English keyboard rings up a huge success for China

Innovative touchpad is used in smartphones worldwide - but its country of origin comes as a big surprise to many

While some Chinese companies are keen on acquiring technologies from developed countries, Wang Jialiang's high-tech startup survived by providing innovative products for the developed markets.

"China should export more intellectual property and technology innovations," says Wang, CEO of TouchPal, a mobile software developer.

"If China had tens of thousands of small and medium-sized companies that were based on high-tech, then technology innovation would definitely drive its economic development to a higher level."

Wang Jialiang, CEO of TouchPal, a mobile software developer. Provided to China Daily

Founded in 2008, TouchPal has targeted English text-messaging markets from the very beginning. Its primary product, the TouchPal Keyboard, has more than 600 million users in 157 countries and regions overseas. About 42 percent of these are from Europe and the United States, and TouchPal takes up about 20 percent of the North American market.

Wang, 37, says he was able to get familiar with computers at a young age, as his father was among the first generation of computer programmers in China. In 2005, he graduated with a master's degree in electrical engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and joined Microsoft China as a projects manager.

But starting his own business was his dream. When smartphones became increasingly popular worldwide in 2008, their clumsy default keyboards limited users' experiences. Wang sensed a niche market.

That same year, he co-founded TouchPal with a friend in Shanghai. They developed an innovative virtual keyboard that offers many enhancements and shortcuts.

"We saw the trend of globalization when we started our business," he says. "As a high-tech company, we thought TouchPal could fit in well with the English text-messing markets."

Two weeks after TouchPal Keyboard was introduced to the market it had been downloaded more than 100,000 times.

The next year, it won an award for mobile innovation at the Mobile World Congress, the largest annual gathering of the industry, in Barcelona, Spain.

Wang recalls that as the company targeted overseas markets, many Chinese even thought TouchPal was a foreign business. Some wrote asking them to develop a Chinese version.

"They wrote to me in English, explaining in detail about Chinese pinyin and strokes," he says.

TouchPal's business expanded quickly. Now, most well-known brands such as Samsung, Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, HTC and Sony preload TouchPal as the default keyboard for their smartphones.

But there are also obstacles. In 2012, Nuance Communications Inc, then the largest smartphone keyboard service provider in the US, claimed that TouchPal infringed its intellectual property rights.

Wang responded to the lawsuit and finally won the case after more than a year's painstaking efforts. This experience made him realize the importance of intellectual property protection and continual technology innovation.

Chen Qiqing, a senior research fellow of the International Monetary Institute of Renmin University of China, says that Chinese government has put technological innovation high on its agenda and will continue to give incentives for it, which means good opportunities for technology companies.

But TouchPal chose to make a new product for the Chinese market based on analysis of domestic markets and consumers, rather than introducing the TouchPal Keyboard into the country.

"After years of development, we understand better the differences between Chinese and overseas markets, so we won't bring the overseas business model and products back to China," he says.

TouchPal's innovative product for the domestic market is Touchpal Contacts, which aims to provide a safer communication environment for Chinese users.

"We did a survey of all the phone calls that Chinese people get. About 28.7 percent are from strangers," he says. "Of these, some are from real estate agents, some are from salespeople, some are phone scams..."

TouchPal Contacts is designed to help users distinguish between calls, so they won't miss the important ones but won't need to take nuisance calls either. It now has more than 500 million users in China .

But this is still not enough, Wang says. He has already targeted the big data industry and expects more innovations from this area.

TouchPal has set up a big data R&D center in Carifornia's Silicon Valley, in which technicians from China and overseas work together to push forward its prospects in the big data industry.

chenyingqun@chinadaily.com.cn