Samsung beats Xiaomi to reclaim No. 1 spot in Indian smartphone market

Xiaomi, which has led the Indian smartphone market for three consecutive years, has ceded ground to its long-rival Samsung in the world’s second largest market, according to a new report.

According to estimates from marketing research firm Counterpoint, Samsung commanded 24% of the Indian smartphone market in the quarter that ended in September this year, ahead of Xiaomi’s 23% share. (For context: during Q3 2019, Samsung assumed 20% of the smartphone market in India while Xiaomi captured 26%.)

Counterpoint’s finding is in contrast to what research firm Canalys reported last week. According to Canalys, Xiaomi held the top spot in India with 26.1% of the market share in Q3 2020, ahead of Samsung’s 20.4%.

But both the firms agree that India’s smartphone market saw a sharp rebound during the quarter. According to Counterpoint, more than 53 million smartphone units shipped in Q3 2020 at a 9% year-over-year growth. (Canalys pegged the figure to be about 50 million.)

The volume of units Samsung shipped in Q3 2020 was up 32% year-over-year, Counterpoint said. The company has benefited from its recent aggressive push in online sales and launch of several affordable smartphone handsets in recent months, Counterpoint analysts said.

Xiaomi, which entered India in 2014 and for several years sold exclusively through e-commerce platforms, is still the top online brand in India, Counterpoint said. But the company, which identifies India as its biggest market outside of China, is struggling to grapple with a growing anti-China sentiment in India among consumers as tension between the two neighboring nations have escalated in recent quarters.

This tension may lead to some more changes in the market in the coming months. Micromax, an Indian smartphone vendor which once ruled the market, said earlier this month that it was gearing up to launch a new smartphone sub-brand called “In.” Rahul Sharma, the head of Micromax, said the company will invest $67.9 million in the new smartphone brand.

In a video he posted on Twitter earlier this month, Sharma said Chinese smartphone makers killed the local handset makers but that time had come to fight back. “Our endeavour is to bring India on the global smartphone map again with ‘in’ mobiles,” he said in a statement.

It’s worth pointing out that long before Chinese smartphone makers, who command more than 70% of the local smartphone market in India, arrived to the country, they engaged closely with Chinese phone makers. Chinese firms manufactured the phones and sold it to Indian firms under a white-label agreement.

Indian firms then sold those phones to consumers in the country. Eventually, Chinese smartphone makers cut the middlemen and started to sell better smartphone models at much better prices to Indian directly, said Jayanth Kolla, a smartphone industry veteran and chief analyst at consultancy firm Convergence.

India also recently approved applications from 16 smartphone and other electronics companies for a $6.65 billion incentives program under New Delhi’s federal plan to boost domestic smartphone production over the next five years. Foxconn (and two other Apple contract partners), Samsung, Micromax and Lava (also an Indian brand) are among the companies that will be permitted to avail the incentives.

Missing from the list are Chinese smartphone makers such as Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus and Realme.

from blogger-2 https://ift.tt/2J7vODi
via IFTTT

Mophie introduces a modular wireless charging module

Here’s a clever addition for Mophie, one of the longstanding battery case makers, which is now a part of the same smartphone accessory conglomerate as Zagg, Braven, iFrogz and InvisibleShield. The Juice Pack Connect is a modular take on the category, with a battery pack that slides on and off.

For $80 you get a 5,400mAh battery (that should get you plenty of additional charge time) and a ring stand that props the phone up. Mophie may offer additional models at some point, but right now, the biggest selling point is less about add-ons and more the fact that you can slip the battery off the device when not needed and still use the case.

Image Credits: Mophie

It’s not entirely dissimilar from the modular uniVERSE case OtterBox introduced a bunch of years ago, but the big advantage here is that the charging works via Qi, so you don’t have to plug it into the phone’s port.

It’s not cheap (Mophie isn’t, generally). And, no, it’s not a MagSafe accessory. Instead, the add-on attaches to your case (needs to be one thin enough to support the charging, mind) using adhesive. The upside is that it works with a much larger number of phones, including multiple generations of iPhones and wireless-capable handsets like Samsung Galaxies and Google Pixels.

OtterBox’s new case offers a battery, speakers, Square reader and other swappable functionality

from blogger-2 https://ift.tt/37PPkhY
via IFTTT

Samsung chairman dies at age 78

Lee Kun-hee, the long-time chairman of Samsung Group who transformed the conglomerate into one of the world’s largest business empires, died today at the age of 78, according to reports from South Korean leading news agency Yonhap.

The story of Samsung is deeply intertwined with the history of its home country, which is sometimes dubbed “The Republic of Samsung.” Lee, the son of Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul, came to power in the late 1980s just as South Korea transitioned from dictatorship to democracy with the political handover from military strongman Chun Doo-hwan to Roh Tae-woo. Under his management, Samsung spearheaded initiatives across a number of areas in electronics, including semiconductors, memory chips, displays, and other components that are the backbone of today’s digital devices.

Lee navigated the challenging economic troubles of the 1990s, including the 1998 Asian financial crisis, which saw a near collapse of the economies of South Korea and several other so-called Asian Tigers, as well as the Dot-Com bubble, which saw the collapse of internet stocks globally.

Coming out of those challenging years, Lee invested in and is probably most famous today for building up the conglomerate’s Galaxy consumer smartphone line, which evolved Samsung from an industrial powerhouse to a worldwide consumer brand. Samsung Electronics, which is just one of a spider web of Samsung companies, is today worth approximately $350 billion, making it among the most valuable companies in the world.

While his business acumen and strategic insights handling Samsung were lauded, he faced troubles in recent years. He was convicted of tax evasion in the late 2000s, but was ultimately pardoned by the country’s then president Lee Myung-bak (no relation).

Samsung has also been under fire from groups including Elliott Management over chairman Lee’s attempts to secure the financial future of Samsung for his son, Lee Jae-yong, who took over effective leadership of the conglomerate following the elder Lee’s heart attack in 2014. Lee Jae-yong has suffered his own run-ins with the law, having been found guilty of bribery and sentenced to five years in prison, which was ultimately suspended by a judge.

After his heart attack, Lee Kun-hee remained hospitalized in stable condition according to Yonhap. Rumors of his condition have percolated in the six years since.

According to Bloomberg, Lee leaves behind roughly $20 billion in wealth, and he is the wealthiest South Korean citizen. He is survived by his wife as well as four children.

from blogger-2 https://ift.tt/3dYuONo
via IFTTT

Smartphone shipments rebound to an all-time high in India

Smartphone shipments reached an all-time high in India in the quarter that ended in September this year as the world’s second largest handset market remained fully open during the period after initial lockdowns due to the coronavirus, according to a new report.

About 50 million smartphones shipped in India in Q3 2020, a new quarterly record for the country where about 17.3 million smartphone units shipped in Q2 (during two-thirds of the period much of the country was under lockdown) and 33.5 million units shipped in Q1 this year, research firm Canalys said on Thursday.

Xiaomi, which assumed the No.1 smartphone spot in India in late 2018, continues to maintain its dominance in the country. It commanded 26.1% of the smartphone market in India, exceeding Samsung’s 20.4%, Vivo’s 17.6%, and Realme’s 17.4%, the marketing research firm said.

Image Credits: Canalys 

But the market, which was severely disrupted by the coronavirus, is set to see some more shifts. Research firm Counterpoint said last week that Samsung had regained the top spot in India in the quarter that ended in September. (Counterpoint plans to share the full report later this month.)

According to Counterpoint, Samsung has benefited from its recent aggressive push into online sales and from the rising anti-China sentiments in India.

The geo-political tension between India and China has incentivised many consumers in India to opt for local brands or those with headquarters based in U.S. and South Korea. And local smartphone firms, which lost the market to Chinese giants (that command more than 80% of the market today) five years ago, are planning a come back.

Indian brand Micromax, which once ruled the market, said this month that it is gearing up to launch a new smartphone sub-brand called “In.” Rahul Sharma, the head of Micromax, said the company is investing $67.9 million in the new smartphone brand.

In a video he posted on Twitter last week, Sharma said Chinese smartphone makers killed the local smartphone brands but it was now time to fight back. “Our endeavour is to bring India on the global smartphone map again with ‘in’ mobiles,” he said in a statement.

India also recently approved applications from 16 smartphone and other electronics companies for a $6.65 billion incentives program under New Delhi’s federal plan to boost domestic smartphone production over the next five years. Foxconn (and two other Apple contract partners), Samsung, Micromax, and Lava (also an Indian brand) are among the companies that will be permitted to avail the incentives.

Missing from the list are Chinese smartphone makers such as Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus and Realme.

from blogger-2 https://ift.tt/3dZFA65
via IFTTT

Hearings begin in Samsung vice chairman Jay Y. Lee’s accounting fraud trial

The trial of Samsung leader Jay Y. Lee, who is accused of accounting fraud and stock price manipulating, held its first hearing today at the Seoul Central District Court.

The Seoul Central District Court denied prosecutors’ arrest warrant request for Lee in June, stating that even though they had secured a “considerable amount of evidence,” it was still not enough to detain Lee.

Lee was not present for the hearing. Vietnamese state media reported that he was in Vietnam earlier this week to discuss investments with Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

South Korean court denies prosecutors’ arrest warrant request for Samsung heir Jay Lee

Prosecutors allege that the value of electronics materials provider Cheil Industries was artificially inflated before its merger with Samsung’s holding company five years ago to create a more favorable rate for Lee, who was then Cheil’s largest shareholder.

Lee is also one of eleven current and former Samsung Executives indicted by South Korean prosecutors last month over charges that they inflated the assets of Samsung BioLogics, which Cheil held a major stake in.

During the hearing today, Lee’s attorney said that the merger and accounting process were part of normal management activities, reported Channel News Asia.

If found guilty, Lee may face a jail sentence. Lee has already spent time in jail, after he was charged with bribing former President Park Geun-hye to secure support for the merger. Lee was released from prison in 2018 after serving almost a year.

Park was impeached in 2017 and sentenced to a 25-year prison term for bribery, abuse of power and embezzlement.

Samsung Vice Chairman Jay Lee is out of jail after his bribery sentence is suspended

from blogger-2 https://ift.tt/2TcNuzn
via IFTTT

Venn, a network hoping to be gaming’s answer to MTV, raises $26 million

VENN , the streaming network hoping to be gaming culture’s answer to MTV, has raised $26 million to bring its mix of video game-themed entertainment and streaming celebrity features to the masses.

The financing came from previous investor Bitkraft, one of the largest funds focused on the intersection of gaming and synthetic reality, and new investor Nexstar Media Group, a publicly traded operator of regional television broadcast stations and cable networks around the U.S.

Meet VENN, the company hoping to build MTV for the gaming generation

The investment from Nexstar gives Venn a toehold in local broadcast that could see the network’s shows appear on regular broadcast televisions in most major American cities, and adds to a roster of Nexstar properties including CourtTV, Bounce, and Ion Television. The company has over 197 television stations and a network of websites that average over 100 million monthly active users and 1 billion page views, according to a statement from Ben Kusin, Venn’s co-founder and chief executive.

“VENN is a new kind of TV network built for the streaming and digital generation, and it’s developing leading-edge content for the millennial and Gen Z cultures who are obsessed with gaming,” Nexstar Media Group President, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer, Thomas E. Carter said in a statement. “Gaming and esports are two fast growing sectors and through our investment we plan to distribute VENN content across our broadcast platform to address a younger audience; utilize VENN to gain early access to gaming-adjacent content; and present local and national brands with broadcast and digital marketing and advertising opportunities to reach younger audiences.”

It’s unclear how much traction with younger audiences Venn has. The company’s YouTube channel has 14,000 subscribers and its Twitch Channel boasts a slightly more impressive 57.7 thousand subscribers. Still, it’s early days for the streaming network, which only began airing its first programming in September.

Since its launch a little over a year ago, Venn has managed to poach some former senior leadership from Viacom’s MTV and MTV Music Entertainment Group, which has been the model the gaming-focused streaming network has set for itself. Jeff Jacobs, the former senior vice president for production planning, strategies and operations at MTV’s parent company, Viacom and most recently an independent producer for Viacom, the NBA, Global Citizen and ACE Universe.

Venn is currently available on its own website and various streaming services as well as through partnerships with the Roku Channel, Plex, Xumo, Samsung TV Plus and Vizio.

The company has also managed to pick up some early brand partnerships with companies including Subway, Draft Kings, Alienware, Adidas and American Eagle.

 

from blogger-2 https://ift.tt/3m4hXMb
via IFTTT

India approves Apple partners and Samsung for $143 billion smartphone manufacturing plan

Samsung and three major contract manufacturing partners of Apple are among 16 firms to win $6.65 billion incentives under India’s federal plan to boost domestic smartphone production over the next five years. These companies had applied for the incentive program in August.

In a statement Tuesday evening, Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) said these companies will be producing smartphones and other electronics components worth more than $143 billion over the next five years. In return, India will offer them an incentive of 4% to 6% on additional sales of goods produced locally over five years, with 2019-2020 set as the base year.

New Delhi’s move is aimed at significantly improving India’s manufacturing and exporting capacities and generating more local jobs. Around 60% of the locally produced products will be exported, the Indian ministry said. The companies will generate more than 200,000 direct employment opportunities in next five years and as many as 600,000 indirect employment opportunities during the same period, the ministry said.

The move is also a precursor to how the dynamics among major smartphone makers might change in India, the world’s second largest market, over the next few years. The inclusion of Foxconn, Wistron and Pegatron underscores how rapidly Apple plans to expand its local manufacturing capabilities in India. Wistron began assembling a handful of iPhone models in India three years ago, followed by Foxconn. Pegatron has yet to start production in India.

“Apple and Samsung together account for nearly 60% of global sales revenue of mobile phones and this scheme is expected to increase their manufacturing base manifold in the country,” the ministry said.

“Industry has reposed its faith in India’s stellar progress as a world class manufacturing destination and this resonates strongly with Prime Minister’s clarion call of AtmaNirbhar Bharat – a self-reliant India,” the ministry added.

Indian firms Lava, Bhagwati (Micromax), Padget Electronics, UTL Neolyncs and Optiemus Electronics have also received the approval. But missing from the list are Chinese smartphone makers Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus and Realme that had not applied for the program. Chinese smartphone vendors currently command about 80% of the Indian market. Samsung, which once led the Indian smartphone market, has faced intense competition from Xiaomi and Vivo in recent years.

from blogger-2 https://ift.tt/33EhTN3
via IFTTT

Google wakes up from its VR daydream

Daydream, Google’s mobile-focused virtual reality platform is losing official support from Google, Android Police reports. The company confirmed that it will no longer be updating the Daydream software, with the publication noting that “Daydream may not even work on Android 11” as a result of this.

This isn’t surprising to anyone who has been tracking the company’s moves in the space. After aggressive product rollouts in 2016 and 2017, Google quickly abandoned its VR efforts which, much like the Samsung Gear VR, allowed users to drop a compatible phone into a headset holster and use the phone’s display and compute to power VR experiences. After Apple’s announcement of ARKit, the company did a hard pivot away from VR, turning its specialty AR platform Tango into ARCore, an AR developer platform that has also not seen very much attention from Google in recent months.

Google bowing out of official support from Daydream comes after years without product updates to their own View headset and very little investment in their content ecosystem which wrecked the chances of Lenovo’s third-party effort the standalone Mirage Solo.

What went wrong? Once it became clear that Daydream wasn’t going to be an easy win, they kind of just abandoned the effort. Google’s hardware business is already peanuts to their search and ads business so it probably wasn’t clear what the point was, but virtual reality also quickly went from being the “it” technology to work on to clearly being a labor of love for a select few. Google determined it wasn’t the effort while Facebook continued to double down. It’s hard to fault them for it, in 2020, even with some very good hardware on the way from Oculus, it still isn’t clear what VR’s future looks like.

It is clear, however, that Daydream won’t be part of it.

Review: Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 is outstanding

from blogger-2 https://ift.tt/36tydBY
via IFTTT