Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp (小米) yesterday opened its first store in Paris and has plans for more shops in France, Spain and Italy, testing the appetite of consumers in developed markets as its executives consider a US expansion.
“Every morning I think about the US market and when we’ll launch there,” Xiaomi senior vice president Wang Xiang (王翔), who heads global operations, said yesterday in an interview in Paris. “But 2018 is the year of Europe.”
With its plans for an initial public offering (IPO) at the filing stage, Xiaomi is looking to expand into new markets as it consolidates its position at home and in countries including India and Russia.
It launched last year in Spain, where it has four stores now.
The US might prove to be a whole different ball game. A tough stance by US President Donald Trump against Chinese technology companies has already caused turmoil for the likes of ZTE Corp (中興) and Huawei Technologies Co (華為).
“I don’t see any reason the US government will block us — we’re an Internet company founded by engineers who studied in the US and worked at Google and Facebook [Inc],” said Wang, a former Qualcomm Inc executive. “After the IPO, we’re an open book, for regulators and for consumers.”
Xiaomi does not sell smartphones in the US, but does ship products, such as portable batteries and electric micro-scooters, through Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc.
The US market, and also the UK, is more carrier-driven, which involves more smartphone customization, while Xiaomi’s strategy relies on making one model and selling it everywhere at roughly the same price, Wang said.
In Europe, Xiaomi’s biggest challenge will be convincing consumers its devices are top-quality, but more affordable than the flagship devices of Samsung Electronics Co and Apple Inc, he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day