October 1^st 2011 marks the date when all Chinese online game operators will be required to verify the identity of gamers to protect youth gamers from the perils of addictive gaming. The GAPP, Ministry of Public Security (MPS), and six other ministries and institutions are in charge of this policy. Gamers' registration info must be submitted to the National Citizen Identity Information Center (NCIIC) under the MPS for further verification to confirm legitimate ID documents. Those with fake IDs will have game time limited according to the rules of the anti-fatigue policy. The system fails when gamers use legitimate IDs of adults, with or without permission, to register for their games in order to bypass the anti-fatigue policy. Legitimate IDs will not be picked up by the system.

Lenovo is now the 3rd largest vendor of PCs worldwide behind HP and Dell, with 12.2% market share. This data comes from IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Market Tracker. In the past several years Lenovo has continued its ascent in the global ranking, and has maintained its #1 slot in China that it has held for many years. Nevertheless, the vast majority of Internet cafés and home users in China own "white box" (unbranded) PCs because they cost less money. Even with the strong sales of Lenovo in Greater China in Q2, Apple China outpaced the company by $1 billion in sales in the quarter (also Greater China). Lenovo's sales were $2.8 billion while Apple China's were $3.8 billion. 

Niko is a week away from publishing our first report on Chinese Teenage Gamers, and in conducting the research we learned more about Taomee, one of the leading companies for children's virtual worlds in China (and it just went public on the NYSE). Taomee just signed a licensing deal with Texas-based Kingsisle to bring the popular "Wizard 101" game to China, confirming a willingness by Taomee to license strong titles, including those from foreign publishers.