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Tag Archives: Samsung
Samsung in China: latest business and financial News by former journalist at Reuter, expert of Chinese high Tech Market Doug Young
Samsung in China: latest News
Bottom line: Huawei’s move into the US smartphone market looks like a logical and necessary step to consolidating its place as a top global brand, but will require years of major investment to succeed.
Huawei to sell smartphones in US
Riding high on strong momentum from the second half of 2015, smartphone maker Huaweiis aiming to fill the last major black hole in its global footprint by entering the US. The new campaign carries special significance for Huawei, since the company was banned from selling its older networking equipment in the US several years back due to national security concerns from Washington.
The move into the US was just one of many topics that Huawei executives discussed at CES, the world’s biggest consumer electronics show taking place this week in Las Vegas. But it was the move the attracted the most attention due to Huawei’s past frustrations with one of the world’s biggest markets for both networking equipment and smartphones. Read Full Post…
It’s official: the fast-rising Huawei has formally passed the 100 million mark for smartphone sales this year, cementing its place as the world’s undisputed third largest player behind only Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Samsung (Seoul: 005930). In a relatively unusual move for this low-profile company, Huawei is also trumpeting the milestone in a formal press release and forecasting more strong growth for next year.
Huawei has been China’s biggest success story to date in the young smartphone space, gaining rapid momentum over a crowded field of domestic rivals that includes Lenovo (HKEx: 992), ZTE (HKEx: 763; Shenzhen: 000063) and smaller names like Alibaba-backed Meizu. But the company should also carefully watch the case of the stumbling Xiaomi, which was being called a homegrown Chinese version of Apple before it began its recent rapid fall from grace. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: OnePlus and Smartisan are 2 brands that could be most at risk for closure or acquisition in a looming smartphone shakeup that will intensify next year and claim at least 2-3 mid-sized and smaller players.
Less than 2 weeks after he talked about a looming shakeup in China’s overheated smartphone sector, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei is having to explain layoffs at his company, and also fend off rumors of a takeover bid. At the same time, more signs of Pei’s predicted shakeup are coming from Smartisan, another newer smartphone play, whose manufacturing partner for its new model has reportedly gone bankrupt.
Both OnePlus and Smartisan fit the profile of the kind of company that Pei said would be most at risk in the coming shakeup. Each is relatively young, and both are pure smartphone plays without any other operating history. That means they have few other resources to fall back on as their profits evaporate in the unending price wars gripping China’s smartphone market. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Apple’s and Samsung’s simultaneous new mobile payment tie-ups with UnionPay indicate Beijing will open the market next year to foreign companies, many of whom may choose to partner with not only UnionPay, but also Alibaba or Tencent.
Apple ties with UnionPay
In what should come as a big surprise to no one, Apple(Nasdaq: AAPL) has formally announced a tie-up with Chinese electronic payments giant UnionPay to bring its Apple Pay service to China as soon as early next year. This particular development isn’t hugely unexpected, since Apple CEO Tim Cook had previously talked of such plans and media reported Apple was close to such a deal last month. (previous post)
What does come as a slight surprise is the addition of Samsung’s (Seoul: 005930) name to the latest reports, as the South Korean smartphone giant announced its own separate deal with UnionPay. Apple’s choice of UnionPay also is a slight surprise, since the earlier reports only said that Apple was in talks with several major Chinese banks. Last but not least, this latest announcement seems to be the strongest indicator yet that China will finally open up its electronic payments market to foreign companies in the first half of next year. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on December 19-21. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), Samsung to Enter China Payments Market With UnionPay (English article)
Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU) Enters into Definitive Agreement for Going Private (PRNewswire)
Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Unveils Plans for China Joint Venture (English article)
Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Oriental Pearl in Cloud Computing Partnership (Chinese article)
BOCI (HKEx: 3988) Sells Nanyang Commercial Bank to Cinda for HK$68 Bln (HKEx announcement)
Bottom line: Next year’s likely election of a Taiwan president from its current opposition party could delay many of Tsinghua Unigroup’s pending Taiwan acquisitions, crimping its plans to build a Chinese chip giant using Taiwanese technology.
Unigroup buys into 2 more Taiwan chip firms
Barely a week seems to pass without news of a major new acquisition by Tsinghua Unigroup, the Beijing-backed company that suddenly seems intent on building a global chip giant able to challenge worldwide leaders like Intel (NYSE: INTC), TSMC (Taipei: 2330) and Samsung (Seoul: 005930). The company is once again in the headlines as we head into year-end, this time in new deals to buy stakes in 2 Taiwanese chip firms for a combined $2.1 billion.
These latest deals follow another major purchase in Taiwan last month, making it increasingly clear that Unigroup hopes to combine its own financial resources and government connections with Taiwan’s high-tech expertise to realize its chip-making dreams. That plan looks good in principle, since China and Taiwan are highly complementary and also share many cultural elements. But the plan could run into big problems next year, as Taiwan’s political landscape looks set for major change that could see the current China-friendly regime replaced with a more conservative government. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Huawei’s smartphone unit is finishing 2015 on a solid note, meeting its annual targets a month early, while Xiaomi will need to show better overseas performance next year to regain some of its fading momentum.
Huawei meets smartphone targets early
A flurry of new numbers are coming from the smartphone space as we head into year end, reflecting the different focuses of domestic leaders Huawei and Xioami. When the history books are written, 2015 will be remembered as the year when Huawei surged to become the world’s third biggest smartphone brand behind only Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Samsung (Seoul: 005930), and also the clear Chinese leader. But for Xiaomi, 2015 could be a year the company would rather forget, as it lost momentum in its home China market due to stiff competition and saw slow progress in its overseas expansion.
The latest headlines have Huawei forecasting its overall revenue will surpass the $60 billion mark this year, equating to a rise of 29 percent or higher from last year’s $46.5 billion. That would mark a nice acceleration from the previous year’s 20.6 percent revenue growth, with much of the gains coming from the company’s rapidly growing smartphone division. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: China Resources’ unsolicited bid for Fairchild Semiconductor is certain to fail, but reflects Beijing’s desire to broaden its field of domestic companies making bids for global microchip companies.
China Resources enters chip-buying race
Beijing’s recent bid to build up its high-tech microchip sector is in the headlines again, with word that state-run conglomerate China Resources has made an 11th-hour bid for mid-sized US chip company Fairchild Semiconductor (Nasdaq FCS). This particular bid, which would value Fairchild at nearly $2.5 billion, was quite a surprise, since Fairchild had agreed just last month to be acquired by US rival ON Semiconductor (Nasdaq: ON).
There are 2 major elements to this chip story that has seen China become a sudden major bidder for global assets. The biggest picture is a story of consolidation in the global sector, which is long overdue and comes as maturing technology and has created an intensely competitive field of mid-sized players, many of those losing money. The second element is Beijing’s own recent decision to join the field of global buyers, as it tries to build up a homegrown chip giant to compete with big global players like Taiwan’s TSMC (Taipei: 2330) and South Korea’s Samsung (Seoul: 005930). Read Full Post…
Bottom line: The latest muddled comments from Lenovo founder Liu Chuanzhi could reflect his growing frustration with CEO Yang Yuanqing, who could be forced out in the next year if the company’s performance doesn’t improve.
Lenovo’s Yang looks for new rice bowl
It’s no mystery that PC giant Lenovo (HKEx: 992) has been stumbling in the last 2 years due to bad execution in the smartphone space. But slightly more mystifying are new remarks by company founder Liu Chuanzhi on his views about his self-groomed successor and CEO Yang Yuanqing. Liu is currently chairman of Lenovo parent Legend Holdings (HKEx: 3396) and is 71, which isn’t too old. But his remarks on Yang’s performance on the sidelines of a recent event make him seem a bit muddled and also convey the conflicting feelings of loyalty and frustration that he must be feeling about his appointed successor.
Before I attempt to translate his actual remarks, we should put the Lenovo story into a bit of context to understand what Liu is saying. Yang Yuanqing is famous for building Lenovo into a global PC giant through an aggressive acquisition strategy, which began with the landmark purchase of IBM’s (NYSE: IBM) PC business in 2005 and later included other acquisitions in such diverse markets as Germany, Brazil and Japan. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Tsinghua Unigroup is likely to soon announce big new tie-ups with SanDisk and a major second-tier Asian chip maker, in its bid to become a major memory chip maker that can challenge Samsung and Toshiba.
Unigroup eyes 2 new chip tie-ups
After becoming a regular fixture in the headlines over the last year, Tsinghua Unigroup is finally giving the world a more detailed picture of its plans to become a leading global chip maker in one of the first in-depth interviews with its talkative chairman. In that interview Zhao Weiguo is disclosing for the first time that he has a massive war chest of 300 billion yuan ($47 billion) to spend on building his empire.
What he doesn’t say is where exactly all that money is coming from, since it’s quite a large sum for a company that was an unknown name in most semiconductor circles until it embarked on its buying spree over the last 2 years. The answer is almost certainly that Beijing and big state-run institutions are supplying all the funds, as China looks to succeed in an areas where many smaller earlier initiatives have failed in the high-tech chip sector. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Lenovo’s focus on PCs for its latest product launch is designed to divert attention from its struggling smartphones, which are likely to show more losses and weak performance in the company’s upcoming quarterly results.
Lenovo targets bargain hunters
It was just 2 years ago that Chinese tech titan Lenovo (HKEx: 992) was on top of the world, having just gained the title as the world’s biggest PC brand from Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and declaring that Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Samsung (Seoul: 005930) were its next targets. But you don’t hear the company’s chatty chief Yang Yuanqing talking about Apple, Samsung or even smartphones that much these days, most likely because all of its efforts in that space have struggled to find an audience.
Instead, Yang was falling back on his company’s older PC business in the latest headlines, showing off a few new models from its Yoga line that can function as both laptop and tablet PCs. The only problem is that both of these types of computer are in rapid decline, as consumers increasingly flock to large-screen smartphones for simple functions like reading news and e-commerce shopping that they used to do on their PCs. Read Full Post…
