Computer factory in China

The growth rate of China’s IT industry slowed in the first three quarters, while full-year growth is estimated at around 20%, according to a report released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

But despite the overall slowdown, some IT sectors such as software are still gaining ground.

With the fall in exports and investments, the IT industry grew more slowly than the national average, continuing with the momentum of the last several quarters.

Between January and September, the combined core business revenues of major IT companies reached a total of RMB4.1 trillion ($600.3 billion), up 20.5% year-on-year. The full-year’s total sales are estimated at RMB6.7 trillion, according to Gao Sumei, a monitor of the industry operation monitoring agency with the Ministry.
Read more HERE.
Source: China Daily

More Internet users in China than anywhere else in the world

According to The Beijing News and the China Media Project in a purported effort to cut down on ‘ID sharing’ in Beijing’s Internet cafes, the government will require that by the end of 2008, first-time visitors will have their picture taken and ID scanned before being allowed online,

Users were already required to show identification when they entered, a rule that has been spottily enforced at times but more strictly, by most accounts, since preparations for the Olympics began.

David Bandurski at China Media Project writes:

The newspaper quoted Li Fei, a spokesperson for the Beijing Cultural Law Enforcement Agency, as saying the policy was aimed at preventing ‘ID sharing’ ). The monitoring platform will allow enforcement officials to target any terminal at any Internet bar in the city to compare the user with registered information.

An editorial in the China Youth Daily, sees the new policy as creating the potential for invasion of privacy.

In this monitoring system that renders users ‘naked,’ how will the freedom and privacy of citizens using the Internet be protected? The Beijing Cultural Law Enforcement Agency reassures us that these controls end with the enforcement team’s monitoring platform and that we ‘have no need to be concerned about the leaking of personal information.’
Well that’s alright then.
Source: CNet.news

She works at the research lab and she is a damned sight prettier than the other pictures

IBM is planning to open a research facility in Shanghai, its first new research center in a decade.

The lab will focus on building new applications for the internet and small businesses.

John E. Kelly III, IBM’s director of research, said China’s population, economic growth and large number of private enterprises present a ‘huge laboratory’ for the company, and that its customers have recently gravitated toward China.

IBM has eight R&D centers worldwide, but has not opened a new one since building two facilities in India.

The Shanghai lab will be an extension of the company’s lab in Beijing, which it opened in 1995. Other technology companies, including Google and Microsoft, have expanded their R&D presence in China. There is no guarantee that the model will be at this new lab but we can hope.
Source: Wall Street Journal

The HP 35, the world's first hand-held scientific calculator, which went to China about 1986.

US technology giant Hewlett-Packard has announced plans to build a manufacturing plant in southwestern China to make notebook and desktop personal computers for the Chinese market.

HP said in a statement that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Chongqing municipality to build a factory in Chongqing in Sichuan province.

HP said the plant is expected to begin production in 2010 and would target customers in Chongqing ‘as well as other parts of China across government, public and retail sectors.’

HP opened its first office in China in 1981 and bills itself as the leading foreign manufacturer of personal computers in the country. It already has manufacturing operations in Shanghai.

It first came to China in the 1970s laying the groundwork for an eventual joint venture with China over the course of several trips by HP representatives to that country.
Source: AFP  and researtch

ASUS PC EEE

Asus has big plans for its Eee PC S101. Details on the premium ($699 and up) netbook were announced as its slimmest, sleekest netbook. According to DigiTimes, Asus expects the S101 to account for 10% percent of the Eee PCs it ships by the end of the year.

That would seem to be an impressive number, given that the S101 costs double that of the original Eee PC and that Asus seems to introduce a new Eee PC model every other week.

And I do not believe it for one moment.

In fact, Asus will reportedly introduce two new Eee PC models, which will fall between the Eee PC 1000 series and the S101.

DigiTimes reports that Asus expects to overtake Lenovo in global shipments next year, while leaping over Dell in China in 2009. At last count, Asus was eighth in laptop market share, three spots behind Lenovo.

OK, it is sexy, attractive, works and is very light to carry. Now get over that and it is very difficult to use as a laptop.

There is a lot of noise and thunder about there machines. What no one says is they are simply not very practical. And, yes, I have used one for considerable time.

There will the first mad dash of early adopters and then it will slow down to being just another machines. There is a lot of hype written about these machines. No one mentions they are too small. Which they are.
Source: CNet News

China's epic space walk

When the Olympic flame extinguished on Aug. 24, it ended a phase of modern Chinese history that began more than 15 years earlier, when Beijing first bid to host the 2000 Olympics. Then comes the question: what’s next for China?

The answer is simply. The Shenzhou-7 rocket carried three taikonauts (China’s word for astronauts, from ‘tai kong,’ the Mandarin Chinese word for ’space’) into space. Two days later, Zhai made China’s first space walk.

So what now?

Think on a smaller, more commercial scale. China already leads the world in numerous technology market sectors, including as an Internet market and mobile phone market. It’s also Asia’s largest producer and consumer of computers.

It may well be that Yang Liwei will always be remembered as the first Chinese in space, and, perhaps, another name will eventually be immortalized as the first Chinese on the moon, but the role models for China’s youth are the founders of companies such as Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent. They are the entrepreneurs who have reached for the skies. Who have made technology their very own. For them and China, it seems that in technology the sky is the limit, and that may only be a theoretical limit.
Source: PC World

Skype logo

Skype, eBaysWeb communications unit, has admitted that TOM-Skype, its China venture with TOM Online Inc, had been monitoring and storing some of its users’ text messages.

To get this into perpective: everything you writie on the Internet is stored somewhere. Bill Gates did not have that clear in his mind and had a very nasty surprise when they were produced in court.

You send a message somewhere, anyhow — if the Internet is involved it is recorded somewhere. So those, ahem, somewhat personal notes you sent your sexual partner about the night before are still hanging around somewhere. No matter what you thought. No matter how scrupulously you both cleaned them from you hard drive.

Now it has been alleged that a Web service monitors text chats with politically sensitive keywords and stores them along with millions of personal user records on computers that could be easily accessed by anybody - including the Chinese government. What is amazing is hat this should come as a surprise.

Jennifer Caukin, a spokeswoman for Skype, minority owner of TOM-Skype, admitted to the privacy breach in the servers and said it had now been fixed.

If Jennifer Caukin thinks the message thus disappears she is in for a sad disappointment.

She said that Skype needed to have further discussions with TOM after it found out that the venture had changed privacy policies without Skype’s consent or knowledge in order to store certain user messages.

Caukin said in an e-mailed statement that Skype had publicly acknowledged in 2006 that in order to meet Chinese regulations, TOM was operating a text filter that blocked certain words on TOM-Skype chat messages without compromising customer privacy. But she said that policy had changed.

Jennifer, worry not about the policy. There is no great scrubbing vat in the sky that deletes all messages. If you invent one, let me know.
Source: Reuters

Hynix Semiconductor  will  sell part of its stake in a Chinese joint venture to partner Numonyx for $100 million, as Numonyx seeks to raise its control over the Hynix-led chip plant.

After the sale, Hynix will see its stake in the Wuxi plant, which produces dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips used in personal computers, cut to 72.3% from the current 83.3%.

Numonyx, a memory joint venture owned by STMicroelectronics, Intel and Francisco Partners, has said it planned to increase its stake in the joint venture to one third.

It is also working with Hynix in a five-year tie-up to develop NAND flash memory chips, used in hand-held devices including cellphones, digital music players and cameras.
Source: Reuters

China boasts the most netizens in the world, around 253 million by June 2008. In 2007 netizens in rural areas increased by almost 130%, accounting for 40% of all newcomers, according to statistics released at the 2008 Internet Conference.

More and more Chinese farmers are turning to the internet to look for information on growing and sales as well as to release business information.

The informatization of rural areas has improved in recent years, but there is still a disparity between city and countryside. Internet use in cities is still four times higher than among rural residents.
Source: China.org.cn

Most computers are made in China

China’s IT market is projected by BMI to reach a value of more than $100 billion by 2012. Total spending on IT products and services should grow at around 12% over the forecast period as the country witnesses rapid expansion on the IT front.

Despite some concerns such as falling prices, the fundamentals supporting growth will include an expansion into Western China, rural areas and lower-tier cities, growing demand for IT services and outsourcing in key verticals, and more sophisticated demand from enterprises.

As a result of rising computer sales and internet usage in recent years, IT is being applied by enterprises to upgrade traditional technologies and enhance efficiency and value.
Much, much more HERE.
Source: PR Inside