Tencent Invests in Glu Mobile

According to Seeking Alpha, “Along with its Q1 results, Glu Mobile has announced that Chinese gaming/messaging giant Tencent investing $126M in the company through the purchase of 21M shares at $6 apiece. Tencent will own approximately 15% of Glu once the deal closes, and Glu will have a $190M cash balance.With Tencent’s WeChat mobile messaging platform (~500M MAUs) nearly ubiquitous in China and the company claiming a massive share of the Chinese online/mobile gaming market, the alliance could significantly increase the Chinese reach of Glu’s games. Tencent executive Steven Ma will be joining Glu’s board.”

“I followed my stolen phone around the world”

This is the funniest story of the year, and it shows so much about China, Chinese culture, iPhones, phone usage, celebrity status, and more all through the eyes of a guy from New York who had his iPhone stolen, you just have to read the whole thing and you’ll gain a lot of insight.

National Broadband Rate in Malaysia Rises

The national broadband penetration rate has reached 83.7 per cent in populated areas up till December last year, compared to 22 per cent in 2008. Deputy Communication and Multimedia Minister Datuk Jailani Johari said the household broadband penetration rate was at 70.2 per cent up to last December. He said the government had allocated RM4.9 billion to beef up the nation’s internet services. “The government is always concern and strive to raise the national internet services to a higher level via projects implemented for wider accessibility and higher internet speed in the country such as High Speed Broad Band (HSBB) and Fiber Optic Core Network for Sabah, Sarawak and the peninsula,” he said during the question-and-answer session at the Dewan Negara sitting here, today.

Jailani said as a continuous endeavor, the government was implementing projects like Phase 2 HSBB and Increase Capacity Suburban Broadband (SUBB) projects that had commenced this year to enable the people to enjoy better coverage of internet access in every populated areas.

Alibaba Looks to Rural China

Alibaba has continued to push forward with their YunOS mobile operating system and in order to spread its usage, they have been focusing on offering low-cost phones in rural parts of China. SkyMobi has a mobile platform pre-installed on low-cost phones that also targets the rural and smaller city markets, as Chinese companies recognize the growth potential in those areas deserves some attention.