MediaG3 is partnering with China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television division Academy of Broadcasting Science to begin wireless services for interactive TV coverage and Internet in China.
In the interior regions and rural areas, there are about 900 million Chinese who are under-served or have no connections to the Internet or interactive TV programs.
"Broadband wireless technology has tremendous market potential in China, especially in vast regions where cable coverage is not feasible," said Peiyu Guo, director of Information Technology Institute, of ABS. "Proven and cost effective broadband wireless technology and applications are two key solutions to satisfy the huge demand in China. We are very pleased to work with MediaG3 to explore and develop broadband wireless applications for connectivity and delivery."
MediaG3 develops and markets broadband wireless technology products and online applications that empower interactive content delivery to fixed and mobile consumers.
Guangdong's Zhongshan Cable is deploying BigBand Networks' Broadband Multimedia-Service Router to process, manage and deliver digital television services, including HDTV and video-on-demand.
Zhongshan Cable serves approximately 300,000 subscribers in the city and is using the BMR to improve the video quality and bandwidth efficiency of its television services.
"Zhongshan and other Chinese cable operators continue to move forward with advanced digital video services that will soon rival those offered anywhere in the world," said Johnny Cheung, BigBand's senior regional director of the Asia-Pacific region. "We look forward to continuing to introduce solutions that can expand the content and enhance the quality and user experience of video services in China."
Samsung China has for the first time released its complete line of business products and solutions and initiated a traveling exhibition of these products in about 100 cities in China.
Qu Jingdong, vice president of marketing at Samsung Electronics, says that Samsung's commercial-use products cover such sectors as IT, home appliances, digital offerings and wireless communications, and they range from printing equipment, commercial-use laptop computers, monitors, high-definition TVs and multimedia equipment to e-political affairs, long-distance education, medicine, finance, hotel interactive service and so on.
Samsung disclosed that it spent over US$9 billion in 2007 on research and development, and Samsung China ranks tops among all foreign companies in China in issuing patents — it applied for 3508 patents last year.
Chinese Internet Search engine Baidu.com has announced public tests of its new voice-activated search.
Local media reports the new service will be available to both fixed phone and mobile phone users. When a user calls 400 666 8585 to reach Baidu's engineer, the engineer will offer them a search result based on their request. That search result can be provided based on voice or sent to users' mobile phone via SMS. In addition, Baidu's voice search can also help people with visual disabilities to access Internet information.
As of January 2008, there are 920 million telephone users in China, of which over 500 million are mobile phones. So the launch of the new service is expected to help Baidu penetrate over 1 billion users and increase the influence of its online search activities.
The fee for Baidu's new voice service is reported to be RMB1 per minute, which might be too expensive and may initially limit the development of the service. At present, Baidu is offering a RMB5 service fee to new users who apply for the service.
After a few days' silence, Gome has now made new headway in the acquisition of Sanlian Commercial Company and formally started its expansion in the Shandong market.
Sanlian has made an announcement that Gome has acquired 10.69% of its stake, and has hence become an actual controlling shareholder of the company. However the company says Gome will not make big adjustments on Sanlian's major businesses in the coming 12 months, nor will it carry out major asset restructure or arrangements.
However, Gome has recommended its president Chen Xiao, standing vice president Wang Junzhou, and vice president Zhou Yafei join Sanlian's board of shareholders. It has also promised to share the market resources with Sanlian to which it has pledged that it won't develop any franchise stores in Shandong so as to avoid competition with Sanlian.
At present, Gome occupies 18% of the China's home appliance market with 1200 stores.
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