China Watch Blog

China Watch Blog has learnt that the number of Chinese mobile phone users has exceeded 1 billion as of the end of February.

According to a statement posted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) on its website, the total number of mobile phone users increased by 20.67 million during the first two months this year to hit a record high of 1.01 billion.

The number of 3G mobile phone users rose by 15.5 million in the first two months to reach 143.92 million, the statement said.

During the same period, the number of landphone users dropped by 828,000 to 284.29 million users.

The number of Internet users with broadband access totaled 154.96 million as of the end of February, with a net increase of 4.96 million during the first two months, according to the statement as reported by China Daily.

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China Watch Blog reports that as technology is changing expectations in the airline industry, passengers want to be in control, and they expect airlines to become solution providers and aggregators of value, to provide them with personalized services.

Airline employees expect to be given the tools to do their jobs and to meet passenger expectations. Airline executives expect to make returns that are reasonable and relatively stable through business cycles.

All of these expectations can be met by airlines through the effective and efficient leveraging of information and technology, to shift from begin operations- and product-centric to becoming customer-centric and dramatically improving the overall passenger travel experience throughout the travel cycle.

In his new book by world-renowned airline expert Nawal K. Taneja, the 7th in a series with Ashgate, the author explores and explains the game-changing opportunities presented to the industry by new generation information and technology.

He shows how information and technology can now drive, not just enable, an airline’s strategy to become truly customer-centric at a personalized level, while at the same time enabling the operator to reduce costs, enhance revenues, reduce risks and become much more flexible and agile by better managing complexity.

China Watch Blog has learnt that IceWarp helps regional Internet and Satellite Services provider eliminate messaging security issues, and what is most interesting is that the solution was discovered accidentally.

The Company in question was TXOL Internet, a subsidiary of Eastland Internet Inc, which offers internet access in many communities in Texas and is also expanding other parts of the country.

The company offers web hosting, web design, e-mail services, Dialup, DSL, Wireless and 3rd party satellite connectivity through Eastland Office Supply. The company has recently added web hosting services that provide database services, shopping cart, and Adobe services compatibility.

TXOL is an authorized reseller of over 400 software programs. Currently TXOL is working on Wi-Max Wireless Technology to expand their wireless service.

The problem was that TXOL was using Sendmail open source solution to provide its clients with messaging capabilities and was constantly running into security issues.

“We had a lot of problems with it,” explains Benny Williams, a Network Administrator at TXOL. “There was no control over outgoing emails, in addition to other glitches.” TXOL team tried to solve the problem by adding the Barracuda Networks solution to filter the outgoing traffic.

This, however, did not work. “We have discovered that the system was still sending spam emails through the network,” says Williams. At that point, adopting yet another security solution on top of the existing one seemed to be a dubious exercise. “There was no guarantee that replacing the application would fix the problem,” notes Williams.

TXOL ran across the effective solution by sheer chance. “We purchased a company that, as luck may have it, already had IceWarp installed,” recalls Williams. His team reviewed the solution, liked it and decided to purchase additional licenses.

As a result, TXOL discovered that IceWarp’s powerful features have significantly improved security for its customers and the company’s image. “Prior to IceWarp, our reputation score fluctuated between 67 and 85 points – we were frequently blacklisted because of spamming activities,” says Williams. “Now our reputation score is between 99 and 100. It means we are not getting blacklisted.”

Additionally, the solution helped TXOL reign in systems administration costs. “IceWarp is so easy to manage, that we can use administrators who are not too tech-savvy,” says Williams. “The product already paid for itself.”

In future, TXOL is currently upgrading its network to provide high-speed wireless connectivity and sell additional services that can be powered by IceWarp. “For example, we will consider IceWarp for VoIP offerings, groupware and instant messaging offerings local businesses could be interested in,” concludes Williams.

China Watch Blog has learnt that China will take greater strides in promoting the development of its mobile Internet sector.

Wang Xiujun, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), said that the government will step up policy support for mobile Internet because it “promotes industrial integration and leads to revolutionary changes in development and technology.”

Wang said the country will speed up comprehensive upgrades for its information networks and boost the development of third-generation technology (3G), especially homegrown TD variants of 3G and LTE (long-term evolution) technology.

Along with the development of information networks, the innovation and development of integrated technologies and businesses should also be highlighted, Wang said during the ongoing fifth International Mobile Internet Conference, which opened Monday in Beijing.

Wang said that the Chinese government will attach more importance to the protection of users’ personal information and their rightful interests and maintain a healthy environment for the development of the mobile Internet sector.

The two-day meeting is sponsored by China Mobile, the world’s largest telecommunications firm by number of users.

China Watch Blog has learnt that China had 952.31 million mobile phone users by the end of September.

According to a statement by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) posted on its website, the MIIT said 12.22 million new mobile phone users signed up in September alone.

China’s 3G mobile phone users reached 102.46 million by the end of September, the statement said.

The country’s telephone users totaled 1.24 billion by September, with fixed-line telephone users dropping 363,000 in September to 288.43 million, according to the statement.

China’s Internet users with broadband access totaled 149.93 million by the end of September, up 23.64 million year-on-year, whereas the number of dial-up connection users dropped by 198,000 to 5.7 million.

China Watch Blog reveals a TV survey of mobile phone users in Hong Kong, which shows that some people play games on their mobile phones for between one to three hours daily, while admitting they did it at their working place, toilet, walking on the pavement or basically anywhere.

In addition, phone users say that they use the phone to make phone calls, sending text messages, checking emails, internet surfing, playing games, taking photographs, calculating some figures, listening to songs, reading stories online and so on.

Asked whether the users had met any accident or any untoward incident when they were too absorbed in playing games outdoors, one of the mobile phone user said there had been incidents when he was almost knocked down by a car, and in another incident, he fell into a pool of water.

A lady who was interviewed said she forgot to get off a bus while being too focused on playing game on her mobile phone.

China Watch Blog has learnt that Baidu Inc, the most popular search engine in China, has introduced a service on Wednesday that will make it easier for users to access content they have searched for on mobile devices.

The step is intended to fend off competition from rivals such as Tencent Holdings. The mobile “box computing” service, as Baidu calls it, takes users directly to games, e-books, music or other content they have searched for instead of showing a list of Web pages containing links to that content. With it, Baidu is trying to bring a variety of Internet services to its basic search engine.

“Giving users better searching experiences with ‘box computing’ will help us gain more market share,” Yue Guofeng, general manager at Baidu’s mobile Internet division, was quoted as saying in a China Daily report.

Baidu is using the service to stay ahead of competitors such as Tencent and the US-listed Qihoo 360 Technology Co, analysts said.

Tencent, which owns the instant-messaging service QQ – one of the most popular applications in China – has been working with software developers to add various Internet offerings to its main product. Qihoo has adopted a similar approach.

“The three companies all have a large number of users, and by providing diversified services on their own platforms, they can monetize their large user bases,” said Fang Li, an analyst at Analysys International.

Baidu said earlier this month that it will invest $306 million in Qunar.com, a Chinese online travel website. Yue said the step is intended to add more to Internet services offered by Baidu.

Tencent has also poured billions of yuan into investments this year. The money has gone into e-commerce, online travel, movies and other products and services. Similarly, the companies have all begun offering “open platforms” as a means of working with service providers and application developers to diversify the services found on their websites.

China Watch Blog has learnt that AliBaba Group and mobile phone maker K-touch have teamed up to launch a new smart phone model with a tailor-made operating system and more e-commerce applications to grab a share of lucrative and fast expanding phone market.

It has joined other Internet giants such as Baidu and Tencent to develop their own operating systems to tap the growth potential in the mobile Internet segment.

The smart phone, to be priced at 2,680 yuan (US$412), is equipped with Alibaba’s cloud computing operating system based on Google’s Android system, allowing users to have as much as 100G of online storage space and basic applications such as maps, search and email services without downloading the applications to their handsets.

The new operating system will come with Taobao’s price-comparing widgets as well as pre-installed social networking applications.

“We’re working towards an open platform that will bring Internet-based services to mobile phone users conveniently,” said Wang Jian, president of Alibaba Cloud Computing.

Alibaba Cloud Computing is a wholly-owned unit of Alibaba Group with the aim of building an advanced data-centric cloud computing service platform. The company is also in talks with other handset makers to pre-install its operating system on their phones.

China now has 318 million mobile Internet users or 65 percent of the 485 million overall Internet users in the country, according to a recent report by China Internet Network Information Centre.

China Watch Blog has picked up this news from NYDailyNews.com that there is mounting evidence that mobile phones don’t increase your odds for getting brain cancer.

According to a study out yesterday citing researchers in the Journal Environmental Health Perspectives, “Although there remains some uncertainty, the trend in the accumulating evidence is increasing against the hypothesis that mobile phone use can cause brain tumors in adults.”

The findings are a blow to the World Health Organization, which just a month ago declared that cell phones are “possibly carcinogenic to humans,” arguing that using them could cause brain tumors.

But experts who looked at previously published research on the issue determined there isn’t enough proof to make that claim.

The panel – which hailed from the U.S., England, Australia and Sweden – focused on a survey published last year of 13,000 cell phone users over 10 years.

The data gave no clear answer, nor do countless other studies across the globe, the panel determined.

The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer acknowledged there is no direct link between cancer and cell phones but believes the devices put users at an “increased risk” for the malignant brain cancer glioma.

They also list coffee, booze and working the night shift as possible cancer triggers.

China Watch Blog has found an interesting article by Shelly Palmer, who is the host of NBC Universal‘s Live Digital, a weekly half-hour television show about living and working in a digital world, which outlines his frustrations with mobile phones’ prices and tariffs galore Europe compared with US$3 per day all in – in the USA.

His article “International Cell Service: Still A Costly Mess” reveals the reality of the world we live in. Everywhere people talk about connectivity, but Palmer says in his article headlined “International Cell Service: Still A Costly Mess”, he describes mobile phone connectivity, say, between USA and Europe a Wild Wild West Show as people have to pay through their noses if they Verizon’s International Roaming Service.

“Charges for calls and data in the UK, Germany and France, according to Verizon, was Dollars per minute for voice, and tens of dollars for data,” Palmer says.

Verizon is not a workable solution for American international travelers, if you phone works at all, you must mortgage your house to pay Verizon, he says.

With a fully functional Motorola Atrix Android 2.2 FroYo at his disposal, Palmer who thought he would get a London Zim card and his problem would be solved. However, he discovered, much to his chagrin, that his phone was locked and could not be used. However, someone told him that there was a guy at an Internet Cafe who could “hack” and unlock his phone in return for buying a “very reasonable Labara SIM card with 10 GBP of talk time”. So the tale goes.

Palmer says there was no plan that stood out as “the obvious one to purchase.” In fact, nothing about the experience was obvious at all. You could spend a lot of money or a ton of money or a small fortune or large fortune, but “spend” was the only common feature of these plans.

At 4.50 USD per MB of data, checking my email would cost me $25-$30 USD daily. Texting would jump from $10 USD/per month to $10-$15 USD per day. Sticker shock is an understatement. Just for goofs, I purchased the full package from Labara (Voice, Txt & Data) on their lowest price pay-as-you-go plan.

His conclusion is that this state of affairs will NEVER GET SORTED OUT. Why? Simply because there’s no pressure to make it any less expensive or less confusing. From the carrier’s perspective, it’s perfect the way it is. Perfect for them, that is, Palmer says.

Write to “Shelly Palmer” , if you want more details.