NIO: Chinese Tesla now also wants to produce smartphones. The goal is to steal customers from Apple
The Chinese carmaker NIO now also wants to produce smartphones. The strategy: one phone a year and same quality as iPhones.
Chinese automaker NIO now wants to produce smartphones as well . A path perfectly mirroring that of Xiaomi, born as a smartphone manufacturer and now about to spend over 10 billion euros to produce its first car.
According to some rumors, the first NIO-branded smartphone could come out by the end of next year. The target? Offer the same quality as Apple products . In short, not a simple smartphone but a status symbol to show off with pride.
NIO is an automaker specializing in electric cars: it boasts over 270,000 customers worldwide and is often referred to as ‘the Chinese Tesla’. NIO has focused heavily on battery swap, i.e. on the possibility of quickly replacing the batteries in order to speed up recharging times – making them similar to those of a refueling station. NIO has recently started selling its cars also in Europe (and in particular in Norway, Sweden and Germany).
Already in March of this year William Li , the CEO of NIO, had confirmed that the company was considering producing a phone and that this would have the Android operating system. Always Li had also added that NIO would aim to produce only one new phone a year, a bit like the OnePlus (but also Apple itself) of the origins.
