China's wine market targeted

Australian entrepreneurs are now using e-business channels to uncork opportunities in China's lucrative wine market, says Wines Info.

Adelaide-based start-up WhatWine has introduced a free, English and Chinese iPhone app and Web site targeting China's emerging wine drinkers.

The company provides wine reviews to help consumers select medal-winning Australian wines. It says all wines featured have been tasted and rated by an independent judging panel made up of leading winemakers, sommeliers and industry experts from Australia and China.

ISP iiNet has introduced a new service to allow its small business customers to build an online shopping presence, reports Computer World.

The company has debuted a white-label online shopping cart solution. The service, which starts at $39 per month, can process payments from all major Australian banks, as well as PayPal.

It also includes eBay functionality, and is integrated with Australia Post to provide automatic calculation of shipping costs.

Dangdang, China's online book retailer, is still waiting for a better time to release e-book services, a branch that may help it catch up with its US counterpart Amazon and defend itself in the competition of online bookselling in China, reveals People's Daily Online.

Roger Huang, chief operating officer of Dangdang, says the company has been following the development of digital books for years, but it is still too early to say when it will enter that market in full swing.

"The time is not ripe," Huang says. He has three concerns; the high price of electronic readers, rampant copyright infringement and not enough e-book buyers.