Tag: mobile devices

Retailer finds success by engaging with mobile consumers in non-metropolitan areas

Maimaibao, a Chinese online retail firm, has announced that it has received funding from several large organizations within China, including Tencent. The amount of funding the firm has received has not yet been revealed, but speculation suggests that it is somewhere around the $100 million mark. Maimmaibao has attracted attention for not being a typical online retailer. Instead of targeting consumers in large cities, it focuses on non-metropolitan areas where Internet access is not necessarily reliable. Notably, the firm has seen a great deal of mobile activity in these parts of China.

Feature phones can also participate in mobile shopping, even without access to a fast Internet network

The retailer manages to engage consumers where Internet access is lacking through its mobile website. This website is particularly accommodating to feature phones that only have access to 2G wireless networks. Many Chinese consumers that have these types of mobile devices live and work in places where they do not have access to a PC, making their phones a valuable shopping tool. Maimaibao has managed to find significant success in making itself open to these consumers, and this has attracted the attention of Tencent.

Tencent continues to fight for dominance in the mobile commerce space

Tencent is one of China’s largest Internet organizations and it has begun to focus quite heavily on mobile commerce. Tencent is working to establish a dominant presence in the mobile commerce space through its WeChat application and various other ventures. The company is currently clashing with Alibaba, which has also begun working to engage mobile consumers more aggressively in recent months. Tencent may be able to achieve its goals of mobile dominance by aligning itself with Maimaibao.

Maimaibao aims to develop new smartphone for its primary demographic in China

Maimaibao will use the funding it has received to develop a new smartphone under its Big Q brand name. This mobile device is meant to provide the company’s chief demographic — those living in non-metropolitan areas of China — with a mobile device that has more capabilities than typical feature phones.

A new partnership has formed between the kids’ entertainment company and Kobo ereaders.

One of the global leaders in ereading mobile devices, Kobo, has just announced that it has entered into a partnership with Sesame Workshop in order to make it possible to produce Sesame Street ebooks through its proprietary platform.

This agreement will bring over 50 kids ebook favorites onto the screens of their ereader gadgets.

Some of the titles that are expected to be among the most popularly downloaded to the Kobo ereader mobile devices include “The Monster at the End of This Book”, “How to Be a Grouch” and “Count to 10”. These, among others, are already all available at the mobile commerce Kids’ Store on the brand’s platform.

This will help to enhance the offerings for children over these mobile devices in a meaningful way.

According to the Kobo chief content officer, Michael Tamblyn, in a press release from the company, “We are thrilled to make the Sesame Street titles available to Kobo customers.” He explained that Sesame Street is among the leading global children’s entertainment organizations. Kobo has wanted to create an agreement with the brand for quite some time and Tamblyn stated that they “knew that making their books available to our customers was one of the best ways to round out our Kids’ Store catalogue.”

As a part of the launch of this brand into their mcommerce offerings, the audio ebook “The ABCs of Cookies”, which typically retails for $4.99, will be available to North American readers for $0.99 from this week through until March 22, 2014.

The Sesame Workshop vice president of worldwide publishing, Jennifer A. Perry, explained that the company was happy to launch their eBooks on the Kobo platform, “As it is one of the most popular reading devices around the world.” She went on to point out that their primary goal is to be able to reach children no matter where they are, so choosing this ereader provided them with one of the best possible opportunities with which to achieve that goal.

The Kids Store at Kobo already offers children almost 100,000 titles. Its design makes it easy for kids and young adults to be able to use their mobile devices to find exactly the book that they want to read, whether it is from a bestselling series, a picture book, or a read along.