|
News feed
Bite-sized news updates on China’s tech world
Thursday, July 14
- China’s media regulator, the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA), issued 67 gaming licenses for July on Tuesday. It is the third batch of gaming licenses issued since NPPA resumed issuing those licenses in April after an eight-month freeze. There are 64 titles for mobile platforms, six for PCs, and one for PlayStation 5. ByteDance’s action game title for mobile platforms appeared on the licensed list, developed with Unreal Engine 4. On the Chinese gaming review platform TapTap, 200,000 players are looking forward to playing this title. The approval also included a simulation game title, Infinity Kingdom, from a notable gaming firm, Yoozoo Games. The title was first launched overseas last year with a 4.8 out of 5 rating on App Store in the US. [NPPA, in Chinese]
- Chinese tech unicorn ByteDance is on a hiring spree related to chip development, according to a Wednesday report by Chinese media outlet China Star Market. The company has recently filled or is looking to fill titles covering semiconductor fields such as system on chip (SoC) and core design, analysis of model performance, and chip security, the report states. ByteDance’s chip team has three sectors – server chips, AI chips, and imaging chips. According to China Star Market, the new head of server chips was previously a senior employee at Qualcomm, while the report also claims ByteDance has recently poached staff from Huawei’s Hisilicon and Arm to develop its own independent chips. [China Star Market, in Chinese]
- Brazilian ride-hailing company 99 revealed on Tuesday that it plans to begin testing electric vehicles tailor-made by Chinese automaker BYD for car-hailing services. The trials will launch this week in Sao Paulo, with the firm planning to gradually deploy more than 300 EVs as part of its fleet by the end of 2022. A major rival to Uber in Latin America and a subsidiary of Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi, 99 has set a goal to put 10,000 EVs on the roads by 2025. Didi has had a long-time alliance with BYD, with the two companies co-launching an EV model specifically for ride-hailing services in November 2020. [Reuters]
- On Tuesday, the Shanghai municipal government released a detailed five-year plan for developing the city’s digital economy, following guidelines set out in the country’s five-year digital economy plan issued by the state council. The city aims to increase the value of the digital economy by RMB 3 trillion ($446 billion) by the end of 2025, with aims to have it account for more than 60% of the city’s overall economy. In one section about cultivating new data elements, the guidelines say that it supports top companies exploring and establishing NFT trading platforms, promoting Shanghai as one of the first Chinese cities to test NFT digital assets and related industries. In a section on digital infrastructure, the guidelines also support metaverse-related businesses, such as research into core technologies like avatars, virtual reality, mixed reality, and 3D scanning, as well as cultivating virtual live shows, virtual idols, and other forms of digital entertainment. [Shanghai Municipal Government, in Chinese]
Friday, July 15
- Chipmaker TSMC announced on Thursday that its revenue increased by 43.5% to NT$534.1 billion ($18.2 billion) in the second quarter of this year, achieving expectations set by the firm. TSMC’s net profit increased by 76.4% year-on-year and 16.9% quarter-on-quarter to NT$237 billion. Revenues from advanced chip-making accounted for half of the company’s net profit. Meanwhile, revenue from IoT and automobile sectors grew fastest with a 14% quarter-on-quarter increase. The firm also revealed its guidance for the third quarter of this year, with expectations to reach $19.8 to $20.6 billion in revenue. TSMC confirmed it would bring 3 nm chip-making tech into volume production in the second half of this year, with expectations for it to start paying back beginning in the first half of 2023, Wei Zhejia, CEO of TSMC, said on the company’s earnings call. He added that enhanced 3 nm tech will be introduced for volume production a year later, with these 3 nm chips mainly serving smartphones and high-performance computing devices. [TSMC, press release]
- JD Group announced on Thursday that it has completed the acquisition of China Logistics Property Holdings (CLPH), which delisted from the Hong Kong stock exchange on Friday. Before the acquisition, JD owned 10.64% of CLPH’s shares. JD first announced the acquisition plan last September, aiming to buy a further 26.38% of the company. It has since expanded the offer to all holders of issued shares and convertible bonds at HK$4.35 ($0.55) per share, due to the exchange’s rule on mandatory acquisition when the acquirer owns 30% of the voting rights. The total purchase price could rise to about HK$16.4 billion. Founded in 2000, CLPH is one of the largest logistics infrastructure developers and operators in China, owning 41 logistics centers and 190 items of logistics infrastructure across 21 Chinese regions, according to its website. By the end of 2021, CLPH’s assets were worth RMB 24.83 billion. [Caixin, in Chinese]
- Alibaba is letting go of more than a third of the staff in its investment team, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter. The e-commerce giant has one of the most robust corporate venture capital teams among the Chinese tech giants. It plans to reduce the strategic investment team of more than 110 people to about 70, with the cuts mainly affecting mid-level and senior people in mainland China according to the report. In mid-January, ByteDance sent shockwaves through the Chinese investment circle by dissolving its strategic investment team and reassigning 100 staff. Chinese tech giants are currently downsizing their investment units after nurturing promising startups for more than a decade. [Reuters]
|
