Connect with us

Published

on

Xiaomi is trying to push into the high end of the smartphone market with the Xiaomi 13 Pro. It will pit the Chinese giant against rivals Apple and Samsung.

CFOTO | Future Publishing | Getty Images

Xiaomi launched its flagship smartphone globally on Sunday as the Chinese electronics giant attempts to take a slice of the high-end market and challenge Apple and Samsung.

The Xiaomi 13 and 13 Pro were originally launched in China in December, but now the Beijing, China-headquartered company is bringing the devices to markets overseas.

The Xiaomi 13 Pro device sports a 6.73-inch display and the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset from U.S. firm Qualcomm. It has a triple-lens camera and other premium features like ultra-fast charging. The company talked up the capabilities of its camera that it “co-engineered” with German firm Leica.

The Xiaomi 13 starts at 999 euros ($1,053) while the 13 Pro starts at 1,299 euros.

Xiaomi had a rough year in 2022 with its smartphone shipments declining 26% year-on-year, according to research firm IDC, the biggest fall among the top five biggest handset vendors. The company swung to a loss in the September quarter, the latest financial results available.

Xiaomi has faced a number of headwinds, in particular a more difficult macroeconomic environment with a slowing economy in China. A total of 1.21 billion smartphones were shipped in 2022, which represents the lowest annual shipment total since 2013, according to IDC.

“Xiaomi is facing multiple headwinds inside China from an ever-popular Apple iPhone, a surprisingly strong Honor, and fickle Chinese consumers who often switch between Android hardware brands in a flash,” Neil Mawston, an analyst at TechInsights, told CNBC via email.

Honor is the Chinese smartphone brand that was spun off from Huawei.

Xiaomi has turned into one of the biggest smartphone makers over the years via a strategy of bringing out high-spec devices at very competitive price points. It began pushing into overseas markets around seven years ago, pursuing a similar strategy. But it is now looking to push into the higher end of the market, where margins are higher and the market is still growing.

High-end smartphones, those that cost over $800, accounted for 18% of the total handset market in 2022, up from 11% in 2020, Canalys data shows. Xiaomi’s push into the premium tier will pit it against Apple and Samsung, which will be a challenge for the Chinese rival. Samsung and Apple devices accounted for 92% of the high-end market in 2022, according to Canalys.

“Competing with Apple and Samsung is incredibly difficult. Not just matching market leading products, but particularly going up against enormous companies with exceptional brand awareness, high-end perceptions, experience focused solutions and product ecosystems with high user-stickiness,” Runar Bjørhovde, research analyst at Canalys, told CNBC via email.

Xiaomi is the latest Chinese smartphone player that is trying to crack the high-end of the market. Oppo launched its first foldable phone for the overseas market this month that costs more than $1,000.

Continue Reading

Technology

Tesla shares climb as Musk pledges to be ‘super focused’ on companies ahead of Starship launch

Published

on

By

Tesla shares climb as Musk pledges to be 'super focused' on companies ahead of Starship launch

Elon Musk listens as reporters ask U.S. President Donald Trump and South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa questions during a press availability in the Oval Office at the White House on May 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

Tesla shares gained about 5% on Tuesday after CEO Elon Musk over the weekend reiterated his intent to home in on his businesses ahead of the latest SpaceX rocket launch.

The billionaire wrote in a post to his social media platform X that he needs to be “super focused” on X, artificial intelligence company xAI and Tesla as they launch “critical technologies” on the heels of a temporary outage.

“As evidenced by the uptime issues this week, major operational improvements need to be made,” he wrote, adding that he would return to “spending 24/7” at work. “The failover redundancy should have worked, but did not.”

An outage over the weekend briefly shuttered the social media platform formerly known as Twitter for thousands of users, according to DownDetector. Earlier in the week, the platform suffered a data center outage. X has suffered a series of outages since Musk purchased the platform in 2022.

Read more CNBC tech news

Musk has previously indicated plans to step away from his political work and prioritize his businesses.

During Tesla’s April earnings call he said that he would “significantly” reduce his time running President Donald Trump‘s Department of Government Efficiency.

In the last election cycle, Musk devoted time and billions of dollars to political causes and toward electing Trump in 2024. However, a story over the weekend from the Washington Post, citing sources familiar with the matter, said that Musk has grown disillusioned with politics and wants to return to managing his businesses.

Last week, Musk said in an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum that he planned to spend “a lot less” on campaign donations going forward.

The comments from Musk precede SpaceX’s Starship rocket Tuesday evening. Pressure is on for the company after two Starship rockets exploded in January and March.

Ahead of the launch, Musk announced an all hands livestream on X at 1 p.m.

Tesla is still facing fallout from Musk’s political foray, with protests at showrooms and other brand damage.

In April, Tesla sold 7,261 cars in Europe, down 49% from last year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.

WATCH: Elon Musk: We have seen a major rebound in demand

Elon Musk: We have seen a major rebound in demand

Continue Reading

Technology

Trump advisor Hassett says ‘we don’t want to harm’ Apple with iPhone tariffs

Published

on

By

Trump advisor Hassett says 'we don't want to harm' Apple with iPhone tariffs

NEC Director Kevin Hassett on Trump's iPhone tariff threat: In the end, we don't want to harm Apple

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Tuesday that the Trump administration does not want to “harm Apple” with tariffs.

“Everybody is trying to make it seem like it’s a catastrophe if there’s a tiny little tariff on them right now, to try to negotiate down the tariffs,” Hassett told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday. “In the end, we’ll see what happens, we’ll see what the update is, but we don’t want to harm Apple.”

Hassett’s comments come after President Donald Trump said in a social media post that Apple will have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the U.S. Apple has historically manufactured its products in foreign countries including China, India and Vietnam.

“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump wrote in the post. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S. Thank your for your attention to this matter!”

By some estimates, a U.S.-made iPhone could cost as much as $3,500.

Read more CNBC tech news

“If you think that Apple has a factory some place that’s got a set number of iPhones that it produces and it needs to sell them no matter what, then Apple will bear those tariffs, not consumers, because it’s an elastic supply,” Hassett said.

Hasset’s comments continue the administration’s push to pressure companies to shoulder the cost burden of Trump’s tariffs, instead of raising prices for consumers.

Earlier this month, Trump told retail giant Walmart to “EAT THE TARIFFS” after the company warned it would have to pass those added costs on.

Shares of Apple were up more than 1% Tuesday.

Apple did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

WATCH: NEC Director Kevin Hassett on Trump’s iPhone tariff threat: In the end, we don’t want to harm Apple

Continue Reading

Technology

Ambience announces OpenAI-powered medical coding model that outperforms physicians

Published

on

By

Ambience announces OpenAI-powered medical coding model that outperforms physicians

Dr. Priti Patel, CMIO at John Muir Health, uses Ambience before starting a patient encounter.

Courtesy of Ambience Healthcare

Artificial intelligence startup Ambience Healthcare on Tuesday announced a new medical coding model that outperforms doctors by 27%.

Ambience uses AI to draft clinical notes in real-time as doctors consensually record their visits with patients. The company used tools from OpenAI to build the new model.

The startup is part of a fiercely competitive market that has taken off as health-care executives search for solutions to help reduce staff burnout and daunting administrative workloads. 

The company’s new model can listen to patient encounters and identify ICD-10 codes, which are internationally standardized classifications for different diseases and conditions. There are about 70,000 ICD-10 codes that are regularly updated and used to facilitate billing and other reporting processes in health care. 

Ambience said its new ICD-10 model can reduce billing mistakes and help clinicians and professional coders work more efficiently. The model notched a “27% relative improvement over physician benchmarks,” according to a release on Tuesday.  

“We’re not replacing doctors or coders,” Brendan Fortuner, Ambience’s head of engineering, told CNBC in an interview. “What we’re doing is we’re liberating them from administration, and we’re fixing mistakes that help make health care better, safer, more cost-effective.”

More CNBC health coverage

Documenting ICD-10 codes has traditionally been a labor-intensive task in health care, but it’s a crucial way to track outcomes, mortalities and morbidities in a standardized way, said Dr. Will Morris, the chief medical officer of Ambience.

“If you think about it from a data perspective, it’s how you can compare and contrast clinician A to B, or health system A to B,” Morris said in an interview. “It’s the cornerstone for quality.”

Ambience’s technology is used at more than 40 health-care organizations, like Cleveland Clinic and UCSF Health. It has raised more than $100 million, according to PitchBook, from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz and the OpenAI Startup Fund. 

The company is reportedly seeking fresh capital at a valuation of over $1 billion, according to a report from The Information. Ambience declined to comment on the report. 

Ambience trained its new AI model using OpenAI’s reinforcement fine-tuning technology. This technology allows companies to tune OpenAI’s best reasoning models for very specific domains, like health care. 

To validate the model, Ambience tested it against a “gold panel” set of labels, the company said. The labels were established by a group of expert clinicians who evaluated complex clinical cases and came to an agreement on what the right codes were. 

Ambience’s AI platform for compliant documentation, CDI, and coding.

Courtesy of Ambience Healthcare

The company then recruited 18 different board-certified doctors and compared their performance on ICD-10 coding accuracy to the model’s performance. That comparison showed the Ambience technology performed 27% better than the physician baseline. 

“It shows for the first time that an AI system can actually surpass clinician experts at a very, very important administrative task, especially in coding,” Fortuner said. 

Ambience already has similar capabilities available for other medical codes like Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes, and Fortuner said it’s exploring how to tackle other areas like prior authorizations, utilization management and clinical trial matching. 

The company’s new ICD-10 model will roll out to customers over the summer.

“Getting it right at the point of care is a fundamental change,” Morris said.

Continue Reading

Trending