A veteran TV maker just got a notable refresh as it enters the age of connected devices. Xiaomi, the Beijing-based firm best known for budget smartphones, has bought 65.2 million shares, or 0.48 percent, of Chinese home appliance maker TCL, said TCL in a statement to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Sunday.
Shares of TCL, the world’s third-largest LCD TV manufacturer, jumped nearly 4 percent in morning trading on Monday, giving the company a market cap of $36 billion.
The financial gesture deepens an existing alliance between the duo. On December 29, the companies signed a strategic partnership that would see them collaborate on various fronts, including R&D in integrating smart devices with “core, high-end, and basic” electronic parts. To put in layman’s terms, the joint effort focuses on chips and will make it easier for TCL devices to incorporate into Xiaomi’s operating system, where an expanding universe of third-party gadgets reside. The partners may also make co-investments in the hardware field.
The tie-up provides “tremendous help” for Xiaomi as it ups the ante in home appliances, wrote Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun on Weibo, China’s closest answer to Twitter, in a reply to TCL’s CEO Li Dongsheng. During the third quarter of 2018, smart TVs helped drive revenue growth for Xiaomi’s non-smartphone hardware segment, shows the company’s financial results.
“[Our partnership] helps facilitate the transformation and upgrade of China’s manufacturing industry,” wrote Li, whose company started in 1981 as a cassette manufacturer.
Xiaomi has long been keen to team up with manufacturers to make its own branded devices instead of producing them itself. By early 2018, Xiaomi reached nearly 100 such partners, many of which Xiaomi had invested in to harness bargaining power in the supply chain, from what a smartphone should look like to how much it’s priced at. Xiaomi’s retail stores — available online and in physical manifestations — have also opened doors to third-party brands in an effort to broaden product selection.
Xiaomi’s close ties with its ecosystem partners result in an inventory of affordable products rivaling the likes of Fitbit and Apple. During the third quarter of 2018, Xiaomi topped the global chart by shipping 6.9 million units of wearables. Apple and Fitbit came in second and third with 4.2 million units and 3.5 million units, respectively, according to market research firm IDC.
Xiaomi derives most of its revenues from smartphones, though Lei Jun has long envisioned a future in which internet services will be the firm’s main force. This segment, which Xiaomi has marketed as its key financial differentiator against other phone brands, includes sales from mobile games, internet finance, paid content among a slew of services available through Xiaomi’s connected devices.
Source: TechCrunch
At its CES press conference today, Nvidia broke with tradition and put the focus on gaming, not self-driving cars and data center AI technologies, the typical topics of this event. After a (far too long) recap of everything Nvidia announced the RTX 2060, the low-end version of its new Turing-based desktop graphics cards.
The new card will cost $349, which is quite a bargain compared to the existing 20xx cards. It’ll be available on January 15.
The card will offer 52 teraflops of Tensor Core processing power, can handle 5 gigarays per second and features a 6GB frame buffer. Traditionally, the xx60 series has always been the low-end version of the GeForce series, though they are no slouch either. The 2060, Nvidia promises, will offer somewhere between 1.4 and 2x performance benefit over its 1060 counterpart. That makes it faster than the 1070Ti cards.
The company demoed the new card with an exquisite real-time demo of Battlefield 5, optimized for using its new RTX ray-tracing technology and running at a resolution of 1440p.
“Next-gen gaming starts today for tens of millions of gamers everywhere,” said Huang. “Desktop gamers are demanding, and the RTX 2060 sets a new standard — an unbeatable price, extraordinary performance and real-time ray tracing that blurs the distinction between movies and games. This is a great moment for gamers and our industry.”
Source: TechCrunch
Samsung shows off new televisions at CES, and says iTunes will soon join its smart TV offerings.
Source: Wired
It’s no pee-detecting wearable, but Ellcie’s glasses could be a life saver. The glasses feature 15 sensors designed to determine whether the wearer is falling asleep. I got a quick demo today and CES and was fairly impressed with the technology’s responsiveness. It detects a number of different factors, including head nods, eye blinks and even yawns.
When the system detects one of the above, it sends an a level of alert, depending on how far gone you are. That involves some combination of flashes on the side of the the eyes and a buzzing sound. There’s no haptic feedback or bone conduction for audio, though an audible alert is sent to the connected found, which could come in handy if you’re using your phone for audio in the car.
Such a product could ultimately prove useful for folks who have to drive long distances for their job. Certainly it’s a better for one’s health than a bit of the old trucker speed. Applications can be extended beyond there, as well, including fall detection for elderly users. The glasses are actually pretty light, all told, and the company is offering a prescription lens version as well.
At present, they’re only available in the company’s native France, priced at around $250. The company is looking to expand to additional markets, which is what brought them to CES in the first place. Given how the show’s been going for me so far, I suspect I could use a pair a this week.
Source: TechCrunch
I really dug the Nuraphones. A lot. In fact, I was so impressed with the headphones’ adaptive noise technology I ended up putting them on my of the year list back in 2017. As such, I was pretty psyched to seen the Australian startup back at CES with a followup.
The NuraLoop are the next logical step for the company, putting that technology into a pair of earbuds. It makes sense, really — the original headphones had earbuds positioned inside a pair of on-ear headphones. But the buds were really doing most of the heavy-lifting, with the cups providing addition bass.
Setup is the same as with the over-ear models, using the app to essentially take a digital image of your unique hearing profile and tweak their sound accordingly. Even if you’ve already set it up for the larger models, you’ll still need to go through the process again, as the architecture is a bit different here.
The outside of the buds feature a touch control mechanism for interacting with the device. The models should ship in both wired and wireless models, with the latter offering exceptional battery life, according to the company.
We’ve got to take Nura’s word for it here, however. The company will be showing off a prototype model later this week. The final version should ship in May, priced at around half the larger model. Color me intrigued.
Source: TechCrunch
Nvidia is holding its CES press conference today at 8 PM Pacific, 11 PM Eastern. The company will talk about self-driving cars and all things GPUs. It’s a great way to see what’s ahead for Nvidia.
We’ll have a team on the ground, so you should also check out our full CES coverage.
Source: TechCrunch
Just when you think you’ve seen every kind of wearable there is to see, the D Free comes along in all it its urinary glory. The little plastic sensor attaches to your belly, with a little gel and some medical tape.
Once attached, the system uses ultrasound to determine how full your bladder is. It then sends that information wirelessly to a connected smartphone, showing you the capacity on a scale of 1 to 10.
So, why, precisely would one need that information, when our bodies are fine-tuned to, uh, let us know when it’s time to go? Well, I’m glad you asked, dear reader.
The device is targeted at elderly users who have might have some trouble knowing when to head to the restroom. Everyone’s bladder is different, of course, so so may want to head things off at the pass when the number gets to around five or six on the scale. The battery should get a full 24 four hours after a four hour charge.
The D Free is available now, but it’s pretty pricey. The system costs $40 a month to rent, or you can go ahead and buy it outright for $500. A small price to pay, perhaps, for knowing when it’s time to go.
Source: TechCrunch
LG unveiled the LG HomeBrew a few weeks ahead of CES. I’ve seen the device today, and it looks like a gigantic, inconvenient machine.
It’s hard to grasp the size of the device based on photos, but it’s as big as a full-size espresso machine. You’ll need a big counter in your kitchen. But that’s not the issue.
The system uses a set of capsules. There’s a big tube-shaped malt capsule and three tiny Nespresso-shaped capsules for yeast, hop oil and flavoring. All these capsules come in a single box every time you want to start a new batch. But the capsules are not the issue either.
The main issue is that it takes two weeks to brew your beer once you’ve started the process. At the end, you get 5 liters of beer, or around 10 pints. Once you’re done, you need to replace the capsules and wait another two weeks.
Unlike traditional home brewing methods, you can’t start another batch while the machine is still brewing. So you’ll be out of beer quite regularly. Sure, you can buy two machines. Maybe LG should have designed a rackable system so that you can stack them up. But that defeats the purpose of an all-in-once, self-cleaning machine.
It’s unclear how much the machine and capsules are going to cost and if beer tastes any good. We couldn’t try the beer. There will be five different tastes — American IPA, American Pale Ale, English Stout, Belgian-style Witbier and Czech Pilsner.
Source: TechCrunch
ClassPass, the five-year-old fitness marketplace startup with $239 million in financing, is acquiring competitor GuavaPass, which was founded by Rob Pachter and Jeffrey Liu in 2015.
ClassPass is in the midst of an expansion sprint, both domestically and internationally. The company is hyper-focused on Asian markets, where GuavaPass had carved out its own place with 75 studio partners across 11 cities, including Abu Dhabi, Bnagkok, Beijing, Dubai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Mumbai, Shanghai and Singapore.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
This is not ClassPass’s first acquisition. In 2014, ClassPass acquired competitor FitMob. But CEO Fritz Lanman says that this is less about competition and more about opportunity.
“The GuavaPass founders reached out to us,” he told TechCrunch. “They said that they were raising more money and had some options developing but that they felt they could continue working on their original mission as a part of ClassPass. They are really missionaries for the space.”
ClassPass will be bringing on about half of the GuavaPass team as part of the acquisition. However, Lanman doesn’t expect to do many acquisitions in the future, saying that “acquisition isn’t a part of the company’s expansion strategy.”
Alongside regularly planned expansion, the acquisition now puts ClassPass in more than 80 markets across the 11 countries, with plans to expand to 50 new cities in 2019.
Source: TechCrunch
ASUS just announced the first — but surely not the last — combination router/Alexa smart speaker of the show. The Lyra Voice is a pretty decent looking thing — covered in the sort of fabric design that’s become all rage with smart speakers like the Google Home and the latest iteration of the Echo.
In fact, the product looks a lot more like a speaker than router, with cones one opposite ends of the oblong device. There’s a pair of eight-watt speakers, which can be used to play music via bluetooth or for your standard Alexa commands.
The device features the company’s proprietary AiMesh technology, meaning you can pair it with other ASUS Lyra devices to take care of dead spots in your home. Of course, at $220, it’s a bit more than other systems mesh systems — though this one’s doing double duty.
It’s an interesting emerging category. ASUS certainly isn’t the first company to bring a combo router/smart speaker to the market — Netgear beat the company to it by a couple of months with the Orbi. But it’s a hybrid product that makes sense for those who want an Alexa product in every room of the home.
The Lyra Voice hits retail later this month.
Source: TechCrunch
