Apple Pay may be having problems with China regulations

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BY Unknown 03:03 0

Apple Pay may be having problems with China regulations

As most of you surely know Apple's own NFC-based payment system has been steadily expanding all throughout the US thanks to the enormous efforts of the Cupertino giant. And while the new system is still seeing a lot of distrust from major retailers Tim Cook continues to push the payment method even abroad.

Deals have already been struck with major banks and payment gateways to bring the service to Canada and Europe, but Apple also has its sights set on the huge Chinese market. The US tech giant was hoping to achieve this formidable expansion through a partnership with UnionPay.

However, MarketWatch now reports that negotiations between the two sides have been slow and unfruitful and that government regulations and security concerns may prevent Apple from reaching the final deal, initially planned for March 2015. Sources go on to speculate Apple is "struggling with its relationship with UnionPay" mostly because of the nature of the NFC chips inside Apple's products, which reportedly don’t meet regulatory standards. The requirement that China-based data center handle requests from the country's mainland is also said to be a problem with the negotiations.

Last year there was also a lot of talk about a possible partnership between Apple and China's own Alibaba. This was viewed as a potential path to introducing Apple Pay in China, through an integration with the company's own Alipay system. This however does not solve the problem as UnionPay controls the NFC payment system in the country so there is no going around the regulations. Alipay's mobile app does currently support authentication of payments with Apple Touch ID, but for now this is as close as the Cupertino company has gotten.

Samsung slips to number five in Chinese smartphone market

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BY Unknown 02:14 0

Samsung slips to number five in Chinese smartphone market

Samsung, which was dethroned in China by local upstart Xiaomi last year, has slipped to the fifth position in the country's smartphone market now, according to a latest report from the market research firm IDC.

As per the report, in Q4, 2014, the South Korean company captured just 7.9% of the market, a whopping 50% decline compared to the year ago quarter.

On the other hand, with an year-on-year growth of 150%, Xiaomi occupied the first place, capturing 13.7% of the market. Next came in Apple, with 12.3% market share, followed by Huawei and Lenovo, with 11% and 9.5% market share, respectively.

Overall, a total of 107.5 million smartphones were shipped in the country in Q4 last year, representing a 2% quarter-on-quarter growth.

Oppo 3000 released in China, it's a 4G-capable midranger

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BY Unknown 05:00 0

Oppo 3000 released in China, it's a 4G-capable midranger

Oppo has unveiled a new smartphone in China today. It's called Oppo 3000 and it's already up for grabs in the mainland, in an interesting twist.

Unlike other Oppo handsets, this one can't claim the title of "world's thinnest smartphone", nor does it come with an innovative swiveling camera. The Oppo 3000 is just a midrange device, aiming to deliver a polished experience to those who aren't looking for top of the line specs. 

Oppo 3000

Speaking of those, the Oppo 3000 comes with a 4.7-inch 720p touchscreen, a 5 MP wide-angle front camera, and an 8 MP Sony IMX179 rear camera sensor, which boasts f/2.0 aperture and has a five-element lens. All of these things should add up to decent image quality produced by this phone.

Running the show here is Qualcomm's 64-bit Snapdragon 410 SoC, with a 1.2 GHz quad-core CPU in tow and Adreno 306 GPU. The Oppo 3000 has 1GB of RAM, 8GB of built-in storage, a microSD card slot, dual-SIM functionality (dual-standby), 4G LTE support, NFC, and a 2,000 mAh battery.

It runs Android 4.4 KitKat underneath Oppo's own Color OS 2.01. The device is being sold in China for CNY 1,599, which is about $256 or €226. That's quite a bit more than what's being asked for similarly specced handsets such as the new Xiaomi Redmi 2, so it's unclear how successful the Oppo 3000 will turn out to be, sales-wise. Another unknown is whether it will ever be offered for purchase elsewhere

Samsung Galaxy E7 heads to China for $330

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BY Unknown 19:16 0

Samsung Galaxy E7 heads to China for $330

The Samsung Galaxy E7 is the mid-range sibling of the Galaxy A7 and so far has been available in India only. Now the availability is expanding to China where it's joining the smaller Galaxy E5.

The Galaxy E7 phablet will cost CNY 2,100 ($335/€300) though the exact launch date wasn’t revealed. That's a bit cheaper than the price in India of INR 22,800 ($365/€325).

It's also not entirely clear which of the country's carriers will offer the phablet, though it supports both China Mobile and China Unicom for its optional dual-SIM and LTE (150Mbps).

The Samsung Galaxy E7 boasts a 5.5" Super AMOLED screen with 720p resolution (267ppi), runs Android 4.4 KitKat on a Snapdragon 410 chipset (4x Cortex-A53 CPU) with 2GB of RAM and has a 13MP/1080p main camera as well a 5MP selfie camera.

Redmi 2 with 2GB RAM, 16GB storage to go on sale this month

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BY Unknown 18:39 0

Redmi 2 with 2GB RAM, 16GB storage to go on sale this month

A couple of weeks after its existence was revealed, it is being reported that the Xiaomi Redmi 2 with double the RAM and storage will go on sale during the Chinese company's Spring Festival, which is set to take place between February 13 and February 25.

It is being speculated that the device will be called the Enhanced Edition, and will be priced at CNY799 (about $128).

Aside from RAM and internal storage, the new model will retain all the other specifications of the original version, which is powered by Snapdragon 410 chipset with Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 CPU and Adreno 306 GPU. The device sports a 4.7-inch screen with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels, 8MP main camera, and 2MP front camera. The Redmi 2 also packs in a 2,200mAh battery, and runs Android 4.4.4 with MIUI 6 on top.

Lenovo P70 launches in China with 4,000 mAh battery

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BY Unknown 14:05 0

Lenovo P70 launches in China with 4,000 mAh battery

Lenovo has made a new smartphone available in China today. It's called P70, and it's a midranger with the battery capacity perhaps being its main claim to fame. The P70 comes powered by a whopping 4,000 mAh cell, which the Chinese company says may last you up to 34 days on standby.

That's quite an achievement for a smartphone in this day and age, though the number does only refer to 2G standby. It goes down to 30.5 days on 4G, and 29 days on 3G. Still, respectable nevertheless.

Aside from that, the Lenovo P70 boasts a 5-inch 720p IPS touchscreen, a 13 MP rear camera with LED flash, as well as a 5 MP front-facing unit. Running the show is MediaTek's MT6752 64-bit chipset, coming with a 1.7 GHz octa-core CPU and a 700 MHz Mali T760-MP2 GPU.

The handset has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot, dual-SIM functionality, and 4G LTE support (Cat.4, up to 150Mbps download and 50Mbps upload). It's being offered in "midnight blue" only.

It runs Android 4.4 KitKat and its dimensions are 142 x 71.8 x 8.9 mm, while it weighs 149 grams. It costs CNY 1,399, which right now means about $224 or €198.

Qualcomm could possibly be fined $1 billion in China in antitrust case

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BY Unknown 01:51 0

Qualcomm could possibly be fined $1 billion in China in antitrust case

A 14-month investigation into Qualcomm's business practices in China is reportedly nearing completion. That said, its conclusions will clearly not be loved by the well known chip maker.

Apparently the company may be forced to pay a $1 billion fine by the Chinese authorities, for engaging in anticompetitive practices over there. This would be the biggest amount ever paid by any company in China.

Last week, during talks between Qualcomm representatives and those of China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) "significant progress" has allegedly been made towards ending the investigation.

Aside from the record fine, Qualcomm could also be forced to lower its royalty rates by around a third for patents used in China. Additionally, the company would also agree to make changes to its licensing practices, yet not in a very damaging way for its bottom line.

The NDRC is soon expected to announce the antitrust settlement with Qualcomm. The record fine won't influence the company's financials that much, since around half of its $26.5 billion global revenue was earned in China for its latest fiscal year.

However, a big part of Qualcomm's profit in China came from its patent licensing arm collecting royalties. This business was disrupted by the NDRC's investigation, which created disputes between the chip maker and its licensees, and caused other companies to delay signing new licensing agreements

Meizu M1 gets 100,000 orders in just one minute

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BY Unknown 23:59 0

Meizu M1 gets 100,000 orders in just one minute

The flash sale model is really taking off in the mobile world, at least in Asia. Pioneered by Xiaomi just a few years ago, it's now employed by many more companies. One of them is Meizu, which recently announced the M1 smartphone.

It went up for pre-order in China, with 100,000 units being made available. And people managed to order all of those in only 60 seconds.

Unlike what the term "pre-order" generally means in China, in this case it seems that money has changed hands, and those 100,000 M1 units will be shipped to the people who ordered them, at some point in the future.

It's not surprising that the Meizu M1 has proven to be this successful. After all it costs just CNY 699, which is around $111 or €97 right now. For that amount of cash you get a 5-inch 1,280x768 touchscreen, a 13 MP rear camera with LED flash, as well as a 5 MP front snapper.

At the helm we can find the MediaTek MT6732 chipset, which comes with a 1.5 GHz quad-core CPU, aided by 1GB of RAM. Internal storage is 8GB, expandable via microSD, and a 2,500 mAh battery completes the package.

ZTE announces Blade S6 Lux in China

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BY Unknown 23:31 0

ZTE announces Blade S6 Lux in China

You might remember that ZTE recently unveiled a budget-oriented handset with dual-SIM LTE connectivity. It is dubbed the Blade S6 and should be available from AliExpress globally for around $250 and also through Amazon and eBay in select markets.

Today the Chinese manufacturer put a little twist to the story, announcing two devices for their home market. The handset will bear the names ZTE Blade S6 and Blade S6 Lux. While the Lux model is definitely new on the horizon the S6 is essentially a downgraded variant of what we already know of the device, but intended for the local market.

The Chinese Blade S6 will essentially get a Snapdragon 410 and slower processors in place of the Snapdragon 615 in the international one as well as a slightly smaller battery. The rest of the specs seem pretty much unchanged, at least on paper, but we expect there will also be a few modifications in terms of mobile bands.

The ZTE Blade S6 Lux on the other hand is a hardware improvement on the standard S6. It comes with a 5.5-inch Full HD display, instead of a 5.0-inch HD one and a larger 3000 mAh battery. Other than that the S6 Lux is identical to the international S6 model.

They are both powered by an eight-core Snapdragon 615 setup and sport 2GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage. Cameras are also the same - 13MP main shooter and 5MP front-facing. And to keep with the design trend of the Blade S6 the new model is also a proper iPhone look-alike.

Interestingly enough all of the aforementioned devices will come with Android 5.0 Lollipop out of the box and MiFavor 3.0 UI on top. As far as availability goes all we know for now is that both the S6 and S6 Lux will be available in China. Pricing is quite competitive at CNY 1699 (about $272) and CNY 1999 (about $320), respectively.

Nokia N1′s second batch had 32,000 units, was sold out in 7 minutes

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BY Unknown 02:49 0

Nokia N1′s second batch had 32,000 units, was sold out in 7 minutes

When the Nokia N1 went on sale in China earlier last month, the initial batch of 20,000 units was sold out in just four minutes and two seconds. The second batch went on sale a week later, and it too sold out in minutes, although there was no information on the number of units that were up for grabs, the time the batch lasted, and the number of interested buyers.

But it is now being reported that the second batch saw 666,594 interested buyers against 32,000 units of the N1 that were sold out in just 7 minutes and 47 seconds.

For those who are not in the know, the third and the fourth batches also sold out (no information on quantities yet) recently, and the next sale is planned for February 26.

The N1 sports a 7.9-inch 2,048×1,536 pixel touchscreen display and is powered by Intel’s Atom Z3580 SoC, which comes with a 2.3 GHz quad-core CPU. It features an 8 MP main camera, a 5 MP secondary snapper, and packs in a 5,300 mAh battery. The tablet comes with 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, and runs Android 5.0 Lollipop with Nokia’s custom launcher on top.

Moto X (2014) gets 1 million pre-orders in China in a few days

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BY Unknown 02:14 0

Moto X (2014) gets 1 million pre-orders in China in a few days

Last week Motorola officially started taking pre-orders for the Moto X (2014) in China, following the company's reentry into that market, which was announced earlier.

The latest Moto X went up for pre-order in China on January 27, and it seems to have become quite a hit over there. That's because Motorola's Chinese arm has unveiled that as of February 1 it has already received more than one million pre-orders for the device.

So the new Moto X is clearly going to be quite a success in China when it will finally be released. Speaking of which, it's still unclear when exactly that will happen.

When reading about pre-orders in China, you need to be aware that generally speaking these work differently over there than they do in other places. Most of the time, to pre-order (or reserve) a handset in China you do not need to make any payment at all - that will happen when the product you're trying to buy arrives in stock. This of course means that some fraction of the people who pre-ordered those one million Moto X units may change their minds and not purchase it after all.

HTC Desire 826 goes on sale this Thursday in China

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BY Unknown 03:32 0

HTC Desire 826 goes on sale this Thursday in China

At CES early this year HTC unveiled a successor to the Desire 820. The new phone – HTC Desire 826 – will go on sale in China this Thursday (January 29) at CNY 2,300 ($370/€325) for the 16GB version and CNY 2,500 ($400/€350) for the 32GB one.

The phone will launch simultaneously on HTC's web store, JD.com, Suning Tesco and Lynx. Note that some stores will carry only one of the two versions. Note that the older Desire 820 is CNY 2,000.

The HTC Desire 826 updates the 5.5" 720p screen of its predecessor to 1080p resolution, makes the jump to Android 5.0 Lollipop (to make full use of the 64-bit Snapdragon 615 chipset) and switches out the 8MP selfie camera for a 4MP UltraPixel one. The main camera is a 13MP shooter, the phone has LTE and optional dual-SIM connectivity.

After China, the phone will expand across the Asia-Pacific region. It's not clear if it will get a global rollout or not.

Meizu m1 note with Snapdragon 615 unveiled for China

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BY Unknown 01:30 0

Meizu m1 note with Snapdragon 615 unveiled for China

Among the clamor of the Meizu m1 announcement today, a new version of its bigger brother, the m1 note, almost flew under the radar. The China Telecom dedicated variant packs a Snapdragon 615 chipset, as opposed to the Mediatek silicon of the regular version.

The Snapdragon 615 is Qualcomm's upper midrange 64-bit offering, sporting an octa-core processor with performance cores clocked at up to 1.7GHZ (1.5GHz in m1 note's case) and power-efficient cores ticking at 1.0GHz. Graphics are handled by the Adreno 405 chip clocked at 550MHz.

The rest of the hardware has remained unaltered. The smartphone packs a 1080p 5.5-inch display with minimal bezels. 2GB of RAM is on board, internal storage is non-expandable and is either 16GB or 32GB, depending on the version. The main camera sports a 13MP imager behind an f2.2 lens, while selfies are taken care of by a wide angle 5MP snapper.

The Snapdragon 615 version carries a CNY100 price premium over the Mediatek models and the 16GB option costs 1,099CNY ($176) with the more spacious 32GB of storage setting you back 1,299CNY ($208).

Apple sold more iPhones in China than in the US

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BY Unknown 01:53 0

Apple sold more iPhones in China than in the US

Apple is likely to announce soon that for the first time it sold more iPhones in China during 2014 than it did at home in the US. Analysts believe that this overtaking was made possible thanks to Apple's deal with China Mobile and the subsequent release of the Apple iPhone 6 in China last October.

It's interesting because Apple's iOS holds a 41.8% share in the US but only 20.7% in China. It just goes to show just how fast the Chinese market has grown over the past few years (the two were equal just 3 and a half years ago).

Apple's deal with China Mobile has helped the company become more familiar with Chinese users. According to analysts China has accounted for 36% of iPhone shipments while the US accounted for just 24%.

Recently opened West Lake Apple Store in China attracting huge crowds

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BY Unknown 20:22 0

Recently opened West Lake Apple Store in China attracting huge crowds

Today the ribbon was cut and the West Lake Apple Store in Hangzhou, China opened its doors for customers. The event attracted a huge crowd of fans eager to check out one of the company’s largest retail stores in Asia.

Image source: bruce_shia on Instagram

Tim Cook also promoted the store on Twitter saying “Starting Something New in Hangzhou, China!” The latest store is part of a total of five outlets in China. The rest will open before the Chinese New Year on February 19.

The West Lake Apple Store offers a Genius Bar, acres of floor space for workshops and personal trainings as well as scheduled lectures on iPhone, iPad, Mac and iMovie for OS X.

Earlier, Angela Ahrendts, who is Apple Senior Vice President of Retail, announced the company’s plans to open 25 new retail locations in China by the end of 2016.