Obama Calls China New President to Discuss Cybersecurity Dispute

Star Chang, Mar 16, 2013 12:06 AM, 233 views, 2 Comments »,

U.S. President Obama called to congratulate China’s new president Xi Jinping, reportedly taking the opportunity to talk to the new leader about the increasingly tense cyber security situation developing between the two countries. The two leaders committed to engage in an ongoing discussion to address the cyber issue. The New York Times reports that Obama specifically mentioned stealing U.S. companies’ proprietary information and intellectual property. Earlier this week, U.S. intelligence leaders said for the first time that cyber attacks and cyber espionage had supplanted terrorism as the top security threat facing the United States. U.S. businesses are increasingly alarmed about the targeted theft of confidential business information and proprietary technologies through cyber intrusions emanating from China. The issue has soared to the top of the U.S.-China agenda. Communist China needs to come to the table to discuss cyber security rules with America. It will be thrilling to see a major confrontation between Beijing and Washington over this cyber quarrelling.

Samsung Beat Nokia to Seize the Top Spot in China’s Smartphone Market

Star Chang, Mar 11, 2013 11:55 PM, 409 views, 1 Comment »,

South Korean electronics giant Samsung took top spot in China’s smartphone market in 2012, after sales of its devices nearly tripled from 10.9 million in 2011 to 30.06 million last year. According to the data by market researcher Strategy Analytics, Samsung held 17.7 percent market share in 2012, which was a jump of 5.3 percent from the year before. This also marked the first time it topped the Chinese smartphone market since entering the market in 2009, thanks to global brand recognition and increased cooperation with Chinese carriers. Samsung’s rise in China was at the expense of rival phonemaker Nokia. The Finnish phonemaker, which was No. 1 in 2011 with 29.9 percent market share, plunged to 3.7 percent last year to take seventh place …

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Not Every Chinese Mobile Phone User Can Use the New ‘China-Style’ e-Wallet

Star Chang, Mar 11, 2013 5:11 PM, 245 views, 1 Comment »,

China Mobile is teaming up with China UnionPay, the country’s only domestic bank card organization, to promote their new mobile phone wallet service. The service, based on near field communication (NFC) technology, allows users to make financial transactions through their mobile devices. Users with phones equipped with an NFC SIM card will be able to make payments at affiliated stores and locations. The service will effectively integrate information on users’ bank cards, public transportation cards and membership cards into a single digital storage space. The service will be push in 14 pilot regions including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The scale of the entire e-wallet industry chain is expected to reach 150 billion yuan (US$24 billion) this year. Some analysts even expect the penetration rate of NFC mobile phones will reach 20 percent over the next 3-5 years based on the pool of 1.1 billion Chinese mobile phone users. We doubt the widespread of the e-wallet service in China. Not all smartphones come with NFC, the best example is Apple’s iPhone. And the NFC SIM card is also not compatible to every single phone on the market, such as model that use micro-SIM, or battery that cannot be replaceable which has no room to hide the antenna bridge.

China Ready to Export Advanced Nuclear Power Technology That is Designed By The U.S. (Video)

Star Chang, Mar 11, 2013 3:18 PM, 421 views, 1 Comment »,

China is so-called ready to export its advanced AP1000 reactors after gaining a vital breakthrough in its nuclear power technology. The AP1000 is a two-loop pressurized water reactor sold by US company Westinghouse Electric. The AP1000 reactor is a result of cooperation between China and its foreign partners, with 70 percent of its components have been made in China. China now possesses the full know-how about the manufacturing process of the main pump and a supply chain has formed …

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China Doesn’t Need Stark Industries to Launch its First Solid Fuel Rocket

Star Chang, Mar 9, 2013 10:24 AM, 398 views, 1 Comment »,

China plans to launch its first solid fuel rocket by 2016, marking a strategic shift from liquid fuel rockets, which so far has been used in over 170 successful launches in the last two decades. According to China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, China’s first solid-fuel rocket Long March-11 is expected to make its first launch before 2016. The Long March-11 rocket will use China’s largest solid-fuel rocket engine and a brand new launching support system. The rocket will be easy to operate and cost-efficient to launch. It can remain in storage for long periods and reliably launched at a short notice. China has launched more than 170 liquid-fuel rockets successfully, but is yet to make breakthrough in developing solid-fuel rockets, which analysts say can be applied in missiles as well. We can see the development of Long March-11 will greatly improve China’s capabilities to rapidly reach space and at the same time, creating more advance missiles aiming at Japan and Taiwan.

Asus Transformer AiO Will Officially Cost You US$1,299

Star Chang, Mar 9, 2013 7:29 AM, 351 views, 1 Comment »,

Asus first showed us its Transformer AiO — an 18.4-inch Full HD all-in-one/tablet combo that runs both Windows 8 and Android — back at last year Computex, then it showed up again at this year CES, the Tanwanese PC maker has finally given us a release date and a price for its giant tablet. Transformer AiO is a powerful desktop PC, running Windows 8, Intel Core CPU, a bunch of memory and hardisk storage. As a tablet, you can keep running Windows 8 in remote desktop mode or you can run Android Jelly Bean on the device with ARM processor. The Transformer AiO is expected to be available early second quarter at US$1,299 for the basic model. You will get a Windows 8 machine running on a Core i3, 4 GB of RAM, 1TB hard drive storage, and it also comes with a DVD-RW optical drive which properly nobody is going to use it. Popping it from the dock you will get a super-size tablet with its own internal specs: a quad-core Tegra 3, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of flash storage. We will see how the market respond to this crazy all-in-one concept.

The Chinese Are Upgrading Their Old Feature Phones to Modern Smartphones

Star Chang, Mar 7, 2013 5:11 PM, 474 views, Got something to say ?,

According to statistics by IDC, Seventy-million smartphones were shipped in China in the last quarter of 2012, covering 73.2 percent of the country’s mobile market share. The volume of smartphone shipments saw a 112.1 percent year-on-year increase. The total shipments of mobile phones in China last year reached 362 million, among which smartphones recorded 213 million. We believe the low-cost Android phones, subsidies from phone operators and the arrivals of mobile internet were the driving force behind the boom. Decent enough Android devices at a relatively low price are going to be what turns the tide for smartphones in China. Cheap smartphones are going to make a dent in the China feature phone market. Previously, users in rural China, where access to PCs isn’t widespread, favour the feature phone as a way to get online. But due to the demand of better multimedia and online social networking, cheap smartphones have the opportunity to snatch away yet more market share from feature phones in communist China. And now we can see why the Chinese government is worried about Google having undue influence over the nation’s smartphone landscape.

Chinese Software Company Mocks North Korea in Browser Ad

Star Chang, Feb 27, 2013 9:45 AM, 452 views, Got something to say ?,

Poking fun at ally North Korea and Kim Jong-Un’s Nuclear ambitions is the latest stunt by China’s Kingsoft to promote its new ‘Lieboa’ (literally means Cheetah in Chinese) web browser. The software company claims Liebao browser is three times faster than Google’s Chrome. Kingsoft is well known in China for its anti-virus software and for its free alternative to Microsoft Office — Kingsoft Office. China tech giant Tencent has a major stake in Kingsoft and Lei Jun, the creator of Xiaomi Phone, is the co-founder and chairman of the company. Since the new browser launch, there has been little written about the browser outside of China because the lack of English interface. And with recent China hacking scandals and accusations that Chinese telecoms companies are untrustworthy, the Chinese browser will certainly remain only in China market. Maybe, North Korea do really need it for their rocket launch …

Watch: The Confidential Chinese Hacking Report in Animation

Star Chang, Feb 27, 2013 4:40 AM, 305 views, 1 Comment »,

It’s been a while since we featured an NMA report on M.I.C.gadget, but the ironically and amusing animation is back again with this cutting video about the headquarter of Chinese hacker troops in Shanghai. You can see how the Chinese military unit operates all the nasty hacking on foreign companies and news agency, and of course all circumstances are animated. Yes, there is a plot on how Chinese hacker drained data from Coca-Cola to steal business intelligence, and they can even get into system that could shut down an Apple store in US … WTF !

Xiaomi M3 Leaked From Foxconn, Showing It’s a Phablet With Aluminum Back Cover

Herman Lai, Feb 27, 2013 12:58 AM, 1,026 views, Got something to say ?,

Much of the spotlights are focusing on the latest smartphone and electronic devices at Mobile World Congress over in Barcelona. Unfortunately, we don’t see the Chinese superstar Xiaomi’s latest M2 at the show, but it seems like the company is working on the next gen Xiaomi phone with Foxconn right now. The photo above is allegedly taken inside the factory, which is believed to be one of the prototypes of Xiaomi M3 comparing with Xiaomi M2 back cover. Having a 5-inch or bigger display is certainly going to happen, but it’s unlikely to see a fancy glowing LED Xiaomi’s logo at the back cover as previous concept shot showed. There’s another M3 prototype leaked on the Chinese internet as well, but it looks totally different from what you see above. Check it out after the break to see which one you prefer.

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