1 Billion to Invest in Freewares in China

Written by Tangos on January 6, 2010
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Sequoia Capital China, Highland Capital and Qihoo 360 yesterday announced that they plan to jointly invest 1 billion, I think it should be 1 billion RMB, into China’s free software industry in coming years. The plan targets at startups and individuals in freeware sectors, by means of investment, incubation and M&A.

Neil Shen, Founding Managing Partner of Sequoia Capital China, Chuan Thor, Managing Director of Highland Capital and Zhou Hongyi, Chairman of Qihoo 360 will participate in the plan and provide supports to software developers. Qihoo 360 will use its 360 software to promote these freewares to Chinese users. They will not only help freeware developers in financing, but also offer help them to build strategy and improve operations.

In China there are some quite popular free softwares, such as Maxthon, an IE-based browsers, Xunlei, a mega file downloader, Baofeng, a video player and Qihoo 360, a anti-malware software. However, it is still interesting to see venture capitals to announce future investment plan in this sector, when the trend shows that more and more applications are switching from desktop softwares to cloud computing.

In China, maybe there are too many uncertainties in Internet industry, since you can lose the control of your domain and the site can be inaccessible just because of command from governments without any notice. Cloud computing is too far away to Chinese users, we still live in the age of desktop softwares.

3 Responses to “1 Billion to Invest in Freewares in China”

  1. Twitter Trackbacks for 1 Billion to Invest in Freewares in China : China Web2.0 Review [cwrblog.net] on Topsy.com on January 7th, 2010 12:49 am

    [...] 1 Billion to Invest in Freewares in China : China Web2.0 Review http://www.cwrblog.net/1360/1-billion-to-invest-in-free-softwares-in-china.html – view page – cached Sequoia Capital China, Highland Capital and Qihoo 360 yesterday announced that they plan to jointly invest 1 billion, I think it should be 1 billion RMB, into China’s free software industry in coming years. The plan targets at startups and individuals in freeware sectors, by means of investment, incubation and M&A. [...]

  2. uberVU - social comments on January 7th, 2010 1:56 am

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by cwr: 1 Billion to Invest in Freewares in China http://goo.gl/fb/v9kt...

  3. souwangji on January 8th, 2010 12:49 pm

    Baofeng and Xunlei are poor softs

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