Tag: Xiaomi

Posted on

Manu Jain, Xiaomi exec who set up and scaled India business, leaves

Manu Jain, the executive who helped Xiaomi set up and scale business in India, has left the company, he said Monday, joining a long list of high-profile departures at the local unit that is increasingly losing market share to rivals including Samsung.

Jain did not say why he was leaving the firm, but he has been pitching investors ideas for an EV startup for several months, people familiar with the matter said. Jain had been telling many industry figures for several quarters about his plans to leave the venture, according to many of the people with whom he has spoken.

Xiaomi entered the Indian smartphone market in 2014. In within quarters, the firm had started to make a dent in the market, undercutting rivals Samsung, OnePlus, Oppo and Vivo with higher specs phones at more affordable price.

A few years later, Xiaomi became the top smartphone vendor in India, a crown it no longer holds.

Once a key figure in the India team, Jain grappled with a big blow after the relationship between China and India soured amid escalating geopolitical tension between the neighboring nations in 2020, people familiar with the matter said.

According to one source, Jain was supposed to be elevated to a higher global role but the firm changed its mind. Jain was also summoned by India’s Enforcement Directorate, where according to Xiaomi’s own account, he faced threats of “physical violence” in a tax dispute issue.

Amid the tension at its India unit, several key Xiaomi executives including Raghu Reddy, Xiaomi India business head, have left the firm in recent quarters.

Xiaomi did not respond to a request for comment in December. Jain did not respond to multiple requests for comment throughout last year.

“I joined the Xiaomi Group in 2014 to start its India journey. The first few years were full of ups and downs. We started as a one-person startup, working from a small little office. We were the smallest amongst the hundreds of smartphone brands, that too with limited resources and no prior relevant industry experience,” Jain said in a statement.

In his long statement Monday, Jain did not comment on Xiaomi’s dwindling market share in India and other shrinking India leadership team.

Manu Jain, Xiaomi exec who set up and scaled India business, leaves by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

Posted on

Xiaomi’s India business head quits amid growing scrutiny

Xiaomi’s business head in India has resigned as the Chinese smartphone giant faces regulatory pressure and intense scrutiny from the Indian government and sees growing competition from other homegrown Chinese vendors as well as Samsung.

Raghu Reddy, Chief Business Officer, who was one of the prominent public faces and a part of the leadership team, has quit Xiaomi, the company confirmed on Wednesday. He is currently serving his notice period at the company.

“It has been a privilege to have Raghu as an integral part of the Xiaomi India Leadership team. He has played an influential and significant role in Xiaomi becoming the #1 Smartphone and Smart TV brand in India. [We] would like to extend thanks from the complete Xiaomi India family to Raghu for his ‘can do’ spirit, collaborative mindset, and passion for Xiaomi, our Mi fans and Partners. As he moves on to pursue different growth opportunities externally, we wish him all the best for his journey,” the company said in a prepared statement.

“Xiaomi India has built a strong leadership team over the years and we will look to strengthen this going forward. As a brand, we will continue to focus on delivering innovation for everyone and democratizing technology for the masses.”

Reddy had joined Xiaomi as its online sales head in the country in 2016. The company elevated him to the chief business officer position in January 2020. Before joining Xiaomi, Reddy worked at FreeCharge, Snapdeal and EY.

Following the transition of Xiaomi India’s former chief Manu Kumar Jain to group vice president in June this year, Reddy was named among the three people leading the smartphone company’s India business independently — alongside Chief Operating Officer Muralikrishnan B and Chief Financial Officer Sameer BS Rao. At the time, the company appointed Alvin Tse as the general manager for its India business.

The departure of Reddy from Xiaomi’s team in India comes at a time when the smartphone vendor is seeing scrutiny by New Delhi.

In April, India’s anti-money laundering agency seized assets worth about $725 million from Xiaomi India for allegedly breaching the country’s foreign exchange laws. The agency also summoned Xiaomi executives including Jain for questioning over tax compliance.

On Tuesday, Indian IT minister for state Rajeev Chandrasekhar said in a media interview that Chinese handset manufacturers “must effectively follow the law of the land and should have open transparent supply chains” if they want to continue in the country.

The Indian government banned over 200 apps with China linkage in 2020. Some of those were developed by Xiaomi.

Xiaomi has led smartphone shipments in India for the last few years, according to reports by analyst firms including Canalys, Counterpoint and IDC. However, the Beijing-headquartered company has started getting the heat from Samsung, which is the number two player in the country, as it is growing the portfolio of its Galaxy phones in the country. Chinese vendors including Oppo, Realme and Vivo are also trying hard to take the share from Xiaomi and grow their market share in the country.

Xiaomi’s India business head quits amid growing scrutiny by Jagmeet Singh originally published on TechCrunch

Posted on

Xiaomi winds down financial services business in India

Xiaomi has quietly discontinued its financial services in India, less than three years after launching payment and lending apps in the key global market, two sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, retreating from what analysts say is a $1 trillion opportunity.

The Chinese giant recently pulled the Mi Pay and Mi Credit apps in the country from the local Play Store and its own app store. Mi Pay, which allowed users to make transactions on the nation’s UPI payments network, is also no longer listed among the recognized UPI apps by NPCI, an industry body that oversees UPI.

Xiaomi and NPCI did not respond to a request for comment.

The abrupt wind down of the financial services business is a setback for Xiaomi India, which commands the smartphone market in the country and has aggressively expanded its offerings to increase profits as the company’s hardware business operates on razor-thin margins.

Xiaomi launched Mi Pay in India in March 2019. The app had amassed over 20 million registered users in the country that year itself, company executives said at the time.

Later in the year, the company launched Mi Credit, an app that lent customers between $70 to $1,400 at low interest rates. It accessed users’ texts and call logs to look for transactions information and some other details to determine their credit-worthiness and approved loans to them through partners in a matter of minutes.

In August last year, Xiaomi India’s then head Manu Jain told media outlets that the company was aiming to become one of the largest players in India’s fintech space through Mi Credit and Mi Pay apps. The company considered India as the biggest market for Mi Credit after China, he said.

Scores of giants including Facebook and Google have entered India’s digital loan market, offering small businesses loans via partners. Digital lending is expected to be worth $1 trillion by 2025, according to estimates from the Boston Consulting Group.

Jain, who has transitioned to a different role within the firm since, said last year that the company was looking to bring several more financial services including gold loans, credit line cards and insurance to the South Asian market.

It’s unclear why Xiaomi discontinued the financial services offerings in the country, but the move comes at a time when India’s central bank has proposed stringent rules surrounding lending in India, mandating what all data they can access on a customer’s phone and broader disclosures about the terms of their credit agreement.

Xiaomi has also been at the center of intense scrutiny from the Indian government agencies. The Indian Enforcement Directorate earlier this year seized bank accounts of Xiaomi India after finding that the company had remitted $725 million to three foreign-based entities “in the guise of royalty” payments.

Executives of Xiaomi, which has refuted the charges and has legally challenged the ruling, faced threats of “physical violence” during their investigation with the ED, Reuters reported earlier.

Xiaomi says it has shipped over 200 million smartphones in India amid crackdown

Xiaomi winds down financial services business in India by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

Posted on

China’s smartphone shipments slumped 23% in Jan-Aug

Smartphone shipment is often seen as the bellwether of China’s consumer spending, and right now, the picture isn’t very rosy.

The world’s largest market for smartphones shipped 175.1 million handsets between January and August, marking a sharp 22.9% decline year-over-year, according to research from a state-backed institution. In August alone, shipments dropped 21.9% year-over-year.

The global smartphone market as a whole is experiencing a slowdown, logging a 9% decline in the second quarter due to a mix of challenges including a COVID-struck economy, inflation, and deceleration following years of frantic growth. China’s growing consumer appetite obviously played a big part in driving the boom, and now that the world’s second-largest economy is hitting a speed bump, the smartphone industry is inevitably taking a hit.

The era of economic miracles is coming to a close in China. On Monday, official data reported a 3.9% GDP growth rate from July to September, which beat forecasts but was way below the double digits that propelled the country’s economy forward for three decades.

China is not only the world’s largest market for hanset users but is also its largest phone producer, with home-grown brands like Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi rising over the years to rival Apple and Samsung. These domestic phone markers began seeking overseas expansion well before their home market start cooling down. And they’ve successfully carved out their international market share and have in recent years consistently shared the top five spots alongside Apple and Samsung.

The smartphone industry is notoriously cut-throat with modest margins, so it wasn’t unsurprising when Xiaomi and Oppo, which are long known for selling budget phones, started offering higher-end models in recent years. Huawei established a strong presence in the premium handset space before the U.S. cut off its supply of critical chipsets and key Android services. Having seen how overdependence on advanced U.S. technologies and geopolitical tensions has wrecked Huawei’s revenues, Oppo and the likes are rushing to work on their own smartphone processors.

The need for Chinese firms to have their own high-end chips is getting dire as the Biden administration hit China with possibly the strictest export controls earlier this month. Analysts are still parsing the impact of the policy, but initial observation shows that the new rules will not only restrict Chinese companies’ access to high-end U.S. chips but will also bar their access to chip-making equipment, which will hobble the country’s ability to develop such advanced technologies.

Oppo’s first self-developed chip is all about imaging performance

China’s smartphone shipments slumped 23% in Jan-Aug by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

Posted on

Xiaomi’s latest flagship has a 200-megapixel sensor — so don’t think spec race is over

Xiaomi just launched the 12T Pro, a flagship with a 200-megapixel main camera. The company is using Samsung’s HP1 sensor with a base pixel size of 0.64μm and f/1.69 aperture.

The sensor, which was launched last year, uses pixel binning in different ways: it can combine 16 pixels to produce a 12.5-megapixel image (2.56μm pixel size), combine four pixels to produce a 50-megapixel image (1.28μm pixel) or produce a full 200-megapixel image. For comparison, binned 12-megapixel photos the new iPhone 14 Pro’s 48-megapixel camera has a pixel size of 2.44μm.

This main sensor provides features such as 2x zoom, night mode photography and video recording in up to 8K resolution. Xiaomi says it expects the device’s extremely high megapixel sensor to churn out images with super crisp details and color depth in both day and low light situations. However, other things such as the size of the sensor and the company’s post-processing algorithms matter a lot. So using a 200-megapixel sensor doesn’t guarantee that the resulting photos will be superior to sensors with a lower megapixel count.

The other specifications for 12T Pro are on-par with Android flagships launched this year: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor; 8 GB or 12 GB RAM; 128 GB or 256 GB UFS 3.1 storage; 120Hz 6.67-inch AMOLED display; and a 5,000 mAh battery that could be charged with a 120W charger packed in the box.

The company also claims that the new device has a 65% better cooling system than its predecessor.

Apart from the admittedly ridiculous 200-megapixel main camera, the Xiaomi 12T Pro has an 8-megapixel ultra-wide camera, 2-megapixel macro camera and a 20-megapixel front-facing camera.

Last month, Motorola released a device called the Edge 30 with the same 200-megapixel sensor supplied by Samsung, so it’s officially a trend.

The phone will be available in Black, Silver, and Blue colors starting €749 ($743) when it goes on sale October 13.

Xiaomi’s latest flagship has a 200-megapixel sensor — so don’t think spec race is over by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Posted on

Meet Xiaomi’s new humanoid robot, CyberOne

Long gone are the days when a consumer electronics company could simply announce a phone and call it a day. At this morning’s big launch event in Beijing, Xiaomi followed up its foldable news by handing the stage over to CyberOne. The bipedal humanoid robot joined Lei Jun onstage, greeting the CEO and handing him a long-stem flower.

At first glance, the robot isn’t exactly Atlas or Digit, in terms of locomotion, but it’s still a promising demo and very much not a person in a spandex suit (not that anyone would do that). It’s the latest sign of Xiaomi’s growing robotics ambitions, which began with vacuums and have since expanded to include last year’s Spot-esque CyberDog.

Image Credits: Xiaomi

We’ve seen plenty of consumer brands flex some robotic muscle at events like this, including Samsung and LG, so it’s tough to know where CyberOne falls in the spectrum between serious pursuit and stage spectacle.

Lei Jun was quick to flex the company’s investment in the category, noting, “CyberOne’s AI and mechanical capabilities are all self-developed by Xiaomi Robotics Lab. We have invested heavily in R&D spanning various areas, including software, hardware and algorithms innovation.”

There’s an extremely broad range of claims here, including the ability to read human emotions. Xiaomi notes:

Humanoid robots rely on vision to process their surroundings. Equipped with a self-developed Mi-Sense depth vision module and combined with an AI interaction algorithm, CyberOne is capable of perceiving 3D space, as well as recognizing individuals, gestures, and expressions, allowing it to not only see but to process its environment. In order to communicate with the world, CyberOne is equipped with a self-developed MiAI environment semantics recognition engine and a MiAI vocal emotion identification engine, enabling it to recognize 85 types of environmental sounds and 45 classifications of human emotion. CyberOne is able to detect happiness, and even comfort the user in times of sadness. All of these features are integrated into CyberOne’s processing units, which are paired with a curved OLED module to display real-time interactive information.

Image Credits: Xiaomi

Equally broad are the promised real-world applications, ranging from manufacturing assistance to human companionship. There will be plenty of use for both of these feature sets in the future, but that’s a long walk (so to speak) from today’s demo. For the time being, it probably makes the most sense to view CyberOne as something of an analog to, say, Honda’s Asimo: a promising experiment that’s serves as a good brand ambassador for some of the work being done behind the scenes.

Posted on

Xiaomi’s new foldable is thinner than Samsung’s and only available in China

A day after Samsung announced a pair of foldable devices, Xiaomi launched its second-gen foldable, Mix Fold 2, in China. The new phone sports a 6.56-inch outer display, 8.02-inch inner display and a Leica-powered camera system. The phone is China-only for now for the base price of RMB 8,999 (~$1,335) for a version with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage — much cheaper than the Samsung Fold 4 priced at $1,800.

Xiaomi bests Samsung’s foldable in a number of key specs. For instance, both the outer display (6.56-inch v 6.2-inch) and the inner display (8.02-inch v 7.6-inch display) are larger than that of Fold 4.

The Chinese tech firm has included a Leica-powered 50-megapixel main sensor, 13-megapixel ultrawide sensor and 8-megapixel telephoto sensor with 2x optical zoom. The setup can record footage in 8K resolution with support for Dolby Vision HDR standard. Xiaomi said the Leica partnership extends to photographic styles — Vibrant look and Authentic look — which sound more like branding exercises than anything.

The company has managed to fit the internals in a sleek frame that’s 5.4mm unfolded and 11.2mm folded. For comparison, the Samsung Fold 4 is 6.3mm unfolded and 15.8mm folded. Though Xiaomi also has an extreme camera bump to show for it. Like the Galaxy Fold, the Mix Fold 2 is powered by Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1.

While the phone sounds exciting on paper, it’s limited to the China market for now, so it’s not going to be a threat to other players like Samsung. While the broader global smartphone market is seeing a growth decline, analysts project an upward curve for foldables. A report from Counterpoint predicts that companies will ship 16 million foldable this year, and that number will go up to 26 million next year. Xiaomi has the opportunity to make a mark in the market, but in the short term, Samsung still has a significant head start.

“Samsung has led the market since the beginning, and we think its dominance will continue for some time. Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, and Vivo are all introducing new foldables but they are mostly limited to the Chinese market. Motorola may be the only contender in markets like the USA for now,” Counterpoint Senior Analyst Jene Park said.

The Mix Fold 2 is up for pre-order in China starting today and starts shipping October 16.

Posted on

Luminar to invest in Geely-affiliated Ecarx, eyes China market

Luminar, the Florida-based lidar company that went public via SPAC in 2020, has formed a close alliance with an auto behemoth in China. It’s making a strategic investment of an undisclosed amount in Ecarx, an auto tech startup co-founded by Eric Li, founder of China’s largest private automaker Geely, Ecarx said on Thursday.

The funding will be part of the pair’s wider collaboration on automotive-grade technologies, which aims to “enable advanced safety and automated driving capabilities in the production of consumer vehicles and commercial trucks,” a plan that Luminar unveiled in May.

Luminar’s sensing technology can potentially reach millions of vehicles through the Geely/Ecarx auto empire. Ecarx is building a comprehensive platform for the future of cars, focusing on the likes of auto chips and smart vehicles. Its customers include, unsurprisingly, Geely-owned brands like Lotus and Volvo.

Shen Ziyu, Ecarx’s other co-founder and a former General Motors executive, told Reuters in March 2021 that the company had already supplied 2.5 million vehicles.

The lidar industry in China is enjoying a boom as the country’s electric car makers — which themselves have benefited from government support for renewable energy — woo picky consumers with advanced driving technology, in-car entertainment, other novel auto features.

Luminar’s tie-up with Ecarx will be critical in helping it confront domestic lidar players, from BYD-backed Robosense and Bosch-backed Hesai to Temasek-funded Innovusion and Livox, which sprang out of DJI.

“The collaboration will help Luminar to accelerate deployment of its industry-leading long-range lidar and software in the [Chinese] market and beyond through Ecar’s deep connection with Geely and the Geely ecosystem, comprising some of the world’s most reputable automotive brands,” Luminar said in May.

The same month, the American lidar maker said it had brought on Jackie Chen, a Harman veteran, to head its China business.

Ecarx’s empire is ever expanding. On Thursday, the company announced another funding boost along with the Luminar partnership. Siengine, an automotive system on chip maker it co-founded with Arm China, has completed a Series A funding round of nearly 1 billion yuan or $15 million. Sequoia Capital China led the round, with Bosch’s China venture capital arm Boyuan Capital and others participating.

Earlier this month, Li and Shen bought Chinese smartphone maker Meizu, once a Xiaomi archrival, to work towards a future of “multi-device, scenario-agnostic, and immersive” digital experience, which will no doubt include system integration between vehicles and handsets.

In May, Ecarx announced plans to go public through a merger with a blank-check firm in a $3.8 billion deal.

China’s robotaxis charged ahead in 2021

Posted on

Daily Crunch: VW Group changes drivers — CEO Scott Keogh shifts to launch Scout EV brand

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Oh hey, and welcome to the Daily Crunch for Wednesday! Today, the whole office is proverbially abuzz with robotics. Proverbially, because we’re not sure we actually have an office at this point, and if we do, we don’t know who’s there. Maybe we are abuzz in Slack.

In any case, tomorrow is the big day! TC Sessions: Robotics is finally upon us! You can still snag a (free!) ticket ahead of the event. Here’s the agenda, and these are the companies that are pitching at the event. Come join us — we’ll be hanging out in the chat, and we may even make an appearance on the virtual stage from time to time.

Oh, and with a title like OK, don’t fear: the long shots are still getting venture funding, you just know you’re in for a treat with today’s episode of the Equity podcast. — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • ‘Scout’ing out new endeavors: Scott Keough, Volkswagen’s U.S. CEO, is stepping down from his post at the automaker to take a similar role over at Scout, which makes electric pickup trucks and SUVs, Jaclyn writes.
  • That’s not cold brew: Trust Haje to get on his somewhat-caffeinated soapbox in his short review of Spinn, “the $1,000 coffee maker for people who are too lazy to learn about coffee.”
  • Puff, puff, pay: Over in TechCrunch+ land, Anna lights up a market analysis into cannabis commerce company Dutchie’s new Dutchie Pay product that enables you to digitally pay for cannabis when purchasing at one of the dispensaries the company works with.

Startups and VC

Ex-NBA and Team USA basketball star Michael Redd is now the co-founder of 22 Ventures. In his newest TechCrunch+ column, he advises not to abandon founders in a downturn, and suggests 3 ways to support your portfolio.

Meanwhile, Haje is questioning the wisdom of changing the name of your startup to something that cannot easily be trademarked, as exemplified by GetHenry changing its name to Cycle.

Let’s parcel out some more newsy goodness:

Fundraising tips for early and midstage startups in 2022

Image of money sticking out of a brain against a yellow background; fundraising tips 2022

Image Credits: Massonstock (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Given current conditions, best practices for fundraising and building investor relationships are less relevant than they were a year ago. Back then, the promise of early growth was enough to help founders close seed and Series A rounds.

Today, startups with long sales cycles that aren’t cash-flow positive may not even be considered for follow-on investments.

If you’re curious about which kinds of startups investors are (and aren’t) willing to look at, Kami Vision CEO Yamin Durrani has written a comprehensive post about the changes he’s between fundraising in Q4 2021 and Q3 2022.

“Don’t panic, VCs are interested in investing right now — just in a few areas,” he writes.

Fundraising tips for early and midstage startups in 2022

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

The Indian government is alleging that Chinese smartphone makers, including Xiaomi, are evading taxes. Yet even amid those struggles, Xiaomi announced it shipped over 200 million smartphones in India, Manish reports.

That’s not the only company dealing with the Indian government. Amazon is also facing a setback after an Indian court agreed to send its partner, Future Retail, into bankruptcy, Jagmeet writes. Speaking of Amazon, Kyle reports the company debuted its new Alexa developer tools today, while Ivan writes about Amazon’s new partnership with Skullcandy to offer dual smart assistants.

Netflix was in the news today, and Lauren dropped a trio of stories about them. One story touches on the company’s not-so-good news about losing subscribers, and the other two stories provide an update on its ad-supported tier and an acquisition of Animal Logic.

Meanwhile, Carly writes that Google Drive is in the spotlight after it was found that Russian hackers are using the software to hide malware.

Here are some others we think you will enjoy:

Posted on

Xiaomi says it has shipped over 200 million smartphones in India amid crackdown

Xiaomi said on Wednesday it has shipped over 200 million smartphones in India to date, demonstrating just how large of a presence it has marked in the world’s second largest phone market in just eight years.

The Chinese giant, which began selling smartphones in India in 2014, revealed the figure at a media conference on Wednesday, where it pledged future commitment to the country. It took Xiaomi five years to ship its first 100 million smartphones in India, and just three for the next. The company claimed it has held the tentpole position in the Indian smartphone market since 2017.

The announcement comes at a time when Indian authorities have stepped up a crackdown on Chinese smartphone makers in the country.

Indian authorities have alleged that Chinese phonemakers Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi have engaged in tax evasion practices. The companies have denied any wrongdoing. China’s embassy in India criticized Indian authorities earlier this month for “frequent investigations” into local units of Chinese firms and warned that such moves “impede the improvement of [the] business environment” in India and “chills the confidence and willingness” of other foreign nation’s businesses to invest and operate in the South Asian market.

The recent probes into Chinese phonemakers follow growing tension between the two nuclear-armed neighboring nations that escalated in 2020 after a skirmish at the border.

India has since introduced several restrictions on Chinese firms. In the past two years, New Delhi has banned hundreds of Chinese apps, including TikTok, UC Browser and PUBG Mobile, citing national security concerns. New Delhi also amended its foreign direct investment policy in 2020 to require all neighboring nations with which it shares a boundary to seek approval from New Delhi for their future deals in the country.

While India cuts its reliance on Chinese software and capital, the country still lacks the infrastructure to make a similar go at hardware. New Delhi has launched big incentives to boost local hardware production ecosystem in India in recent years, but analysts say it will likely take several years for such efforts to show meaningful impact.

Four of the top five smartphone vendors in India are Chinese. Indian smartphone makers such as Micromax, Karbonn and Lava lost relevance in the past decade as Chinese smartphone makers and Samsung, which is the second largest handset vendor in India, launched more competitive devices at better prices.

In India, most handsets ship with a price tag below $200. Xiaomi, whose phones punch above their price class, has largely focused to the budget-conscious market from the day it began operations in India. The company has said in the past that it never makes more than 5% profit on any hardware product it sells.

When Xiaomi entered India, it relied mostly on selling handsets online to cut overhead for the first two years. But in the years since, it has established presence in brick-and-mortar markets, which continues to drive much of the sales in the nation.

Xiaomi appoints Alvin Tse as general manager of India business