China's virtual reality arcades aim for real-world success

SHANGHAI--Chen Jiuxiao puts on virtual-reality goggles and is immediately transported to a snow-covered ski slope, down which she slaloms without ever leaving Shanghai.

"I felt weightless skiing down the mountain," Chen, 25, gushes after re-emerging in the material world.

"The scenery around me was so authentic," she adds.

Chen, a hospitality worker, said she ventured into one of Shanghai's VR arcades due to word of mouth from her tech-savvy friends.

China had an estimated 3,000 VR arcades in 2016, and the market was forecast to grow 13-fold between then and 2021 to amount to 5.25 billion yuan ($782 million), according to a joint report by iResearch Consulting Group and Greenlight Insights.

Add in the profits to be made from headsets, equipment, games and other products, and it's little wonder that augmented-reality and virtual-reality industries are excited about China.

"Chinese growth in the next 5 years could see it dominate AR/VR long-term -- and not by a small margin," Silicon Valley consultancy Digi-Capital said in a report last year.

"China has the potential to take more than $1 of every $5 spent" in the industry globally by 2022, it added.

QUALITY SHORTAGE

One key factor is China's government.

Tens of millions of Chinese have become obsessive players of mobile video games, causing concern that China was raising a generation of myopic youngsters addicted to battle games.

Authorities imposed curbs last year on the number of new game releases and playing time for youths, rattling the industry and shaving billions off the market value of big players including gaming giant Tencent.

But the government is pushing hard for China to become a world leader in next-generation technologies including artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles. VR has been lumped into that favoured class, benefiting from a slew of preferential policies.

Chen Wei, manager of Shanghai VR arcade Machouse said VR was likely to avoid the fate of mobile video games in China.

He cites the relatively high cost of arcade play -- up to 70 yuan ($10) or more for a 15-minute game -- and of setting up home systems.

"It's hard for minors to get addicted," he said.

The nascent VR games industry suffers from a shortage of high-quality games, however.

At Shanghai's VR+ Amusement Park, a new game lands only once every three months, officials there said.

VR EXPLOSION


Firms such as Tencent remain hesitant to dive in to the arcade scene until the sector reaches critical mass, analysts explained.

But the company, along with fellow Chinese giants Alibaba and Baidu, is investing in virtual online shopping and VR entertainment, all of which could trickle down into gaming.

Already a number of towns and cities in China have declared themselves incubator zones that are integrating VR into research, manufacturing, education and other spheres, luring in capital, according to Chinese reports.

Seekers VR, which is based in the eastern city of Wenzhou and owns a franchised chain of 200 arcades in more than 70 cities across China, is working with the Wenzhou government to establish a college focused on educating students about VR and using the technology in lessons.

"There is no dominant competitor in the VR industry since it is so immature, and we will bring more and more opportunity," said Seekers VR's CEO Belle Chen.

The expected wide-scale adoption in China of ultra-fast 5G networks is expected to further boost VR development, and foster growth in areas such as education and training, said Chen Wei.

He said: "There is no better way to learn skills, and at a lower cost, than VR. Even though VR is still educating users about what it is, it could explode someday."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Trade war, censors blow chill wind through China's giant tech scene

BEIJING -- Wang Miaoyi's small one-bedroom apartment, which doubles as her design studio, is overflowing with game magazines, figurines and boxes of sci-fi novels.

The 30-year old game developer is a child of the county's tech boom: she studied at one of China's top universities and her company hit it big with an award-winning game that was published on Nintendo's Switch console and the PC gaming platform Steam, with plans for roll-out on other game platforms.

Now her ambitions - and those of many others across China's giant tech industry - are facing a reckoning, with rising state control over the sector, tightening regulation and a biting trade war with the United States stymieing growth.

"(In 2015) doing a start-up was popular. So many young people set up small businesses, like developing games, and dreamed of making big money as well as being free," she said. "But they found out now it's really unrealistic."

Wang says she has had to abandon for now hopes of releasing the game on new platforms in China, closing the original studio that developed it and working instead on updates with a skeleton crew of freelancers. She has moved from the Beijing tech hub of Zhongguancun to the city's cheaper far-west outskirts to cut costs.

She is not alone. Reuters interviewed a dozen tech industry insiders, from gig economy workers to investors, who said that the boom days of easy returns looked to be over.

Until last year, China's tech industry had enjoyed years of breakneck growth. Firms including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd almost doubled in value in 2017 alone, making big-ticket investments as part of a multi-billion dollar expansion into cloud, offline retail and finance.

But now the market is feeling the pinch. Hiring numbers are down, company margins are thinner and tumbling technology stocks have wiped nearly half a trillion dollars this year from the value of China's top listed tech firms.

The biggest names in tech have flagged concerns, including Alibaba and Baidu Inc, who revised down their full-year sales forecasts in recent weeks on the weaker outlook.

"Investments into the tech space have definitely cooled down, measured by almost every metric: number of deals, deal size or fund raising," said Zhang Chenhao, Shanghai-based Managing Partner at technology-focused Prometheus Fund.

"I think this year is the first time over the last 30 years when greed yields to the fear."

HAND OF THE STATE

The technology sector is facing challenges on all sides.

A broader economic slowdown saw China's third quarter GDP slow to its weakest pace since the global financial crisis. The currency has slid against the dollar and domestic markets are down sharply.

Alongside a series of tit-for-tat trade tariffs, the United States has accused China of stealing technology, barring tech acquisitions by Chinese firms and blacklisting others.

At home, tech companies from social media to gaming and fintech have seen tightening regulation and a heavier hand from the ruling Communist Party.

Gaming and social media giant Tencent has seen its stock price dive by more than 25 percent this year amid a temporary ban on licences for games, its top revenue driver.

At the country's top internet forum in Wuzhen this week, officials signaled they would look to rein in the country's tech giants.

"They can be big but we should also be well-regulated," said Gao Xiang, vice minister of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Thursday.

China's regulators have already cracked down on everything from rude joke apps to livestream bloggers disrespecting national anthem - sending a chill through the free-wheeling and innovative online arena.

"The people who worry about technology is first older people, second government and third successful people, they hate it and worry about it," Alibaba's billionaire executive chairman Jack Ma said at an event in Shanghai last week.

"Normally businesses do innovation and governments talk innovation. In order to protect yesterday's interests... they will say please don't do it."

This year Alibaba has lowered its revenue forecast for the first time since listing in 2014.

Meanwhile, local ride-sharing giant Didi Chuxing, backed by Japan's SoftBank Group Corp, has cut the subsidies it pays to drivers after being forced to shutter its car-pooling services under a plan agreed with regulators following criticism over the murders of two young female passengers in separate incidents.

"(In 2015) I bought my first vehicle because you could earn almost 800 yuan a day with the subsidies," says Huang Sun, who used to drive full-time for the company but now says he only takes rides when he is bored. "Now maybe you can't even earn 200 yuan if you drive all day."

HIRING FREEZE

The chill across the tech industry is reflected in hiring data.

According to statistics released by leading local job website Zhaopin.com, job demand in the IT and internet sector has dropped by 51 percent as of September compared with a year earlier.

Companies have slowed hiring in certain fields, including sales and software development, recruiters and human resources staff at Alibaba and Tencent said, asking not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to press.

Tencent did not respond to a request for comment. Alibaba had no immediate comment.

"In general, they are all reducing headcount, or they're not preparing a very big budget for headhunting," said Mocca Wang, who is the director of the IT industry unit at international recruitment firm Spring Professional, which works with companies like Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu.

Smaller start-ups, a key driver of growth in the sector, are also being squeezed by tighter access to credit.

"These companies can't get capital and can't invest," said Wang. "They're going bankrupt."

China's tech firms are, to be sure, still posting sales growth rates above overseas peers.

Tencent chief Pony Ma told state television in a recent interview that there was still "tremendous potential" in the market, though admitted "there are challenges of various kinds right now".

But the numbers suggest tougher times lie ahead - a worry for China's steeply-valued private tech start-ups and newly-listed firms such as smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp and Tencent-backed food deliver giant Meituan Dianping .

"Before the feeling was that anyone can get funding, that if you throw out words like blockchain, AI, big data and machine learning that would get you funding," said Benjamin Speyer, managing director at Hangzhou-based consultancy Serica.

"Now everyone is a bit more nervous about potentially making a mistake with their money."

Alibaba, whose China commerce sales growth dropped to its lowest rate since 2015 in the last quarter, said it would take less income from its platforms for the near future, effectively subsidizing merchants, in an effort to retain brands on its platform.

Competitor JD.com Inc, which posted a loss last quarter, is seeking to revive profits by outsourcing some of its 2.5 million square meters of warehouse space.

The country's upstart technology workforce are even more keenly aware of the slowdown.

Even as property and living costs continue to rise sharply in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, tech workers say salaries can't keep up.

Beijing-based Liu Wangwei works as a software engineer at one of the country's highest-valued start-ups and rents a two-bedroom apartment because his partially-disabled mother often stays with him.

He said his rent has risen by almost 50 percent since they moved to the area in 2014 and says he is considering moving to another of the company's offices in a smaller city where the government subsidises housing for technology workers.

"I always thought I could join the well-known tech companies and never worry about money," said Liu. "When I was in university our teachers gave us encouragement to be like (Steve) Jobs and Jack Ma. It's not the same as we were promised."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

China girlfriend rental app gets leg up from Lunar New Year demand

BEIJING - As millions in China head home to celebrate the Lunar New Year holiday with their families, 24-year-old Luoluo is busy answering messages on a mobile app from desperate men looking to hire an instant girlfriend whom they can present to mom and dad.

On visits home during the holiday, which kicks off on Friday, single people are often subjected to tough lectures from relatives keen on reinforcing the importance of marriage and securing the family blood line.

Some singles resort to hiring fake girlfriends and boyfriends to appease their parents. But an explosion in smartphone use in recent years means one can now pay for such a date through a handful of mobile apps, with just a few clicks.

"Over 1,000 users on our platform have signed up as dates for hire for the New Year break," Cao Tiantian, founder of date-for-hire app Hire Me Plz, told Reuters.

Subscribers to the app pay from as little as 1 yuan ($0.15) to 1,999 yuan an hour for a dinner date, a chat, a game of mah-jong or even a foot massage.

Prices surge around the time of Lunar New Year, with thousands of attractive twenty-somethings like Luoluo commanding fees of 3,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan a day.

"I'm still seeking people to fill my time slots," said the woman from the southwestern province of Sichuan, who has just two half-day slots left to fill over the next seven days.

"But only those who stay in the same province as me. I don't have time to waste on travel," she added.

Apart from Hire Me Plz, there are five major date-hiring apps in China, which make their money by taking a cut from hires, and also from subscription fees.

"Our business model is still new, though an increasing number of young people have accepted the idea of selling their time as commodity," said Beijing-based Cao, who expects date-rental to become a multi-billion dollar market in five years.

Since its launch in 2015, Hire Me Plz has garnered a user base of 700,000 and 1.7 million followers on Tencent's (0700.HK) WeChat, China's biggest mobile social media network.

Date rentals - offline or online - have drawn criticism in recent years, with some netizens on social media and legal experts questioning the morality and legality of the business.

"There are no clear prohibitions in Chinese laws regarding date rentals. But risks exist among such deals, which may also violate the law to some extent," state-run China News Services this month cited Li Hongzhao, an official of the Beijing Lawyers Association Criminal Law Committee, as saying.

Li said it is sometimes hard to define the boundaries of appropriate intimacy and when an act of intimacy becomes sexual assault.

Sex is not part of the services offered on any of the mobile apps. Prostitution is illegal in China.

Dating services are also offered by individuals on Baidu's (BIDU.O) Tieba classifieds and Tencent's QQ messaging service. But buyers beware - those services provide no identity authentication, unlike the mobile apps.

Hire Me Plz's Cao said the initial aim of her app was to help overcome the problem of loneliness experienced by young people leaving home to work alone in big cities.

"I was seeking a more effective way to ask someone out. Who wants to chat for months via social networks and end up with nothing?"

Elsewhere in Asia, online date-for-hire services are mostly found on website-only platforms, such as Soulmate in South Korea and Pally Asia in Singapore.

Pally Asia, which calls itself a "rent-a-friend" platform, plans to push out an app in the first half of this year.

($1=6.8758 Chinese yuan)

(Additional reporting by Fathin Ungku in SINGAPORE and Nataly Pak in SEOUL; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Asian fans snap up new iPhone but crowds smaller

SYDNEY/SHANGHAI - Apple Inc. fans from Sydney to Tokyo, the first to snap the new iPhone 7 off the shelves, cheered as they left stores on Friday brandishing their purchases, flanked by applauding sales staff.

But underneath the usual fanfare, and despite complaints that the larger size of the new phone and the new jet black colour were sold out, crowds were smaller than in past years.

Some 200 people were gathered in Sydney light drizzle for the privilege of being the first worldwide to hold an iPhone 7. Apple will launch in its key Asian market China later on Friday.

"It feels great to be the first in the world to have the iPhone 7. It was 100 percent worth it," said Marcus Barsoum, a 16-year-old "diehard Apple fan" who spent two nights camped outside the Sydney store.

Weary but elated, Barsoum charged in to the store at 8 a.m. to the cheers of Apple staff. He emerged with a matte black iPhone 7 although he had wanted a 7 plus in jet black.

Dale Adams, who works at J.P. Morgan in Sydney, arrived only 15 minutes before the store opened and was able to buy a 7 Plus, having ordered it online more than a week ago.

"I'm certainly not one of the hardcore Apple fans but I think the bigger capacity, better battery, better camera, that's enough to make the jump," he said.

Chatter about the launch on Chinese microblog Weibo has been far more muted than when the iPhone 6 debuted in 2014. An index of searches on Baidu Inc, China's equivalent of Google, shows the new phone lagging both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 5.

Sales in China will be the acid test for Apple's year ahead: the mega success of the iPhone 6 in China drove sales last year, while the slower-burn 6S contributed to Apple's first global revenue drop in over a decade earlier this year.

Stores open in China later on Friday, a holiday.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Baidu Japan offers app to replay recordings on Android devices

TOKYO - Baidu Japan Inc. said Monday it has released a Japanese-language application that replays voice recordings on devices running on the Android operating system.

The new Simeji ver. 5.3 app can replay recordings of up to 15 seconds via e-mail and social networking services such as Twitter and Facebook, according to the Japanese arm of Baidu Inc., China's largest Internet search engine operator.

source: abs-cbnnews.com

Dell and Baidu team up for tablets, mobiles

SHANGHAI - Dell Inc and China's top search engine Baidu Inc plan to jointly develop tablet computers and mobile phones, targeting the Chinese market dominated by Apple Inc and Lenovo.

China is one of the fastest growing markets for tablets and is home to more than 900 million mobile phone subscribers, but analysts were skeptical that the partnership would unseat Apple as the dominant force in the market.

"I suspect this is just Dell, who has a lot of problems on the mobile and tablet front, grasping at straws to get any kind of publicity that it can to make its product more attractive," said Michael Clendenin, managing director of technology consultancy RedTech Advisors.

"Ultimately in China, I still think it is Apple's game, still for the iPad and iPhone."

Dell declined to give a timeline for the launch of the devices, but local media reported on Tuesday, quoting sources, that it may be as early as November.

Baidu launched a new mobile application platform last week and offered a glimpse of its upcoming mobile operating system, which it hopes will serve a growing number of users accessing the Internet from smartphones and tablet computers.

The company said it already had partnerships with Dell and other device makers and declined to comment on the new tie-up. Dell said the partnership with Baidu involved the company's new mobile platform.

Baidu has built on its dominance of China's search market significantly since Google's high-profile exit last year citing hacking and censorship concerns.

Baidu's Nasdaq-listed shares are up nearly 50 percent so far this year, giving it a market value of around $50 billion.

BUSY SPACE

A Dell-Baidu tie-up would be the latest in a series of developments reshaping the mobile devices market.

Last month, Google said it would buy Motorola Mobility Holdings for $12.5 billion, putting Google into a lower-margin manufacturing business and pitting it against as many as 38 other handset companies that use Google's Android software.

"Dell has got nothing to lose. They don't have a big mobile presence, so by partnering Baidu, they will probably get some momentum for their mobile products," said Sandy Shen, a research director with Gartner.

Dell has chosen China to launch new products before. In June, Dell said it had chosen to launch its new 10-inch Android tablet in China this summer, passing up on a U.S. and European launch, in a sign of the market's growing importance to the company.

Dell's China sales grew 22 percent in the first quarter while its retail presence in China exceeds 10,000 sales points.

In 2009, Dell announced it will enter the smartphone market starting in China before moving into Brazil. -- Reuters

Source: gmanews.tv