MediaTek $100 Android Phone is Coming, Game-Changing for Shanzhai Phone Market?

On 12nd July, MediaTek whose phone chips and “Turn-key” (from chips to software design) solution has enabled hundreds of Chinese Shanzhai phone manufacturers to make phones easily, made an announcement saying that it joined the Open Handset Alliance and decided to play with Android market.

One month later, in a talk with a friend from MediaTek, I have been told that MediaTek has finished the development of its Android-powered 3G phone chip. “This will drag the Android phone price down to $100 or even less”, he said.

Interesting enough, yesterday the first MediaTek’s Android phone (T3333a) was spotted in Shenzhen’s Shanzhai market. The rumor also revealed its specs, Android 2.1, Dual-Sim supported, RAM 256M+ROM 512M.

With the strong connection with Shanzhai phone manufacturers, will we see MediaTek repeats another success in Chinese phone market? and will Android eventually become the replacement of Shangzhai’s phone OS? There is possibility, but we have to note that the Chinese mobile market is changing rapidly.

1. The smart phone market has been re-defined. Nokia is still there, together with the ‘closed’ Apple’s iPhone and the tens of ‘open’ Android supporters (brands include Lenova, HTC etc).

2. Educating the millions of Shanzhan users could be challenging? Touch screen and multi-threads are fancy, but are they for geeks only? Would low-education and low-income Shanzhan users like it? Is Android too advanced beyond those users’ need?

3. Like Nokia, Motorola etc, most likely MediaTek will soon spend effort on its own Android application market. It would be a good news for Android application developers, but as a late comer in the hyped Chinese app store market and every app market operator is hungry for good applications and developers, MediaTek is mission might not be easy.

4. App store is also a game-changing strategy in mobile phone market. The strategy to operate the app stores will be the key to succeed. And whether the users could quickly accept the new ways of playing with apps is another question.

But one thing is for sure, Android phone market is growing superb fast and it will be the No.1 target for any parties in Chinese market.

[image via Gigjets]

August 28, 2010 · Filed Under China, Mobile 2.0

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Chinese Microblogging Startup, Zuosa is Looking for Buyer

Back to May 10, 2009, I asked Mr. Zhang from a Japanese investment company, CyberAgent for his opinion on microblogging service. (read the full coverage in Chinese). He said he understood the real-time information generated by this type of service would be very valuable data, but he doubted that most of the Twitter-like startups would have enough resources to survive till they can really deal with the massive real-time data.

So no chance for startups in Chinese microblogging market?! I agreed with Zhang at that time, but we both forgot another key factor, the regulation from the government. Fanfou is gone, Jiwai was not lucky, Digu is alive but has tuned its strategy to focus more on LBS and Social games, sadly, another early adopter, Zuosa is now looking for buyer. In an email from Alex, founder of Zuosa, he told us the team is lack of funding and resources and therefore the only choice left for him is to sell it.

Alex told me Zuosa had over 160K users, 35K daily independent IP. It supports the IMs including MSN,Gtalk,MSN and QQ, and has a couple of phone clients on iPhone,Android, BlackBerry, Java and WAP. Several desktop clients for Windows,Linux and Mac are available too. It’s also interesting to know that in a report on the global microblogging market from QQ.com, Zuosa is even ranked 5, right after Twitter, Plurk, Digu and Sina.

Is it a sad story after Zuosa’s years’ trying in Chinese microblogging space? You might think it is. But reading from the replies to Alex’s open letter, most of them said: it’s kinda of RELEASE.

Please, if you are interested in talking to Alex, please ping me and I will do the intro. Whatsoever, 160k users are priceless, for sure.

July 22, 2010 · Filed Under China Web2