Xaiomi IPO

Very much a company to watch and a customer of my prime suspect for the 10 million contract.

A stunningly fast growing company -- founded in 2010 with 18 Billion in revenues in 2017.



Xaiomi Website

A Market Craving new Features

Whoever it is who has an exclusive right to display only PicoP....

Can make a splash in the smartphone market.

With 1.4 Billion sold last year, more than 1 in 7 people on the planet got a new smart phone last year.

Compelling new features? The market needs them.

Yahoo News

"Smartphone sales are cooling, with analysts citing a lack of compelling new features and saturation in key markets including China"

"It doesn't mean it is not a strong market -- it is a huge market -- but it means vendors have to think differently," O'Donnell told AFP.

Smartphone sellers with slices of the market should no longer count on a fast-growing pie and instead rely on shrewd competitive moves to ramp up revenues, according to analysts.

Samsung remains the market leader, according to surveys, but its lead over Apple has slipped.

China's Huawei is holding the number three spot and rival Chinese maker Xiaomi has been growing rapidly despite the lack of a US presence.

Opportunity India

The Opportunity in India is amazing. Apple is treating its retailers in India shabbily, the demand for smart phones is huge.

Top this off with them loving their movies, and a shortage of movie screens... 

Things are looking good for the Voga V in India. INDIA SCREEN SHORTAGE

Voga V Phablet in India (Money symbol in Rupee)

Patently Apple

Now a new bone of contention has surfaced. According to a new report out of India, "Apple has reduced retail margins on the iPhone X by nearly 30%, frustrating large format chain owners and small-scale retailers that are crying foul that the Cupertino-based company does not want its retail partners to benefit while the company itself profits from the massive margins it makes.

Some like Bengaluru-based Sangeetha Mobiles have stopped taking orders of the new flagship, even as the costliest iPhone ever faces huge supply-demand mismatch in India, leading analysts to say that Apple should slot India far higher in its priority list and bring in larger shipments of the iPhone X."

Subhash Chandra, managing director at Sangeetha Mobiles, which has 400 stores across the country said that "Apple has cut margins on the iPhone X from 6.5% to 4.5% for large retailers like us, and if a customer pays by card, which is usually the case, the margin reduces to almost 1.5-2%."

Chandra added that "Apple gives the least margins… How on earth do they expect the retailer to work for them for free -- our overheads are anywhere around 10%."

The Economic Times report further noted that a "Industry insiders reveal that typically, brands such as Samsung or Xiaomi offer more than double the margin that Apple offers, around 12-15%. To gain share from competition, players like Oppo and Vivo were also giving higher than usual margins to retailers, but Apple has refrained from this practice.

Thanks for the heads-up Ron!

The Growth of Indian Mobile Manufacturing

India is one of the three largest markets for smartphones (and accessories) in the world. Still an industry growing significantly, and desperate for innovation.

Nuts.Guts.Glory


EconomicTimes.IndiaTimes

Chinese companies like Gionee and Xiaomi are making their handsets at Foxconn plant in Andhra Pradesh. Domestic companies such as Karbonn, Lava, Micromax, Intex, Jivi, iTel, and MTech too have set up their manufacturing plants in the country.  

As per industry sources, Chinese company LeEco will start mobile manufacturing unit on Tuesday.  

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/53888154.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

BGR India

Why we're Jealous of Chinese Smartphones

Better innovation and faster turnover in China. 

Wall Street Journal -- more at the source

Phones are TVs

In China, phones aren’t second-class citizens when it comes to watching shows and movies.

The best stuff is mostly available to stream online. China’s historic challenges with protecting intellectual property have helped the market invent new business models for media. Services like Youku Tudou, iQiyi and Tencent Video convinced many piracy-stricken content owners to join, rather than fight, the demand for online video by making it legitimate and getting paid for it through video advertisements. If you pay, you watch without ads.

Chinese can legally watch recent episodes of “Game of Thrones” free on a video site owned by Tencent, though censors make it considerably less exciting than what Americans see on HBO.

Now China’s online video services are even producing 360-degree virtual reality shows designed for the mobile world. We’re not holding our breath for U.S. TV producers to invest in a VR version of “The Big Bang Theory” anytime soon.

Sharp and Foxconn to Sign Deal Next Week

So, multiple sources who know what's going on, I'll believe this report.

I find the language interesting: "adopting next generation displays."  I've read enough of these reports to know that it's assumed by many that the "next generation display" is assumed to be OLED, not confirmed to be. OLED is also a place where there is significant competition and many other take-over targets.

The degree to which Foxconn produces top quality products for a number of major OEMS, including Samsung, Sony, Apple, Hewlett Packard, Amazon, Google, Huawei and Xaiomi -- means that this deal could be an enormous leap forward for MicroVision.

OLED Producers


Reuters

Sharp Corp (6753.T) and Taiwan's Foxconn are set to sign a takeover deal next week after repeated delays, with the two sides set to agree on a smaller bailout than originally planned for the troubled Japanese electronics maker, two sources familiar with the talks said on Saturday.

The two companies will hold board meetings on Wednesday to approve the deal and officially sign a deal the following day, said the two sources with direct knowledge of the talks.

The deal would be the largest acquisition by a foreign company in Japan's insular technology sector. In choosing to negotiate with Foxconn, Sharp turned down a rival offer by a state-backed fund.

It would also boost Foxconn's position as Apple's main contract manufacturer and provide Sharp with funds to start mass-producing organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens by 2018, around the time Apple is expected to adopt the next-generation displays for its iPhones.

Apple Insider

The Mi TV

MiTV

Xiaomi’s India Head Manu Jain for the first time has revealed that Xiaomi is planning to bring in Mi Box and Box TV in India. Also, he said that they don’t see India only as a mobile market and wish to bring in products in different categories.

If you are not aware, Mi Box is a small device that converts any normal TV into a Smart TV (on the lines of Chromecast) which will allow the user to do dozens of different activities. Dongles to convert normal TV sets into smarter ones are already in market and Xiaomi plans to launch their very own Mi Box in India very soon.

While Mi TV will also come to India, it will take some more time as Xiaomi is in talks with number of content providers. Xiaomi India Head himself has teased the launch of Mi Box by end of current year which will be followed by Mi TV. Executive also said that Mi TV will offer a very different TV viewing experience. It will have a mobile-OS like interface where you can do a number of activities and all will be streamed via Internet.

MicroVision's Brilliant Management

MicroVision licenses an imaging technology. While it may be included in devices that exist only to have this imaging technology, it's best use has always been anticipated to be a component in other devices. 

Embedded in smart phones has long been the goal for PicoP technology. Even when the best phones were flip-phones. I don't remember the last time I saw one.

So, given supply chain difficulties where would a brilliant management team take Microvision? Once the supply chain problems were solved, what would be the best partner for MicroVision? 

A company with these qualities?

• makes the best imaging products
• makes its own innovative consumer electronics products
• makes outstanding cellphones
• makes components for all other major OEM's cell phones
• Has huge video content library & distribution

That's where MicroVision's management has taken us - to SONY. MicroVision's management managed to get SONY as a partner.

There could be no better partner. It will be a mutually beneficial association that will benefit all parties: MicroVision, SONY, their customers and their shareholders.

No better possible partner exists than SONY. If for no other reason than they make camera components for every major smartphone on earth. They're so good they're having trouble keeping up with demand.

When PicoP -- SONY's next great component rolls out -- they're already selling components to Apple, Samsung & Xiaomi -- the big three cellphone makers. 

Sony TV partnership with Xiaomi

There are obvious reasons to watch Sony closely when watching Microvision. 

Xiaomi is also an interesting company to watch. 

Xiaomi is a rapidly growing smartphone company in an outstanding target market for PicoP. Xiaomi is a very innovative company in both technology and business practices. 

Their business practices will allow them to incorporate new technologies with less risk to their business than many other companies.

Xiaomi could be an awesome early adopter of Microvision's PicoP technology, and it could be a raging success in China and India where Xiaomi has a market in place.



Xiaomi:
7 Lessons of Xiaomi
Understanding Xaiomi's Marketing Strategy



Xiaomi & Sony from GizmoChina (full article here.)

Xiaomi has emerged as one of the biggest and fastest growing company not only in China, but across the world. This fact becomes clear as Sony gave Xiaomi a hand of partnership. As stated by the Ta Kung Pao website located in Hong Kong, the recent partnership of Sony Visual Products and China’s Xiaomi Technology will fare well.

Considering Sony’s relatively good standing in the Chinese market, and the Chinese market’s influence in America, Sony’s venture has been a wise and expected step. However, with this endeavour, Sony will now have to differentiate itself from foreign competitors.

In addition to Xiaomi, Sony has also joined hands with other Chinese corporations Baidu, Wasu TV and Duomi to offer video and photo content via cloud services as well as content portals for Sony.

This Sony-Xiaomi partnership will also be beneficial for Xiaomi and we must say that people at Xiaomi know how to move ahead in this business world.

Xiaomi Smartphone Share Triples.

Xaiomi phone share triples

Xiaomi’s China Smartphone Share Triples as Apple Declines

By Bloomberg News  Nov 7, 2014 1:29 AM PT

Xiaomi Corp. led China smartphone shipments in the third quarter as local brands including Vivo ate into the share of global market leaders Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. (AAPL), researcher Canalys said. 

Xiaomi more than tripled its share of the world’s largest smartphone market to 16 percent in the three months ended September from 5 percent a year earlier, Canalys said in an e-mail today. Samsung fell to second place from first as its market share dropped to 14 percent from 21 percent, the researcher said. 

Lenovo Group Ltd. (992) maintained its 13 percent share of the China market, yet still slipped to third place from second a year earlier. The country’s smartphone market is coming to the end of a period of “hypergrowth” that saw shipments double in the past two years, Lenovo Chief Executive Officer Yang Yuanqing said in an interview yesterday. 

“China market competition is very fierce,” Yang said by phone yesterday. “It’s the most fiercely competitive smartphone market in the world.” 

The fourth place was a tie as two more Chinese vendors, Huawei Technologies Co. and Coolpad Group Ltd., each captured 9 percent, Canalys said. In sixth place was the Vivo brand of BBK Communication Technology Co., which tripled share to 6 percent from 2 percent a year earlier, when it was ranked 11th, according to the researcher. 

Apple fell to seventh place from fifth as its market share dropped to 5 percent, compared with 6 percent a year earlier, Canalys said. While new iPhones made their global debut on Sept. 19, they didn’t officially go on sale in China until Oct. 17, after the quarter ended. 

Xiaomi’s surging sales at home lifted it to third place globally in the quarter ended September, trailing only Samsung (005930) and Apple, researcher International Data Corp. reported Oct. 29. 

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

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Tighe at mtighe4@bloomberg.netSubramaniam Sharma, Robert Fenner

(I scraped this content because often, in my experience, this kind of link disappears.)