The9 entered Korea and Singapore (for a hub in Southeast Asia), taking more steps in the global strategy that the company has followed this year. In Singapore Red 5 Singapore, a wholly owned subsidiary of The9, will operate Firefall, a highly anticipated game for global markets. In Korea the company new local branch, The9 Korea, will launch Dungeon Craft, licensed from Night Owl of Austin TX, next month. Five additional titles are slated for release there too. The9 has licensed other titles from foreign developers, including SOE's Free Realms, and is focusing on mobile games as well as online games in the mainland China market.

China Mobile claims to have 10 million iPhone users, according to Reuters, but China Unicom is the only mobile operator in China that is licensed to sell the Apple iPhone. China Mobile network users can buy the phone and then adapt it to enable usage on their network. This is still a small number compared to the 630 million total China Mobile subscribers.

Niko will not comment on the rumor about Sina Weibo possibly being planned for spin off from Sina Corp (which is mentioned in the TechRice blog item linked to this commentary), but it is impressive to learn that there are now more than 250 million registered Sina Weibo users - up from 140 million six months ago. Tencent Weibo and Sina Weibo are neck and neck in the race for China domination (and beyond?) and while Tencent launched the English version first, Sina seems to be attracting more users at a very fast clip. Both companies are pursuing multiple applications for their weibo (microblogging) services - far beyond what we see in the US for Twitter - and yes, one of the primary channels of interest is social games. With 250 million pairs of eyes, the number of social gamers  is bound to rise.