Bubble Motion, which is funded by Sequoia Capital and others, is now launching Bubbly in the Philippines, after releases in India, Indonesia and Japan (chosen because of their deep mobile phone penetration). Its launch partner in the Philippines is Globe Telecom.

By the midway point of this year, Bubbly will be rolled out to all major carriers in those four countries, for a total potential audience of 800 million.

Bubbly allows users to send each other voice-based status updates. People who follow a user receive an SMS each time a new status message is posted, and pay to listen to the status message with a fee added to their regular phone bill. This can be used both for communicating with friends and family and for subscribing to updates from celebrities.

Users pay either a monthly subscription fee for celebrities in India and Indonesia, or per message in the Philippines and Japan, following the carrier billing styles in each country. The average user gets one to two messages per day.

Celebrities on Bubbly often have two to three times as many followers as they have on Twitter, bragged Bubble Motion CEO Tom Clayton on a phone interview on Wednesday. And that’s despite the fact that Bubbly costs money and Twitter is free.

Part of the reason is Bubbly has more reach than Twitter in the four countries it has launched in, Clayton said, given it is a mobile service and Twitter is often accessed over the Internet.

But grooming a stable of stars might not be defensible in the long term, given Twitter is ramping up its mobile efforts and celebrities may want to have a broader reach than they can achieve with local phone carriers and voice updates. Clayton said another edge his company has is the infrastructure it has built to deliver voice files–250 million of them since Bubbly was first launched–without overloading carrier networks.

Clayton said Bubble Motion, which has raised about $30 million in funding, is not profitable yet but is growing revenue with a direct correlation to its traffic, which is to say, doubling every quarter.

The daily deal site is mulling a strategic relationship with Lashou, which has experienced astronomical growth on par with Groupon.

Sources close to Lashou tell us that since the company launched in March, it has hired 1,500 employees and operates in roughly 200 markets in China.

Most impressively, its revenues are now totaling $3 million per week for an annual run rate of  more than $150 million.

Sources say Groupon may participate in Lashou’s next round of funding, which is on track to give the company a $1 billion valuation. Groupon has already submitted a term sheet, we have heard. A Groupon spokeswoman declined to comment.

The deal could still fall apart.

Groupon has not appeared to have decided on one strategy for entering the market. Other options it is weighing include forming a strategic alliance with Chinese Internet giant Tencent, or even hiring its own staff and working alone.

The Chinese market is known for being difficult to enter, and Groupon is feeling the pressure to get a piece of the action. To be a serious international player without the economic powerhouse is less than ideal as it prepares for a public offering, (which CEO Andrew Mason admits he hasn’t made a decision about yet).

So far, Groupon’s efforts in China have been scattered.

Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China, who has an influential blog, has written about Groupon’s approach, saying that it has been relying on a company it purchased in Germany last May to lead its expansion into China, Xinhua reports. The rumor mill is rife with other reports of Groupon’s aggressive attempts to hire employees from other group-buying sites. It also suffered a recent setback when Ren Xin, who reportedly was in charge of marketing in China, resigned to consider other job opportunities.

While not operating yet in China, Groupon does have a presence in Asia. Groupon is in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines and Taiwan through the acquisitions of daily deal sites uBuyiBuy, Beeconomic and Atlaspost, respectively.

Much like the U.S., China has tons of group-buying companies fighting to be No. 1. Other successful brands there are Meituan and Nuomi. Lashou has raised tens of millions of dollars in venture capital from Norwest Venture Partners, GSR Ventures and Rebate Networks. Meituan has attracted capital from Sequoia Capital.

Groupon is in talks with Chinese Internet giant Tencent to form a partnership to accelerate its effort in the critical Asian arena, said several sources with knowledge of the situation.

Terms of the deal are unclear, but sources said that it is likely to involve some sort of co-branded joint venture effort between the two–a key strategic move for Groupon, given the hard-to-penetrate-if-you’re-not-Chinese Chinese market.

More typical for Groupon has been to buy a top local player abroad and rebrand it, such as its launch of Groupon Hong Kong, Groupon Singapore and Groupon Philippines and Groupon Taiwan through the early December acquisition of daily deal sites uBuyiBuy, Beeconomic and Atlaspost, respectively.

Moving into the lucrative international arena, where there are innumerable clones of the dominant social buying service, is one of the big strategic reasons for Groupon’s recent $1 billion funding and also last week’s very noisy IPO toe-dipping.

(How much is BoomTown wishing I could be a fly on the wall to see all those investment bankers courting kooky Groupon CEO Andrew Mason? Memo to Andrew: Act like Snooki from “Jersey Shore” and see how they still slavishly kiss up to you like the soul-sucking suck-ups they are.)

Back to China, where cloning popular U.S. Internet brands has become an art form.

That includes one particularly appalling rip-off (pictured here) in China that looks exactly like Groupon and is actually called Groupon.cn.

(Although you’ve got to be in awe of the complete non-effort to pretend it is anything but a complete shoplifting of the brand.)

But, no matter how much that digital swiping goes on, much of Groupon’s growth recently has been outside the U.S., and the company’s strategic future lies internationally.

Of course, global expansion–especially in the famously difficult Chinese market, where the government favors native companies to an unprecedented degree–has stymied many other U.S. Internet phenoms, from eBay to Google to Facebook. (In fact, for obviously thorny privacy reasons, the social networking site has no presence in China.)

But for Groupon, especially with its public offering plans and need to distance itself from close rivals such as LivingSocial, it is a must-do to reach the deal-crazy and huge audience in China.

Thus, having Tencent as its partner is an obvious plus, given it is one of the biggest Internet services in the country, including its huge QQ instant messaging offering.

In addition, there is a strong link between Tencent and one of Groupon’s key investors, Mail.ru Group.

Mail.ru owns five percent of Groupon, said numerous sources, and Tencent is an investor in Mail.ru, which recently had an IPO.

And DST Global, an investment vehicle that is now separate from Mail.ru–although it shares Russian exec Yuri Milner, who is Mail.ru’s chairman and also DST’s CEO–is also a Groupon investor.

Got all that? As BoomTown has written before: It’s a small and way-too-connected world after all, especially when it comes to the goat rodeo of Groupon investors.

What will be interesting to see is if this makes a difference in China, which has been a consistent black hole for most major Internet companies.

Groupon declined comment, and there has been no response yet to an email query sent to Tencent’s PR group.

Founded last May, Kakai is one of the start-ups in Silicon Valley in the deepest of stealth modes, despite a panoply of high-profile players involved.

But while there have been sketchy reports suggesting that the start-up may be working on some kind of e-reader, BoomTown has found out exactly what it’s up to via reports of a concept video the company has shown potential investors and interviews with several sources close to the situation.

In simplest terms, it’s essentially a Kindle for students.

But that’s just the tip of what is perhaps one of the more ambitious and innovative efforts on the part of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who already has one hit under his belt.

That would be Osman Rashid, whose other start-up is fast-growing online textbook rental leader Chegg.

Chegg recently hired former Yahoo (YHOO) exec Dan Rosensweig as its CEO, taking over from Rashid, who wanted to focus on Kakai.

Interestingly, you can pretty much draw a straight line from Chegg to Kakai.

But rather than focusing on making an old business better via the Web, as Chegg does, Kakai is plunging right into the competitive tablet market that now includes Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Samsung, Dell (DELL), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and, reportedly, Google (GOOG).

While these efforts, including Apple’s iPad, for example, are mostly aimed at broader media markets, sources said Kakai’s effort focuses solely on the educational niche, offering a Linux-based foldable double-screened device.

Gesture-based and portable, it is designed to feel like a mix of a notepad and a book.

While Kakai declined to comment, sources said a key part of the endeavor goes well beyond the tablet itself by including robust software and seamless Web site to deliver course material, allowing for note-taking and offering other audio and video capabilities.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Kakai, which is nearing 50 employees, is now prepping the device to be ready for a demo in several months.

It’s paying for all this with almost $10 million in funding from prominent venture players like Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital, along with investors Mike Maples and Ron Conway.

In addition, Marc Andreessen is now on Kakai’s board.

Rashid, who founded Kakai with Babur Habib, has worked in companies related to the consumer electronics industry.

Until he reveals more specifics, though, don’t expect much from Kakai’s homepage (see below), which has a very funny trio of jokes that play with the company name, asking “Which Kakai are you looking for?”

The possibilities include Kakai Bautista, a singer-comedienne in the Philippines; Neferirkare Kakai, third Pharaoh of Egypt during the Fifth dynasty; and Kakai, an Austrian pumpkin that yields valuable oil that promotes prostate health.”

Not looking for the singer, the pharaoh or the pumpkin?,” reads the bottom of the Kakai homepage. “Well, we wish we could tell you more, but you’ll just have to cool your jets.”

Perhaps now it’s time to start heating them up.

The solar company said a preliminary investigation found that cost of goods sold was overstated by about $1 million in the first quarter, but understated by $14 million in Q2 and $2 million in Q3. SPWRA said the findings could impact previously reported results.

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