Latest mobile technologies transforming global communication

Global Business

More than 10,000 tech leaders from 40 countries are gathered in San Francisco to discuss the mobile future. The Global Mobile Internet Conference also brought in innovative entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on both the American and Chinese startup ecosystem. CCTV America’s Mark Niu reported from San Francisco.

Building a successful tech company is increasingly becoming an international competition for the best and brightest.

Mobvoi has been dubbed the “Chinese Siri” for its years of work in Chinese voice recognition. Now it officially launched Ticwear,  which is the first Chinese smartwatch operating system.

Mobvoi was actually started by former engineers and scientists at Google, which has influenced the look and a feel of its Beijing office. From day one, it’s also been funded by Sequoia Capital, the Silicon Valley Venture Capital firm that’s backed everything from Google to PayPal.

“Well, this is Silicon Valley. This is where all the innovation starts. We want to kick off this product here to attract the smart phone developers, we want to bring good smart phone apps back to China and also getting to know the market here in the Valley is going to help us to better understand what the trends are going to be in China,” the co-founder of Mobvoi Li Yuanyuan said.

The global mobile internet conference began in Beijing in 2009. It’s now spread across the globe to become the largest mobile conference in Silicon Valley. The goal is cross-border cooperation.

One startup creating a youthful buzz is SnapLingo. It is an app that creates a platform for kids in China and the U.S. to learn language and communicate with each other through text and voice.

“We give kids a daily mission. If you complete the mission you get virtual rewards. By completing the daily mission, we get kids to practice Chinese, practice foreign language five minutes a day. The kids are intrinsically motivated to talk to someone in China and vice versa,” the founder of SnapLingo Don Cai said.

The app caught the attention of the vice chairman of the education entertainment company LeapFrog, Tom Kalinske. “We have a lot of Chinese speaking English, but hardly any Americans speaking Chinese. So we really need to promote that for better world understanding I think,” Kalinske said.

Kalinske said the education tech space is increasingly drawing the interest of venture capitalists due to its potential to not only make money, but also transform the world.