China Hosts Top Mobile Developers

The days of simply using your cell phone to call people are long gone. Now, thanks to cutting edge software, today's mobile devices are almost as powerful as desktop computers were just a few years ago. Some of the world's top developers within this sector were recently in Beijing for a conference on mobile internet technology [May 27-28].

Our reporter Dominic Swire was there and brings us this report.

"Silence your enemies. Make business and get weapons. Kill everyone on your way." This is the marketing spiel of Crime City, a new cross platform computer game from German-based developers Softgames. What's unique about Crime City is that, unlike normal mobile games, this one can be played on a wide range of gaming platforms, regardless of the operating system of your mobile device. Alexander Krug, Managing Partner of Softgames, explains more.

We've just currently launched our cross-platform game engine. This allows us to rapidly launch social games on as many platforms as possible. This makes us really unique because there is no company currently on the market who is offering such a game engine."

Krug was talking during the 2010 Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing. The event provided a showcase for some of the latest mobile software technology across the world. It also held a competition to find the most innovative mobile internet startup. The winner was a company called 2C2P based in Thailand and Singapore, which has developed a new form of online payment. Aung Kyaw Moe is founder and CEO of the company. He explains more about the concept.

Today if you want to transfer money to someone else it will be difficult you may need to ask for their bank card number and then you have to go to a bank and then fill out a few forms to transfer funds to that particular person. It will be even harder if that person is living outside the country you live in. What we do is we allow people to transfer from their credit card to another credit card. So, let's say you live in any country you want, if I know your credit card number I can transfer funds from my credit card to your credit card regardless of where you reside and where I reside.

The event also attracted many potential investors. Dave McClure was one of them. He heads a group of around 25 tech experts from California's Silicon Valley that call themselves GOAP, which stands for 'Geeks on a Plane'. McClure explains the growing influence of China within the tech sector.

Definitely there's a ton of activity going on here in Shanghai and Beijing, lots of entrepreneurship, lots of investors, lots of development, so it's definitely a very interesting place for us to learn more about what's happening in the Asian market as well as a chance to meet some very interesting and exciting people.

"I just think we're going to be making trips to China more regularly probably once a year at least now… it's impossible to ignore what's going on here. There's so much activity happening."

With around half a billion Chinese people using cell phones, it is understandable why so many developers are flocking to this country. The next few years seem likely to see even more innovative offerings, and much of this will be targeted at the Chinese market.

For CRI, I'm Dominic Swire