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Chinese Fashion Expo Inks JV Agreement With UBM Asia (chinasourcingnews.com)



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Chinese Fashion Expo Inks JV Agreement With UBM Asia (chinasourcingnews.com)


March 7, 2013 | By Editorial Staff

http://www.chinasourcingnews.com/2013/03/07/024716-chinese-fashion-expo-inks-jv-agreement-with-ubm-asia/


UBM Asia has signed a binding agreement with NOVO Mania Limited, the organizer of NOVOMANIA, to acquire the annual urban fashion event in Shanghai.
Upon completion, UBM will own 60% of a joint venture company, with NOVO Mania Limited, called UBM Novomania, to organize NOVOMANIA from 2013 onwards.
Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
NOVOMANIA was launched in 2010 as an annual urban fashion event by the NOVO group of companies, a retailing and fashion conglomerate based in Hong Kong that operates and distributes over 50 international brands and has stores across 45 cities in China, and one of its partners, Focus Workshop, an innovative full service agency in China with expertise in luxury brands in beauty and wellness, fashion, real estate and FMCG. By bringing together designers, brands, buyers, distributors, retailers, franchisees, department stores, mall operators, real estate developers and the media, it creates a platform for introducing retail concepts to international brands which are seeking to enter the China market and for providing new business opportunities for domestic brands.
This year, Novomania will be held from July 17 – 19 at Shanghai Mart.


WeChat Lead Says They’d Monetize the Official Accounts Platform First (technode.com)


By Tracey Xiang on March 6, 2013

http://technode.com/2013/03/06/wechat-lead-says-theyd-monetize-the-official-accounts-platform-first/


Alen Zhang, lead of WeChat (Weixin in Chinese) and vice president of Tencent, gives some ideas in an interview on what were widely speculated by the public and media about the cannot-be-hotter mobile app, such as why there hasn’t been a version for iPad. Of course, monetization is an unavoidable topic. But he didn’t say social games or micro-payments service which Pony Ma, CEO of Tencent, told the WSJ yesterday.
Monetizing official accounts
“Why would I build the official accounts platform? It has monetization potential. It’s possible that, when it works, not only does it can be monetized, but also doesn’t annoy users. What’s even better is (users) would like to pay for services. That’s good approach to monetization.”
The platform performs well on its own. A handful of WeChat official accounts have started featuring display ads within articles sent to their readers daily. Brands who are trying to do social marketing with the platform also see it a good medium for interacting with consumers. Some merchants claimed that they did see traffic from WeChat converted into transactions. It is reported that Sina Weibo is testing a similar platform enabling media Weibo accounts to send out rich-media posts, which is seen as Sina’s feeling pressured by WeChat’s official accounts program.
But Zhang doesn’t mention how to but only says they “don’t want monetization to conflict with user experience. It’s necessary that monetization must hurt user experience. There’s a possibility and that’s our goal”.
“Shake” to access everything
WeChat 4.5, the latest version launched last month, added shake-to-search-for-a-song feature. It functions like music recognition services like Shazam but takes advantage of the shake gesture. Prior to this version, users could shake to find users nearby who also shake their phones or shake to transfer web pages from PCs.
Alen Zhang sees “shake” fit well in mobile Internet as it doesn’t require users to type in anything. He mentions a couple of scenarios for shaking to interact: 1) the official WeChat account of a TV program would show up on your phone screen with a shake when you are watching the program; 2) The detailed information of an ad could be sent to a phone after a shake.
Voice-enabled features are self-developed.
It was speculated that the voice-related functions were enabled by iflytek, a well-known voice technology company. Mr. Zhang, corrected that all those features were developed in house by a team of over thirty engineers (The whole WeChat team consists of over two hundred).
Why no iPad app?
“…for iPad is more used in WiFi environments. So, it may happen that users who sign up to WeChat with iPads may not receive messages immediately after the other side sends some out. The experience must be terrible. That would lose the benefit of ‘always-online’. However it doesn’t mean we’d not roll out a version for iPad. If we’d do one, it must be that we’d have thought through, other than adding one for one more device.”
What’s WeChat?
“How you use it decides what exactly it is to you”, he says.


Suntech Falls 3.3% As Uncertainty Clouds Future Of Former Solar Industry Icon (forbes.com)


3/07/2013

http://www.forbes.com/sites/russellflannery/2013/03/07/powering-down-suntech-falls-3-3-as-uncertainty-clouds-future-of-former-industry-icon/


Shares in Suntech Power Holdings fell 3.3% in trading at the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday amid a dispute over control of the company’s chairmanship and uncertainty about how one of the world’s largest suppliers of solar panels will handle a $541 million convertible bond issue maturing this month.
Following word on Monday that the Wuxi, China-based company had named former Solectron executive Susan Wang as its chairwoman, founder Shi Zhengrong issued his own statement on Tuesday calling the move “unlawful.”
Shi, a China-born Australian national, returned home after earning a Ph.D. there to become one of the best–known faces of the country’s solar energy industry in the past decade, appearing on the Forbes Billionaires List and Forbes Asia’s “Heroes of Philanthropy” list.
However, the industry has of late been plagued by excess supplies, heavy losses, and financial problems among Western governments that can’t afford to subsidize solar purchases. Suntech’s market capitalization yesterday stood at $211 million. Other one-time U.S-listed Chinese solar stars such as Yingli and LDK have also suffered big price declines.

Politics & Law
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