Asia
Auto Added by WPeMatico
SoftBank buys into Line’s mobile service in Japan
SoftBank is partnering up with messaging app Line to help develop its Line Mobile telecom service. Line announced that it has agreed to allow SoftBank to take a 51 percent in the business via an issuance of new shares. The deal is expected to close by March. From the documents, its mobile business is valued at around $15 million (1.7 billion JPY) but a company spokesperson told TechCrunch… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
Google completes its $1.1B deal to buy a chunk of HTC’s smartphone division
Google has announced the completion of its $1.1 billion deal to buy a large slice of HTC’s hardware business.
The acquisition was announced back in September 2017 but now it has passed the requisite approvals and is finalized. Beyond the transfer of over 2,000 engineers from HTC — that’s around one-fifth of HTC’s engineering team — Google will also receive… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
Annual smartphone shipments in China declined for the first time in 2017
China’s smartphone market is no longer growing after it witnessed its first annual decline in shipments during 2017, according to new figures released today. The writing was on the wall with a market decline first noted in Q2 but this is the first time a drop has been sustained over a twelve-month period. That’s according to data from analyst firm Canalys which reported that… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
Xiaomi beats Samsung to top spot in India’s smartphone market
Xiaomi couldn’t have wished for better timing of two reports that claim it has toppled Samsung to become India’s top-selling smartphone company. The Chinese firm, which is reportedly on a roadshow ahead of an IPO that could value it as high as $100 billion, is said to have beaten Samsung’s sales efforts in India, the world’s second-largest smartphone market behind… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
Apple asked to respond to China consumer group about slowing older iPhones
Apple is now facing questions about how it slows down older iPhones in China. The Xinhua state news agency reported yesterday that the Shanghai Consumer Council has written to Apple asking it to explain the performance hit and any remedies it is offering to consumers. Someone stole a piece of China’s new solar panel-paved road less than a week after it opened
Putting solar panels into our roads isn’t the craziest idea, but we may as well admit that it poses some unique challenges. For instance, people may want to walk away with pieces of it. That’s what happened in China, anyway, just five days after authorities took opened up what they claim is the world’s first solar panel-paved highway. Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
As Cook and Pichai leave China, Valley confronts rising internet tyranny in world’s second largest market
It’s been a bad few months for internet freedom in China (and really, a bad few decades, but who is counting?). The government brought into force a broad-ranging “cybersecurity law” earlier this year that empowers Beijing to take unilateral control over critical internet infrastructure, while also mandating that foreign companies keep all citizen data local inside China. Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
Indian home healthcare platform Portea Medical raises $26M Series C
Portea Medical, one of India’s biggest platforms for home healthcare visits, has raised $26 million in Series C funding to expand its service range. The round was led by Sabre Partners and MEMG CDC, with participation from returning investors Accel (which led Portea’s Series B two years ago), the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation and Qualcomm Ventures. Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
AppLovin scraps acquisition and takes debt financing instead
The story of AppLovin‘s acquisition has taken another turn. We first reported that the mobile ad startup was in acquisition talks in August of last year, and the announcement came a month later: AppLovin would sell a majority stake Chinese private equity firm Orient Hontai Capital. Today, however, CEO Adam Foroughi revealed that the deal is (sort of) off. Instead of an outright… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico
Gaming firm Razer up 18% following Hong Kong IPO
Razer has continued a winning streak of IPOs from Asian companies after its share price surged as much as 41 percent up on its first day of trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company, which makes accessories for PC gamers, laptops and is preparing to sell its first smartphone, raised $529 million from the sale of 1,063,600,000 shares. After deductions, Razer estimated its take-home… Read More
Powered by WPeMatico