Xiaomi Beats Apple to Smart TV With $490 Set Coming Next Month

September 5, 2013 Leave a comment

Xiaomi Beats Apple to Smart TV With $490 Set Coming Next Month

Xiaomi Corp., the smartphone maker that outsells Apple Inc. (AAPL) in China, has beat it on another front. The Chinese company will soon offer a TV that connects to the Web and runs on the Android operating system. The 47-inch (119-centimeter) TV costs 2,999 yuan ($490) and will be available next month, Lei Jun, founder and chief executive officer of the three-year-old company, said at a press conference in Beijing today. Lei also introduced a new handset he said would be the world’s fastest smartphone.“It’s time for the entire world to learn about Xiaomi,” said Hugo Barra, who will lead Xiaomi’s international business development from next month, after leaving Google Inc.

After building market share by selling handsets priced at less than a third of the iPhone 5 in China, Xiaomi plans to take on Apple and Samsung Electronics Inc. overseas. The company currently sells its devices in Hong Kong and Taiwan, in addition to the Chinese mainland.

The new handset, Xiaomi Phone 3, uses Qualcomm Inc.’s Snapdragon and Nvidia Corp.’s Tegra 4 processors, Lei said during the briefing. The 16-gigabyte model will cost 1,999 yuan.

Lei in June had said the Beijing-based company this year would more than double handset sales to 15 million. Xiaomi is looking to emulate Lenovo Group Ltd. (992), Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. (763), which all used the local market as a springboard to become among the largest smartphone makers in the world.

China Smartphones

Xiaomi, backed by investors including Temasek Holdings Pte and Qiming Venture Partners, last month said it completed a round of funding that gave it a valuation of $10 billion.

In the China smartphone market, Xiaomi rose to sixth place in the quarter ending June 30 from eighth a year earlier, researcher Canalys said Aug. 9. Apple was seventh.

Xiaomi has won sales with inexpensive handsets running Google’s Android system. Apple sells the iPhone 5 on its China website from 5,288 yuan.

Last month Xiaomi started sales of its first device for China Mobile Ltd. (941), the world’s largest phone company with 745 million subscribers at the end of July. The handset is priced at 799 yuan. Apple has yet to offer a device through China Mobile.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Edmond Lococo in Beijing at elococo@bloomberg.net

Filed under TMT Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment