announced that it has signed an agreement to provide broadband Internet services to China through the company's iPSTAR satellite. ShinSat, is owned by Thai telecom giant Shin Corp and provides telephone, internet, television and other communication services. The company said it has already set up a satellite gateway in Beijing that will begin providing Internet services to clients in May. Two more gateways are planned in Shanghai and Guangzhou. The service cost about $1,000 a year in China and would bring in revenues of $1 billion a year if the company met its target. At present, ShinSat already offers broadband satellite services in Southeast Asia, as well as Australia and New Zealand, with the services in Vietnam set to be launched soon.

Mobile/Wireless
• China Unicom announced a 31-percent increase in its first-quarter profit to Rmb1.4 billion ($174.6 million) due to an increase in subscribers. With about 74.4 percent of its subscribers using the GSM network, China Unicom provides services using both the global system for mobile communications (GSM) and CDMA standards. The company had 97.9 million GSM subscribers and 33.6 million CDMA customers.

• With a forecast that it will post a growth of 4300 percent, China's mobile phone cartoons market size went beyond Rmb720,000 ($90,000) in 2005, according to Analysys International. The report said the number of registered users hit 120,000. The internet-based provider of business information about technology, media and telecom industries in China said the growth in the market will be hitting $4 million) in 2006. This market size is seen reaching $77.8 million) in 2010. Analysys International says the mobile cartoon market in China is currently in the initial stage and that there are some market inhibitors to be solved. These inhibitors include the low penetration rate of high-end mobile handsets that support multimedia applications and the small number of mobile phone users using mobile phone cartoons. The market is expected to show fast growth in 2006 and 2007.

Media, Entertainment and Gaming

• Sun Media Investment Holdings announced the development of the first dedicated home shopping channel for luxury goods on the mainland. The company said it has entered into an agreement with Europe's Luxe.TV, the operator of a soon to be launched global digital television network geared for high-end consumer goods, to create an interactive platform for mainland viewers to buy goods over the Internet. The joint venture, Luxe.TV Interactive, will launch its Internet protocol television channel towards the end of the year. Financial terms were not disclosed. A top official of Sun Media said the Chinese market is ready for the Luxe TV concept. A study made by Ernst & Young indicate that demand for luxury goods on the mainland has reached an average of $2 billion in annual sales and is expect to reach $11.5 billion by 2015 when the country would account for 29 percent of all luxury goods purchases worldwide. Sun Media runs Asia Multi-Media Technology Services Holdings, which owns a 34,880-km national IP fiber optic network servicing 440 mainland cities. Other Sun Media investments include television and multimedia production enterprises and more than 10 cable and satellite television channels on the mainland and in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and North America. Sun Media Investment Holdings is one of China's largest investment groups.

Hardware
• Samsung (China) announced its plan to reduce production costs by increasing the scale of purchase in China, with the amount expected to reach $18.5 billion in 2006. Samsung’s International Purchase Centre in China reached a total of $15.3 billion in 2005. The company said it has moved its Hong Kong International Purchase Centre to Shanghai in December, a move seen as aimed at easing the increase in procurement volume in China. The company also announced the change in the name of the center to China International Purchase Center. With ten offices, the centre makes it purchases from Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Tianjin.

• Lenovo Group, Founder Group, Tsinghua Tongfang and TCL Corp. (TCL) announced that they will sign purchase orders worth $700 million with Microsoft. The agreement between the four PC producers will all be for three years. Lenovo and Founder will each sign the contracts by themselves as Microsoft’s strategic partners in the Asia-Pacific areas. Tsinghua Tongfang and TCL, together with China Mobile Communications Corp. (China Mobile) and China Construction Bank (CCB), will sign the contracts with Microsoft.

• Telecommunications
• Figures released by the country’s Ministry of Information Industry (MII) indicated that revenues from China’s postal and telecom sector reached Rmb169.2 billion ($21.1 billion) in the first quarter this year, a figure representing an 11.8-percent increase year on year.

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