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ChinaHow’s CEO John Roumeliotis (L1) poses for a photo with his wife at the launch party in Wuxi on May 12. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] |
Solving major living problems of “where, what and how”, it offers a variety of services to users in three modes, namely the Business Mode, Travel Mode and Expat Mode.
According to Johan Knapp of ChinaHow’s special sales marketing division, they look at foreigners as a whole, not just the expats living in China, but also students, business and leisure travelers as well. He believes ChinaHow will take its place in the world of business and media platforms.
"Though there is fierce competition in social media platforms nowadays, I wish the app would be popular among expats in China. " said an industry insider surnamed Yu. He thought ChinaHow will face a battle from strong competitors such as WeChat and Facebook. Yu also mentioned the potential challenge from AI applications, referencing the recent announcement from Alphabet's chairman John Hennessy about the Google Assistant tool. He told the audience at Google's annual developer conference I/O that it had passed the Turing test in the domain of making appointments.
“It’s all in English and easy to access, it is the perfect app for me,” said Kate, an English teacher in Wuxi, who is among the first users of the app.
However, some Chinese users were more crticial. “I need to click the menu bar again and again to get the right restaurant and most importantly, I cannot share the link to my friends directly. So I would keep using Chinese apps such as Meituan-Dianping for on-demand online services.” said Niu Zheng, who came over from Shanghai for the product launch party.
As it expands in operations, ChinaHow will introduce program updates with new features and keep optimizing and adjusting existing ones. The company plans to organize many cultural events in big cities to promote the app in China and throughout the world.
