Xiaomi takes second spot in Hong Kong

Xiaomi (1810) said its smartphones had the second largest market share in Hong Kong in the second quarter, at 21 percent.

The world's second-largest cellphone maker's revenue in Hong Kong increased 114 percent year-on-year, or 30 percent quarter-on-quarter in the second quarter - mobile phones contributed toward it by about 80 percent.

Meanwhile, Germany's federal cybersecurity watchdog, the BSI, is conducting a technical examination of a mobile phone manufactured by Xiaomi, a spokesperson for the interior ministry said.

But the spokesperson did not provide further details on what kind of examination the agency was carrying out.

Separately, Samsung Electronics is close to finalizing the construction of a US$17 billion (HK$132.6 billion) semiconductor factory in Williamson County in the US state of Texas, Reuters reported.

Samsung said that it is continuing due diligence in multiple locations and that it has yet to make a decision.

The factory will make advanced logic semiconductor chips and is likely to create about 1,800 jobs, Samsung previously said.

This came after the Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate had been fined 40 million euros (HK$362.5 million) for price-fixing in the Netherlands, Dutch competition watchdog ACM said yesterday.

The market regulator said Samsung had pushed up the prices of its televisions in the Netherlands for years by constantly urging retailers to raise their prices if they were selling them below Samsung's preferred market rate.

Staff reporter and Reuters