Huawei’s bendy phone
So, only days after Samsung announced its bendy phone – the Galaxy Fold – the embattled Chinese handset giant Huawei unveiled its own bendy offering, the Mate X.
Although it is considerably thinner than Samsung’s effort at 11mm as opposed to 17mm it is also considerably more expensive with a price tag of $2,600 versus Samsung’s comparative “bargain” of $1,980!
Although this is precisely the kind of technological breakthrough that is needed to make buying a mobile phone more exciting, the price tag will be pretty prohibitive for most people.
Still, if they manage to get those prices down to appeal to the masses bendy phones could be just the thing to stimulate currently sluggish sales.
The ambitions of the BMW-Daimler joint venture
I also wanted to talk today about the ambitious plans that the BMW-Daimler “urban mobility” joint venture has for expansion as it announced that it will roll out its various activities from 90 cities this year to 900 within the next three years.
The two German car giants have invested EUR1billion in joint ventures covering ride-hailing, scooters, car rentals, parking, electric car charging and public transport booking.
Given that car manufacturers are fearing an imminent apocalypse with people increasingly opting to hire or share cars rather than own them outright in the future, it is understandable that they are putting some resource into finding potential new business areas.
I suspect that a lot of these areas (like scooters, for example) will die a death, but that a few winners will emerge.
I think that these companies are right to have a broad spread of investment at this stage, but they will need to find the areas that work sooner rather than later!