China

The latest numbers from Strategy Analytics reveal that Chinese handset maker Xiaomi has surpassed Huawei and LG to become the third-largest smartphone maker in the world. Xiaomi has been making impressive strides since recruiting former Google executive Hugo Barra and more than doubling its sales following international expansion.
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Chinese company Lenovo, which is in the process of buying the Motorola brand from Google, has reported a 23 percent year-on-year increase in first-quarter profits to $214M, reports Reuters. The company also said that worldwide phone sales were up 39 percent, in line with recent IDC numbers.

While Lenovo recently became the market leader within China, CEO Yang Yuanqing said that the company will in future be focusing on more profitable overseas markets … 
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Things are getting interesting for Google on the legal front. Not long after the ‘right to be forgotten‘ ruling and the messy fallout from that, a Hong Kong court has ruled that the company is responsible for auto-complete suggestions where they could be said to defame.

MyBroadband (via The Loop) reports:

A Hong Kong court has ruled that a local tycoon can sue Google Inc for defamation because searches for his name on Google suggest adding the word ‘triad’, Hong Kong’s notorious organized crime groups.

Searches in both English and Chinese for Albert Yeung Sau-shing, the founder and chairman of Hong Kong-based conglomerate Emperor Group, will automatically suggest phrases related to organized crime using Google’s ‘autocomplete’ function.

On Tuesday, the High Court of Hong Kong dismissed Google’s argument that it was not responsible for the autocomplete suggestions related to Yeung and that the court did not have personal jurisdiction over the U.S. search giant … 

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Samsung has announced a 31 percent drop in for its mobile division, broadly in line with its earlier guidance, when almost 200 managers “voluntarily” handed back 25 percent of their bonuses. Year-on-year operating profits fell from 6.43T won ($6.28B) to 4.42T won ($4.32B).

Chinese competition in low- and mid-range handsets was cited as one of the key reasons for the slump, with Samsung Mobile’s SVP Kim Hyun-Joon promising that the company would address this.

We will respond more aggressively to meet demand in the Chinese market […] in the latter half of this year by introducing more products with better specification as well as better price competitiveness …

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Following releasing its second quarter data for tablet shipments worldwide, IDC today released its Q2 2014 report for smartphone shipments during the three month period that ended in June. The numbers line up with Apple’s fiscal Q3 earnings call that took place earlier this month where the company reported iPhone sales of 35.1 million units for the quarter. With 295.3 million units shipped total during Q2, IDC notes that both Samsung and Apple lost share to the smaller Chinese manufacturers:
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Rapidly-growing Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi announced its first wearable today, the Mi Band. While it’s a fitness band rather than a smartwatch, it does have one smartwatch-style feature: it can be used instead of a passcode to unlock Mi phones.

The waterproof Mi Band measures activity levels and sleep patterns, has a smart sleep-cycle alarm and claims to have a 30-day battery-life. Amazingly, it will be going on sale in China and Singapore for the equivalent of just $13 … 
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Following allegations that one of Samsung’s suppliers in China was using child labor despite passing three separate Samsung audits, the company has now suspended its contract with the supplier. It says that if the allegations are substantiated, it will permanently cease doing business with the supplier.

Samsung’s 2014 Sustainability Report originally claimed that no instances of child labor had been found, but China Labor Watch said that it had found examples of child labour at a Samsung supplier in Dongguan, China, with several children found to be working 11 hours a day … 
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Earlier today, access to Google’s variety of web services was finally restored in China, after weeks of them being offline. This evening, however, Reuters reports that once again, the Mountain View company’s services are being disrupted in China. This includes tools such as Google Search, Maps, Gmail, advertising services, and more.

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Samsung, HTC and Motorola are likely to be looking a little nervously over their shoulders as Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi more than doubled its year-on-year sales. The company announced (via TNW) that it sold 26.1M phones in the first half of this year, more than it sold in the whole of 2013.

These are impressive sales for a company which sold its first smartphone just three years ago, and whose sales were initially limited to China. Its growth has been fuelled by expansion into Singapore, Malaysia, India and the Philipines, with the company now eyeing up Latin America as its next market … 
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The Verge observes that Samsung’s new 2014 Sustainability Report shows that the company has a lot of work to do to get its manufacturing in order.

As part of its 2014 Sustainability Report, Samsung commissioned independent inspections at 100 of its suppliers in China and the results make for grim reading …

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For the past few years, Microsoft has been licensing several of its patents with Android device makers. These agreements reportedly generate around $1 to $2 billion in revenue for the company. The software maker estimates that it has active licensing deals that cover around 70 percent of the Android devices in the US. So far, the company has never outlined what patents are being infringed on by Android, but a recent investigation by China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) has uncovered a stockpile of patents and filings held by Microsoft while reviewing the company’s acquisition of Nokia.

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A new video out of Bloomberg details  just exactly how a once unknown Chinese phone company has able to leapfrog the household names in technology and become the sixth largest mobile handset company in the world, and the third largest in China. Xiaomi was founded back in 2010 and went the total opposite direction in terms of strategy from Apple and Samsung. Making Android powered devices, Xiaomi has focused devices with high build quality and excellent performance.

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We’ve covered the Chinese search engine giant Baidu before, commonly referred to as “China’s Google”, the search engine is one of the leading sites in web traffic in the country. Looking to further support its title as “China’s Google”, Baidu today made a significant hire. First reported by Technology Review, Baidu has hired Andrew Ng to oversee a new artificial intelligence research lab it is opening in Silicon Valley.

Andrew Ng is a Stanford professor who is most well known for his position at Google, where he was a key component in the company’s “deep learning” field. Ng also cofounded the online education company Coursera.

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVp34KQbAqk]

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, the company which specialises in imitating Apple’s marketing for its Android handsets, has launched its first tablet, reports Reuters – and it’s an iPad mini clone. The company has even named it the Mi Pad …

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If you’re in the market for a new phone and a new projector, why not kill two birds with one stone phone? At least that’s what Samsung is hoping for with its projector-toting Galaxy Beam 2. Aside from its major draw, the Beam 2 sports a 1.2GHz quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM and a low-res 800 x 480 4.66-inch display — we’re guessing Samsung wants you to focus on creating your own display with the projector.

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Gif courtesy of <a href="http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2014/04/google-maps-stays-neutral-by-only-showing-your-side-in-border-disputes/">Gizmodo</a>

You can’t please all of the people all of the time – but when it comes to disputed borders, Google Maps gives it a very good try.

According to this wikipedia page, there are more than 200 disputed borders in the world – territories that are claimed by more than one country. Even the USA and Canada argue about who owns two islands, three straits and one sea. That’s more than 200 opportunities for Google Maps to cause offence … 
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Increasing competition in the Android market is placing Samsung under increased pressure, says Kantar, reporting sales figures for the final quarter of 2013.

After years of accelerated growth, Samsung is now coming under real pressure in most regions, with European share down by 2.2 percentage points to 40.3% and in China its share ended the year flat at 23.7% … 
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The Android hardware market in the US better make some shelf space as Chinese manufacturer Meizu states its intentions to come stateside. The company announced its plans to jump-start its entry into the US at the Consumer Electronics Show next month.

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