Tag Archives: china

Many of you will be aware of Blizzard's recent controversy surrounding Hearthstone Grandmaster ‘Blitzchung' and his tournament ban following his support for the protests in Hong Kong. Blizzard's stance caused plenty of backlash, with protesters even showing up at Blizzcon last week. While there are some at Blizzard that agreed …

A huge downturn in Samsung smartphone sales in China has forced the company to close a number of its factories in the country recently. Samsung has now announced the closure of its final smartphone production plant in China. Samsung is to shut down its sole remaining mobile phone factory in …

A few weeks ago, reports indicated that Nintendo was starting to move some of its Switch console production out of China in order to lessen the impact of the US's trade tariffs. Many other tech companies have been in touch with the US government in an effort to stop these …

Many major tech companies have been contacting the US government regarding its proposed tariffs on products manufactured in China. Up to this point, we have mostly been hearing from PC hardware and OEMs like Apple, Intel etc. Today, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo released a joint letter regarding these tariffs, strongly …

Last week we learned that Apple was looking to move as much as 30 percent of its production out of China and into Southeast Asia in an effort to minimise the financial impact of the US government's new trade tariffs. Now, Apple has officially addressed the current situation between the …

Discussion around the strained relationship between the US and China is continuing this week. Some of tech's biggest companies are concerned about the Huawei ban, meanwhile others are starting to look at moving production out of China to avoid tariffs. Last week we talked about Nintendo Switch production moving out …

There has been a lot of talk around the US trade war with China and its impact on the mobile market, but there has been less discussion surrounding how it is going to impact other areas of tech. Today, we are starting to see how other companies are planning to …

The trade war between the US and China is going to be a double-edged sword for many tech companies.

While Apex Legends did experience explosive growth following its launch in February, things did start to slow down over March and April. Respawn already has a competitive season plan in place to keep people coming back regularly, but there are other ideas in place. Similarly to PUBG and Fortnite, Apex …

In an attempt to catch up on the backlog of video game approvals since its stagnation last year, China’s State Administration of Press and Publication hasn’t accepted new submissions since February. The regulator has now opened these channels back up as of today, but publishers have a new set of …

The State Administration of Press and Publications (SAPP) has continued its efforts to clear the backlog of video game approvals since China began handing out licences again last December, with its latest batch approving 97 new games. 30 of those titles were foreign IPs for the first time since the …

While Sony’s mobile efforts have sometimes pushed innovation, once giving us the world’s highest-resolution smartphone camera sensor, the Xperia brand has often been underappreciated in comparison to modern rivals. The company is now looking to cut its losses by shutting down its China-based plant. The Japanese electronics manufacturer will be …

At the end of last week, Canada approved the extradition of Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou to the United States, following her arrest late last year. Wanzhou and Huawei have opted to fight the decision with two separate lawsuits, while China has escalated its case against the two captive …

Although China has always had an iron grip on the content its population can access, the local government introduced new rules surrounding the internet two weeks ago. In order to keep up, Tencent Games has implemented stricter guidelines for streamers to follow regarding its own IPs. Valentine’s Day might be …

Last week, Huawei made a last ditch effort to lay down its 5G network in Europe amidst allegations of espionage, stating that it would comply thoroughly with supervision. While the EU mulls over the decision, the United States government has warned the authority that using Huawei’s technology could bar Europe …

Since resuming its video game approvals in December, China has noticeably omitted its two biggest publishers. Finally seeing approval from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, both Tencent and NetEase have received licenses for the first time in over 9 months. Although Tencent is known for …

China has approved its third batch of video games since resuming license distribution at the end of last year, seeing 93 titles make their way past the regulator. The country’s two biggest publishers are still noticeably absent from the list, as share prices for both Tencent and NetEase fluctuate in …

Update (09/01/19): After nine months of stagnation, China opened the flood gates for new video game approvals, passing its first batch of 80 titles on December 19th. It seems as though the country is steadily upping the pace, with another 84 games revealed to have been approved before the end …

Back in October, California-based hardware supplier Super Micro Computer was accused of distributing components compromised with Chinese microchips developed for spy purposes. Concluding its investigations earlier this week, Supermicro has deemed these reports “wrongful,” finding no malicious hardware within its supply. Bloomberg’s report alleges that as many as 30 US …

Google found itself probed by members of the House Judiciary committee yesterday, as the US government attempted to understand reported efforts to re-enter the Chinese market. CEO Sundar Pichai told the panel that the company had “no plans” at this time to relaunch its search engine after its removal in …

The Qualcomm-Apple legal battle took an interesting turn yesterday as Qualcomm was granted a preliminary injunction to prevent Apple from selling some of its older iPhones in China. This includes popular models like the iPhone 6s, iPhone 7, iPhone 8 and iPhone X, all of which relied on Qualcomm modems …

Google’s Chinese-catered search engine might be going “very well” behind the scenes, but that doesn’t mean staff are happy with the direction of the company. Instead, various employees have recently banded together to pen an open letter, pleading with Google to drop development entirely. Project Dragonfly, as Sundar Pichai dubbed …

RAM prices have risen significantly over the last couple of years and while things are starting to settle down a bit now, there are still many who believe that something shady was going on. In December 2017, China's economic regulator began investigating Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron in order to …

Ubisoft has spent years building up good will with players of Rainbow Six Siege. A chunk of that work was undone in recent weeks, as the publisher announced plans to expand the game into China. Since China has strict content laws, Ubisoft's plan was to censor the game by making …

At the moment, the US is embroiled in a trade-war with China, with new tariffs set to come into play. This is going to have a knock-on effect for the tech industry, as these tariffs will drive up prices for companies doing business with manufacturers in China. We are starting …

2018 has been a big year for Valve, marking the company’s return to a new IP and a rapid boost of over 23 million more players on Steam. Despite the harm that the Chinese government is doing to the video game market by withholding new video game licenses, this has …

Steam’s biggest user base keeps getting bigger ahead of its Chinese-specific application, with over 30 million accounts reportedly originating from the region. Despite this trend, China’s stagnated approach towards video game approvals continues to rage on, hurting indie developers the most. Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad credited Dota 2 for …

After withdrawing its search services in China for a number of years, Google has been making effort to re-enter the market with a censored version of Google Search known as Dragonfly. Speaking about the project for the first time, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has revealed that tests are going “very …

Last week, a big report came out claiming that Chinese spies were able to sneak tiny surveillance chips into Super Micro servers in an effort to steal information from other countries. At the time, Apple and Amazon were specifically named as companies affected by this. Both have since denied these …

A recent exposé has accused China of inserting micropchips into computer servers, granting unparalleled backdoor access to data from the United States and other nations.