Outblaze featured in South China Morning Post

On Monday, June 6, 2011, Outblaze was featured in the South China Morning Post. The article may be found here (requires login). The Post looked at how Hong Kong-based Outblaze is a “pioneering IT company” that has evolved in recent years:

Founded in 1998, Outblaze in 2009 sold for an undisclosed amount its core online messaging and collaboration operations to International Business Machines Corp.

The business acquired by IBM from Outblaze offers hosted e-mail and collaboration services in 22 languages to more than 40 million users worldwide.

These assets in Cyberport have since been transformed into IBM’s first cloud-computing facility in Hong Kong.

Following the IBM deal, Outblaze has [pushed] for more projects in the online community market, including games, chats, message boards and blogs.

The Post asked us about the strategy and success of Outblaze:

Yat Siu, the founder and chief executive of privately held Outblaze, said the company had started “porting a whole bunch of our apps on the Android platform”, but remained “focused on furthering our apps business” on Apple.

“We need to maintain that focus,” Siu said. “At this point, we’re one of the biggest developers on the App Store worldwide. But if you drop the ball, you can easily be forgotten in this market.”

… Outblaze is the developer of the popular Pretty pet series of games that have been downloaded an estimated seven million times and achieved Top-10 ranking in dozens of markets on the App Store…

That mobile game franchise includes Pretty pet Salon, Pretty Pet Salon Seasons and Pretty Pet Tycoon. These are free to download and play from the App Store, with the option of buying premium upgrades through credit card transactions on the platform.

You can visit www.prettypetsalon.com for all your Pretty Pet needs. Yat Siu went on to talk about the broad spectrum of apps available:

“Our apps business has been doubling every month,” said Siu, without disclosing any figures. “We’re not just into games.”

Outblaze, for example, launched its multilingual Chinese horoscope application in January in time for the Lunar New Year. The application immediately became No 1 on the Hong Kong App Store early this year and reached either a top-five or top-10 ranking in other markets around the world.

You can read the entire article here if you have a SCMP.com membership.