Chinese cell phone users will love this

If you've ever been on a flight in China (or really just about anywhere in Asia) you will have noticed how eager passengers are to turn on their cell phones once the plane has landed. If this New Scientist report is any indication, passengers will someday no longer have to suffer the withdrawal of being disconnected from family, friends and colleagues while travelling.

A scary thought, actually.

Oracle focuses on Shanghai

Oracle's OpenWorld conference opens tomorrow in Shanghai, drawing in a couple of the company's top executives, including President Chuck Phillips. There hasn't been much in the way of news so far to indicate Oracle will have much new to offer when this conference opens, but expect to hear a lot of talk about Linux and the usual fawning statements about China's great potential.

In many ways, Oracle is in a sweet spot, competitively, in China. There aren't any Chinese companies that can compete directly with Oracle, especially in terms of databases. Oracle's focus on Linux also ties in nicely with what's happening in China and there should be a lot for them to talk about in this area.

Stay tuned.

WAP lives on in China

According to this report (from Sina) run by China Computerworld, IDG has apparently invested US$5 million into a Chinese company called Molong (we couldn't find a Web site, please let us know if you do) that plans to deliver content to Chinese mobile users over WAP.

US$5 million!?! And here we were thinking that WAP was about as useful as our old Flying Pigeon bicycle, which we hope is rusting in peace somewhere along one of Beijing's back alleys.

Molong's CEO says WAP 2.0 is the perfect technology for delivering content to all those GPRS users in China. We think he's dreaming -- but at least he won't have to worry about funding for a while.

Just go ahead and ignore Asustek

AP has a story up on a new 15-inch laptop from Toshiba called Qosimo, which will include an integrated TV tuner, that the story claims to be the first of its kind. That will come as a surprise to Asustek, which already offers such a model, called the W1000N, first unveiled at Computex last month.

Other laptop vendors have been doing the same as well for some time now.

I can't confirm whether the W1 requires Windows to boot up in order to watch TV or play a DVD, but AP is claiming that's a feature of the Qosmio. The W1 should offer the same functionality since this type of Linux kernel has been used for some time in multimedia desktop PCs. Perhaps someone can confirm whether or not this is a feature of the W1.

This report claims the Qosimo, which will be available in August for around US$2.5K, compared to nearly US$3K for the W1, and will initially not offer a widescreen display. Both the Qosimo and the W1 offer remote controls.

They really should offer a widescreen display. What's the point of splashing out for a machine like this with a square screen. At least a widescreen model is reportedly in the works.

AP may not be far off the mark on the Qosimo, but they really should pay more attention to what the Taiwanese hardware makers are doing and have done. Asus now makes some of the nicest laptops anywhere and AP should be paying better attention to them.

This is a long-standing issue for Taiwanese hardware makers, though. They just don't get the respect they deserve.

UPDATE: This post inadvertently first attributed this story to Reuters. It is not. It is from AP. Apologies for the confusion.

Ending VAT rebate helps Taiwanese chipmakers

The U.S.-Taiwan Business Council said it plans to release a report later this week that assesses the impact on Taiwanese chipmakers of China's decision to end the VAT rebate for some domestically produced chips. In a press release, the Council said the move will give a boost to Taiwanese chip makers.

That's pretty much the same take we had when the announcement of the move was first made last week. We'll look into this again more closely once the report is out.