Need mobile-first startups? Go to China - William Bao Bean

William Bao Bean

With 700 million mobile internet users China is a fertile ground for mobile-first startups, says William Bao Bean, managing director of the ChinaAccelerator in the Korean Herald. And “In China, there is always a way,” Bean said.

The Korean Herald:

China is the second-biggest start-up market and the leading “mobile-first” (first encounter with Internet via mobile) market in the world, said William Bao Bean, partner at global accelerator program SOS Ventures in Beijing. 

“There’s a lot of innovation coming up in China, which is particularly useful in (introducing products to) other emerging mobile-first markets,” he added. 

There are foreign start-ups across many different industries, such as games, education, business-to-business and hardware. 

Bean said foreign start-ups in China are mostly concentrated in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, although there is a small number of start-ups for gaming in Chengdu and for hardware in Shenzhen. 

Foreigners do not need a visa to set up and can later obtain work visas through their own company. 

However, setting up in China is heavily dependent on hiring agents, which is not legally required but “you’d be an idiot not to use one,” due to their ability to circumvent many start-up restrictions. 

“In China, there is always a way,” Bean said.

More in the Korean Herald.

William Bao Bean is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´ request form.

Are you looking for more innovation experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Check out this list.  

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Mobile innovation, coming from China - William Bao Bean

William Bao Bean

Are you still looking for ways to monetize quality content? Watch China, says managing director William Bao Bean of the ChinaAccelerator in Analyse Asia. Mobile applications in China are on average 2 to 3 years ahead of the US, he tells. Mobile commerce 3.0 is highly social, very competitive and does away with the classic ways of making money through advertising. China can focus on mobile innovation, because it has a home-base of 700 million mobile users.

Because now larger internet companies like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are around, Chinese startups have more exit possibility than going IPO, making their opportunities larger.

Listen here to the full episode

More at Analyse Asia.

William Bao Bean is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´ request form.

Are you looking for more experts on innovation at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.      

Integration key for Nokia - Benjamin Joffe

Benjamin Joffe

Nokia faces stiff local competition from domestic phone makers in China, and key for its success is the integration of services like social networks and ecommerce, tells strategy consultant Benjamin Joffe in "InFlexWeTrust."

“Nokia faces very stiff high-quality competition including local phone makers who offer a mobile experience plugged into all sorts of services,” said Benjamin Joffe, who runs strategy consulting firm Plus Eight Star in Beijing. “So it depends how good an integration they can do with services like social networks and e-commerce.” 

China’s biggest social media platforms already support Windows Phone. Renren Inc., a social networking service, is listed on the Windows Phone Marketplace, as is Sina Corp.’s Sina Weibo, a microblogging service, and the QQ instant messaging system from Tencent Holdings Ltd. 

Renren and Sina have worked with phone maker HTC Corp. (2498) to offer handsets with preloaded apps and in some cases special buttons to access the services, while companies such as Xiaomi Corp., which sells high-end handsets running a customized version of Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android for less than half the price of an iPhone 4S, aim to make money later on software and services.

More InFlexWeTrust.

Benjamin Joffe is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

A massage job and a laptop in Henan - Tricia Wang

Tricia Wang

Sociologist Tricia Wang reports on a massage worker in Henan, an interview she had while investigating migrant workers and the way they use mobiles, computers and other communication tools. They are fully part of daily life, Tricia Wang describes on her weblog.

Tricia Wang:

Her husband works as a miner in Guizhou, she works as a masseuse in Changsha, Hunan. They see each other 1 time a year and have a 1 and half year old daughter who they have seen once since she was born. Her husband's mom takes care of her. When they went home during Chinese New Years, her mother-in-law  told her daughter to call her, "mommy." Though, when her baby cried or smiled, she looked to her mother-in-law, and not her or her husband.  I asked if this made her feel sad, she said, 

"what does it matter? sure I feel sad, but back in our town this is normal. Everyone has their parents raise their baby. We all work in cities far away." 

She uses a feature Nokia phone & only texts on it. She bought a laptop so that she could chat with her husband when he goes to the Internet cafe. She uses wifi from another office downstairs. The massage boss has wifi but put a password on it when he saw workers streaming movies when they were resting. During breaks, everyone does their laptop out and they joke that they could open up an internet cafe. She locks her computer up downstairs when working and sleeps with it next to her in the dorms because things get stolen all the time.

More on Tricia Wang's weblog.

Tricia Wang is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.    

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Looking for the bad guys, the shanzai story - Tricia Wang

Tricia Wang

Sociologist Tricia Wang discusses what is holding back China's computing industry from creating disruptive innovation. The lack of a common story that binds the industry, is one of a set of shortcomings, she argues on her weblog. Perhaps with the exception of mobile: shanzai.

Tricia Wang:

I would like to point out an interesting story that comes from the mobile industry, the story of shanzai. What started out as a response from a few rogue mobile hardware producers in Southern China who wanted to avoid paying the government taxes on handset producers, has now spawned a whole industry of shanzai products that goes beyond the original definition of being cheap copies of existing products. Shanzai mobile makers did what Nokia, HTC, Samsung, and Motorola could not do - they met the user needs of millions of new cell[phone users (more on this topic from me). By working outside of the dominant infrastructure of mobile producers, shanzai makers went wild with producing mobile phones with new features that were relevant for low-end users. Shanzai mobiles has give the low-end market, that was once dominated by Nokia, a greater number of choices in mobiles at a lower cost. Shanzai is still in the process of moving beyond the perception of being a copy culture to a bottom-up innovation culture, so it is not a story that is embraced by the programming community at large right now. 

All stories need a good enemy. For shanzai makers in China, it was the government that levied oppressive taxes. For hackers in the West, is was the education system that tried to prevent them from exploring self-directed learning. So who are the bad guys in the eyes of Chinese programmers?

More on Tricia Wang's weblog  

More about Tricia Wang, exploring China's digital underbelly in Storify.

Tricia Wang is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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The mismatch between mobile platforms and ad agencies - William Bao Bean

William Bao Bean

Mobile might be the next big thing in China, both mobile platforms and ad agencies have still a hard time to find each other, tells William Bao Bean, Managing Director Singtel Innov8, in AdAge. AdAge:

"The vast majority of [ad] agencies out there don't know what they're doing on the mobile side in China, and the mobile platforms themselves are not being particularly helpful either," said William Bao Bean, managing director in China for Singtel Innov8, a venture capital fund set up by Singapore Telecommunications. "The issue is that they don't have a context to engage with mobile advertising, they don't have a platform to help manage it, and they don't have measurement."

More in AdAge

William Bao Bean is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch, or fill in our speakers' request form.

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