Alibaba Tackles Amazon, eBay on Home Turf; Chinese Giant’s New U.S. Shopping Website Looks to Become Platform for Small Merchants

Alibaba Tackles Amazon, eBay on Home Turf

Chinese Giant’s New U.S. Shopping Website Looks to Become Platform for Small Merchants

JURO OSAWA

Updated June 11, 2014 2:38 p.m. ET

China’s Alibaba Group Holding launched a U.S. shopping website called 11 Main, in what could be its biggest foray into the market dominated by the likes of Amazon and eBay. Brian Fitzgerald joins MoneyBeat.

China’s Alibaba Group Holding launched a U.S. shopping website, in what would be its biggest foray into the home turf of e-commerce giants Amazon.com Inc.AMZN +0.84% and eBay Inc. EBAY +1.20%

The 11 Main marketplace hosts more than 1,000 merchants in categories such as clothing, fashion accessories and jewelry as well as interior goods and arts and crafts and it plans to keep adding more, the company said.

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Nintendo, hurt by three straight years of operating losses and abandoned by big outside publishers, is looking to Link, Mario, and other beloved characters to help salvage its struggling Wii U console.

Nintendo Looks to Popular Characters to Help Salvage Wii U Console

Gaming Giant Describes New Installments of Franchises at Conference

MAYUMI NEGISHI

June 11, 2014 12:04 p.m. ET

LOS ANGELES— Nintendo Co. 7974.TO -1.88% , hurt by three straight years of operating losses and abandoned by big outside publishers, is looking to Link, Mario, and other beloved characters to help salvage its struggling Wii U console. Read more of this post

Free Wi-Fi is new battleground for China’s internet giants

Free Wi-Fi is new battleground for China’s internet giants

Staff Reporter

2014-06-11

Free Wi-Fi service is expected to become the next battleground for China’s internet giants, who are trying to tap into the online-to-offline (O2O) market, the Shanghai-based National Business Daily reports.

Alipay, the third-party payment service operated by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, recently announced a partnership with Wi-Fi service provider WiTown, under which the two companies will help vendors establish Wi-Fi services at their stores. The Wi-Fi will be offered to customers free of charge. Read more of this post

Hon Hai to transform into technology services company and will provide total solutions from content creation to information management, cloud storage and data transmission

Hon Hai to transform into technology services company

CNA

2014-06-11

Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, a main supplier of Apple, is set to transform itself into a technology services company to meet consumer demand and has no intention of launching own-branded products.

Hon Hai, better known as Foxconn Technology Group, will provide total solutions from content creation to information management, cloud storage and data transmission, Terry Gou told reporters Tuesday at the Global Device Summit, part of the Mobile Asia Expo in Shanghai. Read more of this post

Yu’ebao hits 100 million subscriber mark

Yu’ebao hits 100 million subscriber mark

Staff Reporter

2014-06-11

Over the past year since its launch on June 13, 2013, Yu’ebao, an online public fund operated by Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group, has had a revolutionary effect on China’s public funds and even the overall financial market, reports the Beijing-based Economic Information Daily.

Yu’ebao’s performance has beaten expectations, having reached 81 million subscribers and 500 billion yuan (US$80.3 billion) as of the end of February, the latter the fourth largest among money funds worldwide. The scale climbed further to 541.3 billion yuan (US$86.9 billion) as of March 31 and the number of subscribers has now topped 100 million, the paper said. Thanks to the contribution of Yu’ebao, the total capacity of China’s public fund market has surged 40% year-on-year to 3.4 trillion yuan (US$551 billion). Read more of this post

The founder and chairman of Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, the world’s largest contract maker of electronic goods, urged the establishment of a “smart society” that incorporates devices with services

Hon Hai’s Gou calls for creation of ‘smart society’

CNA

2014-06-11

The founder and chairman of Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, the world’s largest contract maker of electronic goods, urged Tuesday the establishment of a “smart society” that incorporates devices with services.

Addressing the Global Device Summit as part of the Mobile Asia Expo in Shanghai, Terry Gou said people need a smart and connected society because devices alone cannot meet people’s demands. Read more of this post

Big retail can’t compete with India’s corner shops-but online grocery sites have a chance

Big retail can’t compete with India’s corner shops—but online grocery sites have a chance

By Shruti Chakraborty 6 hours ago

India’s modern retail chains are struggling to get customers to buy food from their stores. It’s tough to compete with the corner shop where the cashier knows your name, your tastes, and allows you to settle bills once a month.

Corner shops should beware, though, of the online grocery. Read more of this post

Alibaba to buy out UCWeb in China’s ‘biggest’ internet merger

Alibaba to buy out UCWeb in China’s ‘biggest’ internet merger

2:21am EDT

By Paul Carsten

BEIJING (Reuters) – Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said on Wednesday it will buy all the remaining shares of mobile browser firm UCWeb in the biggest merger in Chinese internet history, as the e-commerce giant steps up its spending spree ahead of its U.S. listing.

Alibaba’s latest deal, hot on the heels of a string of investments which already total $4.8 billion in the past six months, will be larger even than Baidu’s $1.9 billion acquisition of 91 Wireless last year, Alibaba said. Read more of this post

Uber-Like GrabTaxi Takes Harvard Plan Into Southeast Asia

Uber-Like GrabTaxi Takes Harvard Plan Into Southeast Asia

By Siddharth Philip on 12:57 pm Jun 10, 2014

Anthony Tan was a student at Harvard Business School when a classmate pulled him aside to gripe about how hard it was to hail a cab in Malaysia.

“What’s wrong with your taxi system?” said Tan, recalling the complaint about his country three years ago. “Your great- grandfather was a taxi driver, your grandfather started the Japanese auto industry in Malaysia, so do something about it.” Read more of this post

Rebooting Mindtree: Not Thinking ‘Mid-tier’ Any More

Rebooting Mindtree: Not Thinking ‘Mid-tier’ Any More

by Debojyoti Ghosh | Jun 10, 2014

After hitting $100 million in revenue in its first six years, Mindtree lost its way. The IT services firm, though, can still catch up with the big league, but it will first have to stop thinking ‘mid-tier’

As Krishnakumar Natarajan, popularly known as KK, walks into the headquarters of Mindtree in Bangalore, he greets everyone with a humility that colleagues and clients across 14 countries have come to recognise him for. The former chairman of Nasscom, and the CEO and MD of Mindtree, the $500 million IT services firm he co-founded and helped build from ground up, is never too busy for his staff, be it to answer questions, address complaints or extend a warm handshake. Read more of this post

E-tailers growth ensnared in India’s logistics jungle

E-tailers growth ensnared in India’s logistics jungle

Tue, Jun 10 2014

By Nandita Bose

MUMBAI, June 10 (Reuters) – Online retailers jostling for a chunk of India’s $13 billion e-commerce trade are so desperate to avoid snarled roads and inefficient railways that they fly their packages in the passenger cabin of costly commercial flights. The cargo, however, often gets bumped off.

India’s largest domestic e-tailer Flipkart as well as bigger global rivals like Amazon and eBay Inc are widening their supplier networks or racing to build multi-million dollar logistics networks to circumvent crumbling infrastructure, keen to attract customers by shrinking delivery times to same-day or even as short as nine hours. Read more of this post

SingTel to Buy Two Digital Ad Companies for $359M

SingTel to Buy Two Digital Ad Companies

SingTel to Buy U.S.-Based Companies for $359 Million

P.R. VENKAT

June 10, 2014 9:00 p.m. ET

SINGAPORE— SingTel, Z74.SG 0.00% Southeast Asia’s largest telecommunications company, will buy two U.S.-based digital advertising companies for $359 million, as it seeks to expand its footprint in the highly lucrative digital ad market. Read more of this post

Infosys Comeback Seen as Having a Long Way to Go

Infosys Comeback Seen as Having a Long Way to Go

Ex-Chairman’s Return Brings a Vision and Boost, But Executives Leave and Growth is Slow

DHANYA ANN THOPPIL

June 10, 2014 11:04 a.m. ET

BANGALORE, India—One year after coming out of retirement to try to revive revenue growth at Indian IT outsourcing company Infosys Ltd. 500209.BY +1.78% ,N.R. Narayana Murthy still has a long way to go, analysts and investors say. Read more of this post

Huawei tries to be a healthy “sapling” in competition with “big trees”: interview

Huawei tries to be a healthy “sapling” in competition with “big trees”: interview

LOS ANGELES, June 9 (Xinhua) — Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd, a Shenzhen-based Chinese telecommunication giant, is trying to get more business momentum in the U.S. market by joining hands with local partners.

“By continuously strengthening cooperation with local partners, Huawei is gradually expanding the visibility and credibility in the U.S. market”, said Shen Jingyang (Victor Shen), the CEO of Huawei Enterprise USA Inc. Read more of this post