A range of new payment services through mobile phones has put a virtual withdrawal machine in consumers’ hands, enabling 8 million mobile users in China to pay bills, buy insurance or book tickets. Jointly launched among China UnionPay, commercial banks and the service operators, users had their mobile phone numbers joined with that of their bank accounts, allowing them to fulfill payment for various services, like their gas fee and air ticket booking.
Category: Information Technology
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Alibaba.com, the largest business-to-business portal in China underwent its first day of public share trading in Honk Kong, and the results exceeded all expectations, as the price tripled, raising $1.5 billion. The public offering is expected to raise nearly $2 billion in Hong Kong, making its debut offering as large as Google’s 2004 I.P.O. in the United States. ‘We are pleased to welcome investors from Hong Kong and around the world to join us in building a world-class e-commerce company,’ said Jack Ma, non-executive chairman of the company and chairman and chief executive officer of Alibaba Group…
China’s Internet industry continues to be in a state of rapid development. In 2006, the number of Chinese Internet users exceeded 150 million, with 50% of these users between the ages of 18 and 35. China’s Internet market is also transitioning from a narrowband to a broadband market with over 30 million of the 57 million total connected users having broadband access. As an emerging service market, China’s Web 2.0 has shown great development potential and in 2006 the market size reached US$62.8 million. According to IDC’s forecasts, Chinese Web 2.0 market is predicated to reach US$645.8 million by 2011.
Taobao, the leader in Chinese C2C market, released a report on shopping at Taobao in the first half of 2007. Since Taobao has gained about 72% market share in first quarter of 2007, according to iResearch, Taobao’s report would help us to know the general picture of Chinese online shopping market.
Revenue of Shanghai’s information technology industry is set to double last year’s figure to surpass 1 trillion yuan (US$128 billion) in 2010 when the World Expo is held here. The city will invest heavily in several IT projects for the expo, such as a citywide wireless broadband network, a digital transport management network, electronic payment and social security systems, paper-less customs application system and mobile TV, according to Shanghai Municipal Informatization Commission […]
People working in the information technology industry earned more than employees in all other industries on average last year, according to the Shanghai Statistics Bureau. The wage gap between different sectors widened last year. The average wage in the IT sector was 3.55 times of the average salary for those in the service sector, the lowest paid group of workers, while in 2000, the average wage in the highest sector was 3.24 times that of the lowest […]
Combine cheap labor costs and cheap electronic appliances and you’ll get a high-tech version of the ‘sandwich-man‘: in the middle of XuJiaHui, the busiest commercial center in downtown Shanghai, it’s common to see young men carrying backpacks, probably containing laptops, attached to 17” LCD displays showing TV spot advertising, as well as some interactive media advertising…
China could become the world’s biggest online market within two years: the number of Chinese netizens has surpassed 123 million and number of people with access to broadband connection rose by 45.3 percent during the first half of the year to 77 million. Studies show that a typical Chinese consumer spends an average of 17.9 hours per month (36 min./day) engaged in popular online activities such as chatting, blogging, gaming, and shopping […]
Since the beginning of its economical opening — when the first 5-year plans were devised in 1979 — China has being growing at an incredible speed, with its GNP numbers jumping from 44 billion dollars to 1.6 trillion dollars in just 20 years. Such growth has pushed the Chinese manufacturing industry into devouring huge amounts of natural resources in a alarming way: in 2004, China — the 8th largest economy in GNP scale — consumed 8% of all the oil, 31% of all the coal, 10% of all the electricity, 30% of all ore, 30% of all steel, 19% of all aluminum, 20% of all the copper and 40% of all cement produced in the world […]
As in most Western countries, mobile phones are also very popular in China, among all different age groups and walks of life — sometimes seen in very unusual places. The contrast between China and other Western countries shows up in the — astronomical — numbers: up to 1997, there was little over 10 million mobile phone service subscriptions… today, there are more than 400 million.