china - Internet Marketing News and Blogs

A new pilot programme is set to give foreign etailers access to China’s 163m web users for the first time.

The service, launched by Alipay, an online payment subsidiary of Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group, enables foreign currency transactions between Chinese consumers and overseas firms.

Baidu, China's biggest search engine, is reportedly planning to take on rival Google in the European market, with the company expected to launch a European version of its search engine.

Baidu has so far held off competition from Google to remain the biggest search player in China - it has 58% market share, compared with Google's 17%.

China’s biggest search engine, Baidu, has announced that it will launch in Japan early next year.

China has an estimated 125 million internet users, and Baidu.com currently has a 62% share of the Chinese search engine market, up 15% from 2005. Google has the second largest share on 25%, falling 8% since last year.

The number of bloggers in China has now topped the 17 million mark, and 34 million have signed up for blog accounts, according to a recent survey.

The research, by the China Internet Network Information Centre, also revealed that 75 million people read blogs on a regular basis in China, more than half of the 123 million internet users in the country.

In a smart move by Apple, the company has released details of an audit done on an iPod factory in China. The audit came in response to accusations of "sweatshop" conditions by the Mail on Sunday.

According to the audit the supplier was “in compliance in the majority of the areas audited. However, we did find violations to our Code of Conduct, as well as other areas for improvement that we are working with the supplier to address.” What follows in the report is a breakdown of the audit methodology and selected results.