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Tag: Asia Pacific

  • Facebook’s FbStart Program Helps Asia Pacific Developers

    Facebook’s FbStart Program Helps Asia Pacific Developers

    Facebook launched FbStart in April of 2014 to help startups take off by offering them developer tools and services for free. The company partnered with a number of third-party service providers to do so.

    Facebook has given periodic updates on the program in the meantime, and just gave the latest one talking up its impact on Asia Pacific developers.

    “FbStart, Facebook’s program for early stage mobile developers, has now distributed benefits worth more than $50 million to Asia Pacific startups, $20 million of which went to startups in India, Facebook’s largest developer community outside the U.S.,” a spokesperson for Facebook tells WebProNews.

    This year, Facebook launched its FbStart World Tour across 20 cities where it has been meeting with developers. Events have been held in London, New York, and Mexico City, and most recently in Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei, Bangalore, and Gurgaon.

    There are over 1,000 FbStart members in Asia, which have apps like Coursell (a lifestyle marketplace app), Cardback (a card management/wallet app), and Samosa (a movie clip app), which the company highlights in a blog post.

    “Through FbStart, Carousell’s team was able to run and test marketing campaigns with their Facebook Mobile App Ad credit,” Facebook says. “The quality of users acquired and cost targets have exceeded expectations with the help of Lookalikes from Custom Audiences of their top buyers and sellers. They also used FbStart’s partner benefits, including Transifex to scale to multiple countries and languages and Mobile Action to improve their app store optimization. Additionally, Carousell uses Facebook Platform products such as Facebook Login, Social Plugins, and Facebook Analytics for Apps.”

    Cardback has also made great use of ad credit as well as Facebook Login and Facebook Analytics for Apps. Samosa was able to capitalize on Parse to power its backend to help it quickly iterate on its app.

    Image via Facebook

  • Larger Smartphones Beating Tablets in Asia

    As the smartphone and tablet markets begin to become saturated in western countries, manufacturers are now looking to emerging markets such as China and Brazil for growth. However, with smaller tablets becoming more popular and larger smartphones taking off, market watchers are beginning to wonder whether the so-called “phablets” could soon cut into tablet sales.

    Today, analyst firm IDC released projections showing that larger smartphones (those with screen from 5 to 7 inches) are already beating the tablet and portable PC markets in Asian/Pacific territories, excluding Japan (APEJ). Its numbers show that phablet shipments have increased a whopping 620% since the second quarter of 2012, and even rose 100% over the previous quarter. The firm states that 25.2 million phablet units were shipped during the second quarter of 2013 – nearly double tablet shipment numbers of 12.6 million.

    “Phablets first started as a trend driven by mature markets like South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore – and these markets continue to rise,” said Melissa Chau, senior research manager for Asia/Pacific client devices at IDC. “What’s changed now is the added pick up of phablets in emerging markets like China and India, not just the plethora of big-name vendors competing head-to-head with Samsung, but instead the low-cost local players who have swooped in to offer big screens for less money – averaging a retail price of US$220 versus Samsung’s US$557.”

    Phablets may not stay the winners in the region, though, even in the short term. Tablets saw lower shipments throughout the first half of 2013, but sales are expected to rise substantially this fall after manufacturers such as Apple and Amazon announce newer versions of their tablet lineups.

  • PayPal To Add 1,000 New Jobs In Asia Pacific Region

    Ebay’s online payment service PayPal said today it would double the number of employees in Asia Pacific from 1,000 currently to more than 2,000 by the end of the year.

    PayPal said it plans to add more than 100 new jobs at its international headquarters in Singapore. New jobs will be located at all seven offices including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan. For its Singapore business headquarters, PayPal will be seeking Singapore-based people with background in technology, product development, infrastructure design, risk and engineering.

    Farhad-Irani-PayPal "While PayPal’s growth in Asia Pacific to date has largely been driven by our cross border business, we fully expect the domestic business in many of our Asian markets to explode in the coming years," said Farhad Irani, vice president of PayPal Asia Pacific.

    "Our success in the region will continue to rely on partnering with merchants, financial services companies and local governments to deliver the right services for our customers."

    PayPal says it processed more than $6 billion of total payment volume in Asia Pacific in 2009, an increase of 38 percent from 2008.

    As part of its plans to grow across Asia Pacific, the company also announced the PayPal mobile payment software development kit (SDK) will be available to developers in the region.