BabyBus: Exporting Education Apps
Chinese education app developer BabyBus produces pre-school educational games or other formats of content, and distributes through mobile app stores and more recently app platforms of smart TVs. Since 2010 when the company decided to focus on mobile, more than 80 apps have been developed.
Tang Guangyu, founder and CEO of BabyBus, agrees with many Chinese tech entrepreneurs that digital content or apps should be offered for free and revenues will eventually be generated through, instead of premium offerings, cross-subsidies. Qihoo 360 is often cited as a successful example of this model that has monetized the user base gained with a free online security service through advertising, channeling users to third-party games and search marketing.
But different from Qihoo 360 whose major market is mainland China, BabyBus has been exporting its apps since 2011. While the cause that many Chinese app developers shift focus to overseas markets is they believe users of Apple’s App Store in many other markets are used to paying for apps or can afford, Baby Bus believes the aforementioned free model can work everywhere. But offering apps for free isn’t enough, Mr. Tang added, that you have to make sure the quality is the best as there’s little cost for users to switch to other free apps.
ただし、ただ無料のアプリを提供するだけでは十分ではないとTang氏は言葉を加えた。それは最高の品質である必要があるのだ。そうでないなら、大して費用がかからないため他の無料アプリにすぐ乗り換えられてしまうからだ。
Content licensing and pre-intalls in internet connected devices are currently two revenue sources to the company. BabyBus has introduced investments from Shunwei Capital Partners, the venture capital firm co-founded by Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun, and TAL Education Group in 2013 and 2014, respectively.
Services exported overseas are available in nine languages. The company claims to have a total of more than 40 million users, with more than half in mainland China and over 3.5 million in other regions of the Greater China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.
海外に輸出されるサービスは9つの言語で利用可能だ。同社によると、中国本土の半分以上の地域と、台湾や香港、マカオなど他の中国語圏の地域にいる350万人以上のユーザを合わせると4000万人以上になるという。
海外に輸出されたサービスは、9カ国語での利用が可能だ。同社によると、合計4千万人を超えるユーザがおり、うち半数以上が中国大陸で、350万人が台湾、香港、マカオといった他の大中華圏のユーザだという。
ガイドライン(人名には氏をつける)が反映できておりませんでした。
ー> カッコ書き部分について、(Xiaomi社のCEOであるLei Jun氏が共同設立) とさせてください。申し訳ありません。
Its overseas expansion began from Japan and some Asian countries and regions as their content was considered more acceptable in Asian Cultures. All the apps by BabyBus are starring a pair of Pandas. The company believes kids not only in Asian but around the world like panda though it is native to China. BabyBus has hired staff from various continents to make sure content published in certain market will be acceptable with parents and kids living there.
The company hasn’t encountered any problems associated with content but with apps the distribution means. It was warned by the Federal Trade Commission of the U.S. (FTC) in December 2014 for it didn’t get parents’ permission before collecting geolocation information about users. BabyBus later found the geolocation information was collected by a partner analytics service and disabled it accordingly, according to the company.
最後の一文ですが、以下のとおり訂正させてください。申し訳ございません。
しかしTang氏は、アプリを無償で提供するだけは不十分だ、ユーザーが他の無償アプリに乗り換えるのにはほんの少しの労力だけで済むのだから、必ず最高の品質でなければならない、と付け加えた。