While Pokemon Go has not arrived at most parts of Asia, people are waiting impatiently. And, the persistent questions people asked are: (a) Will it arrive China? (b) Who would benefit when it eventually comes to Asia?
For the first question, pundits have argued that since Google map does not run well in China, the game won't be arriving anytime soon. But, we kind of wonder. Map is indeed an important part in the game, but other apps have done the adoption of maps in China just fine. Look at Uber for instance. So, map cannot be the inhibitor.
We have recently seen similar game in augmented reality in China rolled out by Tencent. So, we suspect that the launch of this popular Nintendo game won't really be a technology problem, but more a business decision and the ability to focus in so many geographic areas.
Now, for the second question, if anyone has looked at the stock price of Lenovo recently, you would notice that it has gone up by quite a bit since June. And, it is mostly speculated that Pokemon Go would fuel the sale of Lenovo Phab2 Pro Phone. But, that advantage has yet to be seen. As a matter of fact, if a game can change the buying pattern of a smart phone, it will be a breakthrough.
However, AR is no doubt a really hot topic. Yesterday, we said that the Dell-EMC deal would mean that Lenovo would need to look for a new storage partner. Today, we saw Lenovo (which has a strong desire to break out of the PC market and look into the mobile phone). (Do contrast that against Dell's strategy of going to the storage business more aggressively.)
Lenovo and Tencent just joined Hong Kong based Horizon Ventures in a US$50 million round in investing in a company called Meta --- a Silicon Valley AR company. Now, we see the key words here: Hong Kong, Mainland IT giant, and AR. So, who says somehow this part of the world is not involved in the latest cutting edge technology.
P.S. Mets's CTO, Raymond Lo, has listed Cantonese as his native language. All 3 degrees from University of Toronto (Ph.D., Master, and Bachelor). O.K. that is another link to this region. Good luck, Raymond!
Source:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-13/china-s-tencent-lenovo-buy-into-u-s-augmented-reality-startup
http://www.gizmag.com/pokemon-go-tango-lenovo-phab-2-pro/44376/