Chinese smartphone makers look beyond ‘saturated’ China market

Two of China’s largest smartphone companies are staking out new claims abroad, where they see greater growth opportunity than in the saturated Chinese market.

• Xiaomi has announced that “India is becoming a bigger priority compared to China,” and accordingly will invest $1 billion in the country’s startups to “create an ecosystem of mobile apps for use on its smartphones,” the Financial Times reports (paywall).
• A senior market analyst at IDC explained, “The China market is saturated, so now Xiaomi is turning its attention to India.” Another market analyst at iResearch pointed out that Indian smartphone users are especially price sensitive, so the low-cost Xiaomi phones perform well.
• Huawei is instead aiming for the premium market, as it rolls out a Mate 10 Pro model at nearly $1,000 to compete with the iPhone X “in Europe, in the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia,” according to the New York Times (paywall).
• Huawei is also “in talks with AT&T to offer the phones in the United States,” though the brand’s future there is uncertain given continuing scrutiny from U.S. authorities in charge of national security.

• Alibaba’s push into retail shopping
  Alibaba bets $2.9 billion it can take on Wal-Mart in China / Bloomberg
  Alibaba will pay $2.86 billion for 36.2 percent of the shares of Hong Kong-listed Sun Art, which operates supermarket chains RT-Mart and Auchan in China.
• Solar power
  China on pace for record solar-power installations / Bloomberg
  “About 54 gigawatts will be put in place this year, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said Monday, raising a forecast of more than 30 gigawatts made in July.”
• Pension funds
  China to appropriate state company assets to make up pension-funds gap / Caixin
• Blockchain
  Blockchain-based cloud storage startup Storj expands into China / Tech in Asia