air purifier scandal clouds xiaomi's new year - latest air purifier

What's the difference in a year.
Almost this time last year, the smartphone giant Xiaomi became the King of the world. Five years after its establishment, Xiaomi ended a new round of major financing with a valuation of $45 billion.
This is the last time Xiaomi has boasted about its high valuation, and since then the company's name has been linked to small scandals about marketing fraud, product delays and issues involving fake advertising.
So it seems appropriate for Xiaomi to start the new year with another new scandal, this time involving its air purifier, which is at the heart of another scandal when they first launched about a year ago.
This time, bad news came from Shanghai's quality regulator, which said Xiaomi's air purifiers were not up to standard.
The latest scandal may not be a big deal for Xiaomi, which is rapidly rising to become the world's third-largest smartphone brand with its major online sales of fashion models.
The company is also involved in a variety of other products, including television and television.
As part of its broader vision of building an intelligent device ecosystem, set-top boxes and air purifiers talk to each other.
Air purifiers have never been an important part of this vision. However, due to the serious pollution problems in China, it is more to attract people's attention, this has led many consumers to buy the equipment to clean the air at home.
Xiaomi launched a purifier in late 2014 and was almost immediately attacked by a Japanese company that said it copied its design. (previous post)
Now, the same device is back in the headlines, and according to tests conducted on random machines purchased at local stores, Xiaomi failed to meet the standards of the Shanghai bureau of quality.
According to the quality inspector's report, these problems are related to the amount of pollution the purifier removes from the air and the level of noise.
As a Shanghai resident, I can say that quality inspectors conduct this kind of testing on a regular basis, and our newspapers often report stories of some major brands whose products occasionally do not meet the standards of the bureau.
Usually, the company will quietly solve this problem, we have never heard of it again, I suspect this will happen to Xiaomi this time.
However, the scandal does seem to suggest that the new year may be another difficult one for Xiaomi as it tries to regain its former glory.
We haven't seen the company's final sales figures since 2015, but all indications are that the company may miss its target of selling 80 million smartphones this year.
Even if this number has been reduced from the initial target of 100 million at the beginning of the year.
We also haven't seen any new investments in Xiaomi for nearly a year, which is quite a long time for a company that has grown so fast.
This means that we may soon see a new round of financing in the coming months, although it is not clear whether investors will flock to Xiaomi as they have in the past.
It is also far from clear whether Xiaomi will be able to maintain a $45 billion valuation, and I doubt that if the company decides to release that number, it may even drop a bit.
Meanwhile, it is wise for Xiaomi to keep a low profile over the past few months as it focuses on global expansion into India and Brazil and is ready to enter more and more other developing markets.
I suspect that it may take a year or more to reverse the image of China's decline, but some strong growth in the international community may help save the year ahead.
At the same time, the company may expect less and less coverage of these small scandals over time as the media gets tired of its story and focuses its attention on the next hot company.
Doug Yang, former head of news for Chinese companies at Reuters, teaches financial news at Fudan University in Shanghai.
To read more of his comments on China tech news, please click www. youngchinabiz. com.