5 China Tech Stories to Watch in 2015

On several fronts, 2014 was a particularly eventful year for China’s technology sector. While a handful of domestic players grabbed headlines with blockbuster share offerings, major acquisitions or soaring valuations, some multinational firms encountered major obstacles in their efforts to expand in the vast but increasingly challenging market.

Chief among 2014’s Chinese tech highlights was e-commerce giant Alibaba’s record initial public offering in New York that raised $25 billion and catapulted it onto the international stage. Also raising eyebrows was Lenovo, the No. 1 personal computer maker, with its sizable acquisitions: first a server business from IBM for $2.3 billion, then Motorola Mobility from Google for $2.91 billion. It was also a year that saw Xiaomi, a four-year-old smartphone company, soar to prominence as the world’s most valuable tech startup, surpassing Uber at $46 billion. Still, it was a year of uncertainty and challenges for others in China such as software giant Microsoft and chipmaker Qualcomm, which have been the subjects of antitrust investigations.... keep reading

Vía: The Wall Street Journal China