Taiwanese manufacturer Inventec Corp (英業達) and Chinese software developer Kingsoft Co (金山軟件) yesterday jointly launched an online translation platform for cross-strait phraseology in China to pave the way for Inventec’s Dr Eye translation software to tap the Chinese market.
Kingsoft chairman Lei Jun (雷軍), who is also Xiaomi Corp’s founder and chief executive officer, and Inventec chairman Richard Lee (李詩欽) are to host a press conference in Beijing on Monday, the Taiwanese company said.
“Although Dr Eye has a simplified Chinese version, its user base in China is not as large as Kingsoft’s. The co-developed translation platform will boost the number of Dr Eye users in the country,” an Inventec official said by telephone.
The official, who declined to be named, said a few hundred of Inventec and Kingsoft’s research and development employees have been working together to build the cross-strait phraseology translation platform since the beginning of the year.
The platform helps users of traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese to understand each other’s corresponding phrases, the official said.
“The same thing might be expressed differently in Taiwan and China. That’s where the translation platform comes in,” he said.
As part of efforts to expand Dr Eye’s reach in the Chinese market, the official said Inventec is in talks with its smartphone client Xiaomi to bundle Dr Eye’s mobile application in the Chinese smartphone vendors’ handset products.
“The details are not finalized, but this is the direction we are working on,” he said.
In January, Lee told reporters that in addition to the translation platform project, Inventec was working with Kingsoft to provide cloud storage solutions to the Chinese company.
Inventec, which aims to ship 50 million smartphones this year, up from last year’s 30 million units, built a plant in India this year to assemble Xiaomi handsets.
Meanwhile, Xiaomi is reportedly planning to launch its first notebook product next year and is currently developing the product with Inventec, according to a source who is familiar with the matter.
The two companies have not set a timeframe for the laptop’s mass production, the source said.
The Inventec official yesterday declined to comment on the market speculation about its notebook project with Xioami.
Shares of Inventec grew 0.92 percent to NT$16.4 yesterday in Taipei trading.
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