Cherry blossoms more popular than ever

As many as 240,000 visitors poured into Gucun Park in Baoshan district last weekend to see the cherry blossoms. Attendance was up 40,000 from the same period last year, Eastday.com reported. As more are likely to flower with the warming weather, the park is expecting even more visitors this weekend.

Shanghai is now entering the best season for spring-flower viewing and most of the city's parks are being inundated with people keen to photograph them. A record-high 93,000 visitors jammed Daning Lingshi Park on Sunday, the biggest crowd since it opened 13 years ago.

City to incubate IBM's new storage software

Shanghai is set to become a development center for IBM Corp's next-generation storage software, putting it in league with similar centers in the UK and US. The rising challenge posed by escalating data volumes, velocity and variety is leading companies to shift from traditional storage devices to more stable and lower-cost flash storage solutions, said Brian Wc Uy, an executive at IBM China's storage business unit. The shift is still at an early stage in China but has the potential to double in terms of market volume each year, he added. Over the next five years IBM plans to invest more than $1 billion in its storage software portfolio to accelerate its development.

Students head overseas in droves

The 15 agencies authorized by the Ministry of Education to process applications by Chinese students to study abroad said they had dealt with 50 percent more cases in 2014 than one year earlier, the Xinmin Evening News reported. The number spiked among those eyeing foreign high schools and universities, but dropped among those applying for language courses, said Zhang Jin, an official from the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission. More than 136,000 people applied to have the degrees and diplomas they received overseas authenticated last year. Of that total, 20,035 earned their degrees in the US, second only to the number obtained in the UK (38,403).

Qualcomm may face 100m yuan fine

Shanghai-based semiconductor maker Genitop has demanded a 100 million yuan ($16 million) penalty against Qualcomm for infringing one of its registered trademarks. Qualcomm uses the same Chinese characters for the word Gaotong as the Chinese company does for its name and product brand in China. Genitop registered the trademark in 1992, but it claims Qualcomm has been illegally using this since it entered the China market in 1998. This, it claims, has caused it huge losses. The penalty could reach up to 100 billion yuan under Chinese law, Chen Ruojian, Genitop's lawyer, was quoted as saying by the Economic Information Daily, which runs under Xinhua News Agency. Genitop's move comes after the US chipmaking giant was fined nearly $1 billion for monopolistic practices by the National Development and Reform Commission in February.

China Daily

(China Daily 03/27/2015 page7)