Articles about China

Xiaomi, which has earned a name selling insanely cheap-priced smartphones, smart TVs, a smart band, and a range of other smart products, is indeed making a laptop. Inventec, one of the company’s manufacturing partners  has confirmed.

In an interview with Taipei Times, Inventec Corp chairman Richard Lee said that Xiaomi Inc’s first notebook computer product not only exists but it is set for shipments in the first half of 2016.

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Back in April, we reported that Chinese smartphone manufacturer Elephone planned to launch a handset which would dual-boot Windows 10 Mobile and Android 5.0 Lollipop mobile operating systems. Five months later, that phone has been officially launched. Called the Elephone Vowney, the smartphone is priced at $299.99 and goes on sale from September 30.

As for the specifications, the Elephone Vowney sports a 5.5-inch QHD display (2560 x 1440) with a pixel density of 535ppi. It is powered by an octa-core MediaTek MT6795 processor clocked at 2.2GHz coupled with 3GB of RAM. It comes with 64GB of inbuilt storage with support for a microSD card should you want more.

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Following an initial strong performance out of the gate, Apple Watch sales have been widely regarded as on the slump according to several pieces of analysis we’ve seen -- although the latest snippet concerning the Chinese market is more optimistic.

As you may be aware, the iPhone 6 models have been doing very well over in China, and Apple’s smartwatch has also shifted a considerable amount of units.

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Even though China’s smartphone market is saturated, and now relies only on people replacing their devices instead of buying their first one, Apple still bets a lot on that market.

In its third quarter earnings the iPhone business grew by more than half, to $31bn (£19.64bn) on 47.5 million shipments. According to a report by the IB Times, sales in China more than doubled to $13bn (£8.24bn), over a quarter of Apple’s revenue. The company did not say exactly how many iPhones it sold in China last quarter, but it was an 87 percent increase on a year earlier.

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Whilst recent attention in the payments industry has been on China as the next e-commerce frontier -- with Alibaba’s Jack Ma recently courting US businesses to cross the border -- we are starting to witness the rise of Chinese companies breaking into European markets.

Driven by the hunger of fast growth and the increasing acceptance of customers to purchase online internationally, Chinese brands are keen to get a slice of the European market and bring their offerings to a new audience. And it’s not just the big companies that are crossing borders. With analysts at Bernstein predicting that Lenovo and Huawei will emerge as world class brands in the next few years, we are also starting to see smaller players getting in on the action, including smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi that is already making headlines overseas since launching in the UK in June.

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Flip phones are nowhere near as popular nowadays as they used to be a few years ago, but they are much more interesting as manufacturers introduce new models that try to keep up with the times. A great example is Samsung's new G9198, which comes with high-end internals and runs Android.

Basically, it is the flip phone for people who love the form factor but not its typical shortcomings. And, yes, in case you are wondering, there are still lots of consumers interested in buying a flip phone in 2015. Understandably, they are just not your typical smartphone buyers.

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Xiaomi, the fast-growing Chinese technology conglomerate which earned a name selling durable and powerful smartphones, tablets and other gadgets at insanely cheap price points, today at an event in China announces two new smartphones and a major update to its Android based ROM. The company today launches the Redmi Note 2 and the Redmi Note 2 Prime.

The successor to the company's fast-selling Redmi Note phablet, the Redmi Note 2 is Xiaomi's latest take to the increasingly competitive smartphone market. The Redmi Note 2 sports a 5.5-inch FHD display and costs just RMB 799 ($125).

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China’s online censorship program has taken a decidedly aggressive turn, following the announcement that police officers will now be stationed inside large Internet companies.

The country’s deputy minister of public security Chen Zhimin revealed the plans earlier this week and explained that "network security offices" would be set up inside digital firms "to find out about illegal Internet activity more quickly".

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The move to bigger iPhones is arguably the best decision that Apple has made in recent years. Consumer demand has been extremely strong from launch, proof being that Apple was able to match Samsung's shipments in Q4 2014 and post record sales quarter after quarter. The result? Record earnings.

The strong iPhone sales also translate into a strong market share. In Europe, Apple's handsets are gaining ground across all five-largest local markets, at the expense of either market leader Android or third-place rival Windows Phone, according to a new report from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

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Chinese technology conglomerate Xiaomi, best known for its low-priced and durable smartphones, has been aggressively working lately to increase its other product portfolios. The company today announces that it is refreshing its TV lineup by launching the Mi TV 2S.

As for the specifications, the Mi TV 2S sports a 48-inch display with 4K capability. With a waistline of 9.9mm and aluminum body, the television set is impressively thin too. But the company is not making any compromises on the internal components.

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Samsung has announced the Galaxy A8, a continuation on the A series of smartphones, in China.

The Galaxy A8 features a super-thin design, measuring at 5.9mm, alongside a 5.7-inch 1920 x 1080 display. Like other devices in the A series, Samsung has added a metallic frame to the device.

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Step aside, multi-billion-dollar construction companies. The always-pioneering city of Dubai is about to prove that a completely functional office building can be set up with little more than a 3D printer.

A special 20-foot-tall printer will be able to spit out virtually all the varying components and layers for the single-story building, which will then be placed on site and manually assembled in the United Arab Emirates city. Once all is said and done, it will be a sprawling 2000-square-foot structure.

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It is becoming increasingly common for governments around the world to block access to websites they don’t approve of for one reason or another. The most frequent censor is China, and the latest site to fall victim to the Great Firewall of China is Reddit. If you're not able to pop over to China to check whether the site is blocked, you can use Blocked In China to test whether any site is accessible from within the country.

This is not the only site which people are having trouble accessing. Over in Russia, the Internet Archive -- responsible for the nostalgia-inducing Wayback Machine -- is also blocked. While the blocking of Reddit in China has probably been done on purpose, the same may not necessarily be true in Russia.

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A few weeks ago my one-and-a-half-year-old Nexus 5 started to misbehave. Its power button wasn't holding up well, forcing the phone to switch off a dozen times, while also making it a chore to turn the phone back on again. I realized the phone was on its last leg. I also have an iPhone 5s, but I mostly use it to listen to podcasts, take phone calls, and take photos. Suffice to say I'm an Android guy. With OnePlus announcing its plan to release the successor of its One flagship in Q3 later this year, and LG reportedly working on the successor to Nexus 5, I decided to purchase a cheap phone running Google’s software to keep my boat floating until these much-anticipated smartphones begin to trickle up on the market. This led me to purchase the recently launched $200 Mi 4i smartphone from Chinese conglomerate Xiaomi. After using it for a couple of weeks, I don't think I want to upgrade to a new phone this year.

The smartphone market has seen many new forces arrive in the last couple of years. These new players have changed the landscape entirely, pushing new phones with top-notch capabilities at an increasingly competitive price point. We now have plenty of options in both the low and mid-tier categories. The dirt-cheap $100 Moto E is a decent entry-level smartphone, and the $180 Moto G entices users looking for a more efficient phone. The Lenovo A7000 offers 4G LTE capability for less than $150, and $100 Android One smartphones from Micromax, Karbonn Mobiles, and Lava offer the up-to-date software and reasonably good specs. But I wanted a phone that offers a high-end processor and top-of-the-line hardware modules; Xiaomi was offering me just that.

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Even though it reigns supreme in one of the world’s largest markets, China, Alibaba wants to expand globally. If it fails to do so, it might not survive, the company’s new CEO said recently.

In a speech given to employees on Wednesday, the new Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang said Alibaba will heavily invest in "new and existing overseas operations".

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