Uncategorized

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China Unicom keeps on serving ads without permission

While driving commuting between home and the office I always work in my car through a 3G connection. The connection is normally fine, but what gets on my nerves are the ads that China Unicom keeps on serving. No full screen China Telecom ads anymore like a year ago, but some still cover half the screen. At least they go away after a few seconds – so quickly that you can’t even take a screenshot.

Yesterday I was driving home when I checked Spil Games’ Arabic site DailyGame.com. I opened the site and noticed a big pop-up on the lower right side. Knowing that Spil Games does not sell pop ups on its sites I knew right away that this was once again an illegal China Unicom action. To make things worse the pop-up did not disappear automatically and even caused my browser to crash (Chrome, not Firefox). At least it gave me the opportunity to take a screen shot.

This just reminded me of a picture that one of my blog readers sent me: http://www.startinchina.com/components/com_jd-wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/china_telecom_ads.jpg

So at least the pop-ups are smaller now…

Football and religion

On the day of the final of the football world cup a lot of people in The Netherlands were overjoyed that the Dutch team made it to the finals. But some went a bit (too) far: in the YouTube video above a Dutch priest turns the Sunday mass into some sort of football party. At first I thought it was a practical joke, but it seems to have been a real event. What I read in the Dutch press is that the Catholic church authorities were not amused and suspended the priest.

I don’t really have an opinion on this. For me religion, and the Catholic church in particular, is one big act already and at least this is a play that many people can relate to. But I can also understand the church authorities who feel their power over the church (and over the few remaining people who are still going to church) slipping through their fingers. As an outsider it’s funny to observe and I had a good laugh watching the semi-serious church goers in the clip. Maybe I should put the video on Tudou, I wonder what the Chinese would say about it.

The coming brain drain: Is Shanghai becoming too expensive?

For the third time this year a staff member at Spil Games Asia resigned because he/she could not afford the cost of living in Shanghai anymore. Our salary level is not low compared to many other companies, but it turns out that the cost of living in Shanghai is so high that for some people it just does not make sense to stay anymore.

Housing prices are the main culprit. If you bought a house a few years ago things are fine, prices have doubled or tripled over the past years so you are safe. But if you rent in order to save some money to pay the down payment for a future mortgage you are out of luck. Housing prices in the city are so high now that people with normal salaries can hardly afford them anymore.

So what we are seeing now is that people are moving to other cities. The first person that resigned this year for financial reasons received an offer from a good Internet company in a smaller city on the East coast. With a similar salary he could get himself decent housing there, but in Shanghai he would never be able to afford that. The second one decided to become a civil servant in his hometown. The pay would be a lot less, but in the end he would have more spending power (and probably an easier life). Yesterday a third person resigned to move back to her hometown with her husband. Again housing prices in Shanghai were the main reason.

People who are originally from Shanghai normally won’t leave because they have their roots here, but people who come from cities in inland China are now starting to go back. It always happens after they have stayed in Shanghai for some time and realize they basically have no future here. If you can’t even afford a house how can you start a family here? It’s the same trend as the one for migrant workers 2 years ago, they also left the coastal regions to go back home. There are more opportunities in inland China now and you only need a fraction of your Shanghai income to have the same quality of life.

This means a brain drain for cities like Shanghai, but it’s probably good for China as a whole. The distribution of knowledge will be more even and this will help the development of the non-coastal areas. It may cause some problems for companies because it puts an upward pressure on salaries for experienced staff. You are still able to find (or keep) people as long as you are willing to pay, but for top people salaries now already come close to those in Europe.

Android will dominate China’s mobile market

My colleague Richard Yu wrote a good article on TechCrunch about future of the mobile market in China. His prediction is that Android will win the mobile wars in China and become the biggest platform by far. I fully agree with him, see for example the last paragraph of this blog post that I wrote a few days ago.

The fears that because Android was originally developed by Google it can never win here are unfounded:

(…) officially sanctioned versions of Android are flourishing, starting with last year

Video of Elaine walking

Two days ago I blogged about Elaine starting to walk and put a picture of her taking her first steps online. My wife just told me that she actually filmed Elaine and me in the supermarket and she put the video on Tudou.

A video says a lot more than a picture: Elaine is not a steady walker yet, she almost falls a few times and also her walking speed changes constantly (fast-slow-fast etc.). A nice memory, within a few weeks she’ll be running around without allowing me to hold her hand. The video is embedded below, if you can’t see it you can also watch it here on Tudou.

Mobile Internet booming in China

Today CNNIC (China Network Information Center) published its half yearly Internet statistics (pdf, in Chinese). As expected the total number of Internet users kept on growing and there are now 420 million Chinese online. Almost everybody has access to broadband, the penetration rate is over 98%.

But what’s actually even more interesting is the number of people that go online on a mobile device. At the end of June 2010 there were almost 277 million mobile Internet users in China. That is more than the total number of people that are online in the US. Amazing how this number is growing (44 million new users over the past 6 months), and I think it’s just the beginning. Phones with wifi only now start to appear on the Chinese market (for a long time phones were not allowed to have wifi here) and also 3G is taking off after it was launched in 2009.

CNNIC also published what people are actually doing on a mobile device. So far it’s still mainly low bandwidth usage, such as instant messaging and search. But Internet applications that need a higher connection speed are growing fast. According to the report 20% of all mobile Internet users now already watches online video on a mobile (Tudou has an exclusive deal with China Mobile where people can watch and upload unlimited videos for just RMB 6 per month) and 21% now play mobile online games.

I expect these figures to grow very quickly over the next year. Especially the announcement of MTK to start producing cheap Android chips for China’s ubiquitous shanzai phones means that very soon inexpensive Android smart phones will appear on the Chinese market. This likely means that Android will become the standard mobile operating system in China, and it will also help to further boost the mobile internet. Exciting opportunities ahead for entrepreneurs!

Elaine starts walking & knows how to say iPad

About 10 days ago Elaine took her first steps without any help. Just 2 steps, after that someone had to catch her. But she is learning very quickly, because today I took the kids to the City Supermarket after work and Elaine walked around everywhere. I still had to hold her hand in case she would lose her balance, something that happened every couple of steps, but most of the time she was basically walking without my help. I love my little girl!

Scott was not so happy that Elaine was suddenly getting all attention. To protest he decided to sit in Elaine’s stroller and he refused to get out. I tried to carry him but he was stubborn and completely ignored me. Luckily I figured out a trick for this: after I told him that the stroller was now a race car (making fast turns and race car sounds) he was a happy boy right away again and forgot all about the fact that he was supposed to be unhappy with us. Scott is a great little boy, I am so happy to have him around every day.

Another interesting thing that I happened this week had to do with Elaine’s vocabulary. She knows about 100 words I think, mainly Chinese ones but also a couple of Dutch ones. But yesterday she surprised me when I came home an she said something like “papa eye bat”. At first I did not realize what she was trying to tell me, until I noticed that she was pointing at my iPad. She is just 13 months old and now already asks for my iPad, she is a real Apple fan girl! When I give it to her she knows which button to push to turn it on, how to swipe to go the home screen and how to launch her favorite app. To me it proves that the Apple UI (=user interface) is the most intuitive in the world and that the iPad is the perfect toy for all ages.

My latest gadget: Concept 2 rowing machine

When I do sports in Shanghai I normally only run on my treadmill or occasionally do a spinning work-out. I felt something was missing in my exercise regime and so I decided to invest some money in a good rowing machine. After a bit of research I found that the best rowing machine on the market is probably the Concept 2, so I decided to order their latest model.

I have the machine for about 2 weeks now and I am very happy with it. It makes a lot less noise than the Concept 2 rowing machines that I used while in university (I did a bit of rowing there, but to be honest I spent more time in the bar of the rowing association than in a boat). Furthermore, on the Model E that I bought you sit much higher than on a conventional rower, so it feels much better. The computer display that is part of the machine is quite sophisticated, it does a lot more than measuring your time, speed and distance. There are some games on it for example and you can save your work-outs to a computer. Pretty cool stuff.

Scott also likes the machine. When I use it he laughs really loud, like I am a clown (I probably am in his eyes, sliding up and down on a seat while pulling a chain). But after 2 minutes he gets bored and tells me in Dutch that I should stop. If I don’t do that he tries to stop me by grabbing the rowing chain, which is quite dangerous. So from now on I only row with the door to the gym closed and him on the other side of the door. When I am not rowing he likes to slide the seat from the back to the front, for him the machine is just a big toy – like most things around him!

If you live in Shanghai and want to buy a Concept 2 machine as well you can buy it from http://www.concept2china.com/en/how-buy. Mine was delivered within a day and for a small fee (RMB 200) they also installed the machine for me.