The ACT team hand-picks the most readable news of the day from China’s booming tech industry. Don’t miss out on these headlines:
Xiaomi loses in India after losing top spot in China, sales down 46% in Q3
Xiaomi sales have seen their first decline in India, according to a report released earlier this week by Counterpoint Research, a tech market research firm. The report pointed out that shipments of Xiaomi’s smartphone slumped 46% in Q3. According to Counterpoint, the main reason is that Lenovo and Micromax’s YU brand–a local phone manufacturer– are also competing with Xiaomi in the under 100 USD price point. Xiaomi did not feature in the top five brands in India.
LeTV backed EV company invests USD 1 billion in US factory to contest Tesla
Faraday Future, the electric car company backed by Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting, founder and chairman of popular video site LeTV, has invested RMB 6.4 billion (USD one billion) in a brand new factory in the US with aims to take on Tesla. The company is already developing their first model in Gardena, California, which will launch within two years. Following the first model Faraday plans to launch a series of new models in quick succession. The location of the new factory will be announced in the next few weeks, and it is scheduled to start production in 2017.
Faraday Future is one of the latest companies to develop electric cars in the US backed by Chinese investment. LeTV is currently developing its own electric Supercar.
Chinese data aggregator raises USD 34 million from JD and others
Chinese data aggregator Juhe.cn has announced B-series funding of RMB 218 million (USD 34 million) from companies including JD.com, which also participated in its A-series funding. Juhe.cn is an online data trading platform that resembles Google Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). The data company claims that it receives almost RMB 100 million (USD 15.8 million) in revenue yearly with more than 350,000 registered users and over 140 million data retrievals per day. The company’s major source of revenue comes from charging enterprises and developers for access to its APIs.
Tsinghua’s online open course platform receives USD 17.6 million
XuetangX, a MOOC (massive online open course) platform founded by Tsinghua University, has raised RMB 111.8 million (USD 17.6 million) in A+ series funding, NetEase reports. Tusholdings has become XuetangX’s second largest shareholder. The company has also received RMB 95.3 million (USD 15 million) in its A series funding last year. XuetangX has more than 1.5 million users in 201 countries globally, and three million people have registered for lessons. Liu Wenbo, XuetangX’s chairman, said the A+ series funding will be used towards commercial and international expansion.
Apple Watch sells 7 million, outstrips competitors
The Apple Watch has sold seven million units in six months since its launch, in spite of being faced with a component supply shortage earlier this year. According to a newly-released report from Canalys, the Apple Watch managed to outsell all of its competitors combined for five consecutive quarters approaching the end of quarter three 2015. Though the Apple Watch has fallen short of analysts’ sales estimates for the first new Apple product category in five years, many predict that sales for the fourth quarter holiday season will bring Apple up to speed.
China post bureau report: 13.7 billion deliveries in first 3 quarters
China’s State Post Bureau released a report on its financial performance in the first three quarters of 2015. The report shows that express deliveries reached 13.7 billion items in the first three quarters, 46% growth compared to the same period in 2014. The total income of the State Post Bureau in the first three quarters was RMB 187.88 billion (USD 29.6 billion), a 33.2% increase compared to a year ago. China’s real-name verification for package deliveries came into effect at the beginning of the month, creating fears that the added procedure will slow down deliveries.
Alibaba’s Tmall releases product authenticity insurance
Tmall, Alibaba’s B2C online retail platform announced on Thursday that it has collaborated with Ant Financial, Pingan Insurance, The People’s Insurance Company of China and other big insurance companies on a policy to ensure the authenticity of its products. Customers will be able to submit their products for testing and they will receive unconditional returns and refunds as well as compensation for four times the cost of fake products. International brands like Louis Vuitton, Samsung, Xiaomi and Panasonic will be included in this policy.
Alibaba has been criticized for allowing the sale of counterfeit goods on its sites. A state inspection of Alibaba’s Taobao platform last year found that 62.75% of its products were counterfeit.
China’s online fraud totals over USD 17.3 billion each year
20,086 cases of online fraud from January to September this year were reported to Liewang, an online fraud reporting platform, according to a report it released on Thursday. Liewang is a platform run by the Beijing police and the Qihoo 360 internet security company. According to the report, RMB 89 million (USD 14 million) was the highest amount of money involved in a single case. On average, RMB 4431 was lost per person. The report estimates that there are at least 1.6 million people involved in web fraud, with an annual output totalling over RMB 110 billion.