According to the Financial Times, new restrictions—affecting the supply of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software suites to Chinese companies—will cause major disruption within the domestic chip design industry. The US government's latest trade amendments are expected to impact Xiaomi and its freshly launched flagship XRING mobile chip family; the first iteration is a compelling first-party effort. Unlike many Chinese tech firms, the popular smartphone specialist can access pretty advanced TSMC node processes. Xiaomi's CEO—Lei Jun—announced his team's 3 nm design during pre-launch preview events.

Days later, closer analysis indicated a selection of TSMC's "N3E" node process. Digital Chat Station—a noted smartphone industry expert—summarized an uncertain future: "under this ban (of EDA tools), XRING chips will not be breaking through a 2 nm barrier, and can only revolve around the (current 'N3E') 3 nm node for a long time. XRING O1 will also be the only time in recent years that it can be on par with current-gen (proprietary) Apple, Qualcomm, and MediaTek mobile chipsets." Crucially, EDA software plays an important role in creating Gate All Around Field Effect Transistor (GAAFET) structures. TSMC's upcoming 2 nm node process is a GAA product. Tom's Hardware believes that several big Chinese tech players, including Huawei, are in the process of developing in-house EDA tools. Not long after unveiling their XRING flagship, Xiaomi outlined an extended Qualcomm chip deal.

Three weeks ago, Kurnal and Geekerwan dived deep into Nintendo's alleged Switch 2 chipset. The very brave Chinese leakers are notorious for their acquiring of pre-release and early silicon samples. Last week, their collective attention turned to a brand-new Xiaomi mobile chip: the XRING 01. After months of insider murmurs and official teasers, the smartphone giant recently unveiled its proprietary flagship SoC. According to industry moles, Xiaomi has invested a lot of manpower into a special chip design entity—leadership likely wants to avoid a repeat of prior first-party developed disappointments. Despite rumors of disappointing prototype performance figures, mid-May Geekbench results pointed to the emergent XRING 01 mobile chip being up there with Qualcomm's dominant Snapdragon 8 Elite platform. Die shot analysis has confirmed Xiaomi's selection of a TSMC 3 nm "N3E" node process; also utilized by the latest Apple, Qualcomm and MediaTek flagships. Overall die size is 114.48 mm² (10.8 x 10.6 mm), with 109.5 mm² of used area; comparable to Apple's A18 Pro SoC footprint (refer to Geekerwan's comparison shot, below).

Unlike nearby rivals, the XRING 01 seems to not sport an integrated 5G modem. Notebookcheck surmised: "it is rumored to use an external radio from MediaTek. It isn't located on the actual die itself, and likely a contributing factor to why its size is so small." Annotations indicate the presence of off-the-shelf/licensed Arm CPU cores (ten in total): two Cortex-X925 units, four Cortex-A725 units, two Cortex-A725 units, and two Cortex-A520 units. Additionally, an Arm Immortalis-G925 MP16 iGPU was identified. A 6-core NPU—with 16 MB of cache—was highlighted, but it is not clear whether this is a proprietary effort or something bought in. Observers have noted the absence of SLC cache. GSMArena posited: "the Geekerwan team speculates that (Xiaomi's) omission of the SLC has hurt GPU efficiency—it's pretty fast, but it uses more power than the Dimensity GPU at peak performance. The more efficient CPU combined with the fact that the GPU rarely runs at full tilt makes for pretty good overall efficiency in real-life gaming tests." The XRING department's debut product is impressive, but industry watchdogs are looking forward to refined variants or full-fledged successors.

Last Thursday, Xiaomi revealed its proprietary XRING O1 3 nm mobile chipset. After months of rumors, the Chinese firm's highly anticipated first-party chip design was introduced during their special "A New Beginning" event—held in Beijing. During this multipronged product launch celebration, company leadership disclosed the underpinnings of their first-ever flagship processor. According to official descriptions, Xiaomi's pivotal XRING O1 SoC is built on: "a cutting-edge second-gen 3 nm process with 19 billion transistors, features a 10-core CPU and 16-core Immortalis-G925 GPU, delivering flagship performance with industry-leading power efficiency. It also integrates Xiaomi's fourth-gen ISP and a 6-core NPU offering 44 TOPS for advanced AI processing." Days prior to important ceremonies in China, a joint statement—issued by Qualcomm—detailed an extended Snapdragon chipset supply agreement. The XRING O1 processor line will drive forthcoming Xiaomi 15S Pro smartphones and Pad 7 Ultra tablets; reserved for initial "domestic market" launches. Qualcomm's current flagship offerings are technically superior to Xiaomi's fresh effort, but an ever-shifting political landscape could affect future shipments.

Lu Weibing—a company president and partner—has outlined a vision for XRING's eventual expansion beyond a flagship/high-end product tier. Last week's intro firmly positioned the 3 nm part as premium option that will power suitably expensive Android-based mobile devices. Weibing acknowledged that his team has jumped into the deep end: "(for) this platform capability, it is most difficult to work on smartphone flagship SoC, it has high power consumption demand and its technology is extremely complicated. If you can, then you should have the ability to work on flagship smartphone SoC. (Once you) move to work on other chips, it won't be that difficult." Industry moles posit that Xiaomi's XRING division is already a formidable force, in terms of staff headcounts and experience. The department could be absorbing some inspiration from Apple; namely their custom C1 modem chip. The firm's president painted a picture of things to come: "so we want to focus on the flagship SoC, and then we want to make a capable modem for the future. We have to work on 4G and 5G parts—together with 3G—leading to a complete matrix. So that is what we need to do at this stage." Early leaks have indicated the existence of a binned version of the XRING O1 SoC; present within early Xiaomi Pad 7 Ultra tablet samples. In theory, these compromised chips could be deployed in unannounced cheaper products.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Xiaomi Corporation are celebrating 15 years of collaboration and have executed a multi-year agreement. The relationship between Qualcomm Technologies and Xiaomi has been pivotal in driving innovation across the technology industry and the companies are committed to delivering industry-leading products and solutions across various device categories globally.

"Qualcomm Technologies has always been one of Xiaomi's most trusted and vital partners, supporting our journey from a startup to a global technology leader. We look forward to continuing the next 15 years of our collaboration and leveraging Qualcomm's cutting-edge Snapdragon platforms and technologies to deliver even more innovative and high-quality products to our customers worldwide," said Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi.

Yesterday, Lei Jun—the CEO of Xiaomi—finally introduced his firm's proprietary XRING 01 mobile chipset, via a couple of Weibo posts. In an initial afternoon short blog entry, the executive informed his followers with a happy unveiling: "I would like to share with you a piece of news: Xiaomi's self-developed and designed mobile phone SoC chip, named XRING 01, will be released in late May. Thank you for your support!" About a month ago, the company's oft-rumored return to in-house chip efforts was linked to a major corporate offshoot. The speculated "chip platform department" was likely established a while ago, given early May reports of the division's staff headcount exceeding 1000+. At the time, an "Xring" codename was mentioned by industry tipsters (in China).

In a follow-up "Weibo Text" bulletin, Xiaomi's head honcho recalled older project timelines and technological attempts: "even drinking ice for ten years can't cool your blood! Xiaomi's journey to making chips began in September 2014. Time flies, and more than ten years have passed in the blink of an eye...Figures 2 and 3 are photos of Xiaomi's first chip launch conference in February 2017." Jun's did not provide any hints about the XRING 01 chip's underpinnings. Late 2024 leaks alluded to a reportedly troubled prototype—insiders connected this design to fairly new Arm Cortex architecture, and a TSMC 4 nm "N4P" node process. The vast majority of Xiaomi's modern flagship smartphone devices utilize top-end Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets. For example, the brand's latest Xiaomi Ultra 15 model is powered by the ubiquitous Snapdragon 8 Elite (Gen 4) platform.

Mid-way through April, a few Asian media outlets proposed a fairly recent formation of Xiaomi's "chip platform department"—most likely operating as part of the Chinese corporation's mobile phone development operation. Industry insiders claimed that this special branch was tasked with the designing of "Xuanjie" chipsets, with added expertise provided by an ex-Qualcomm marketing director. Weeks later, Jukanlosreve has weighed in with alleged new details. The keen tracker—of unannounced flagship smartphone chips and semiconductor business revelations—believes that previous leaks were of merit, but made some corrections.

Given reported greater than expected "new division" headcounts, Xiaomi probably established its "Xring SoC" team a while ago—on this topic, Jukanlosreve divulged: "it operates as a new company; independent of the original parent firm. It's not a small team either—it has over 1000 people. To be honest, I see it as a positive development if a domestically produced chip gets used in a domestically made smartphone and sold globally. I genuinely hope it becomes reality. If Xring succeeds, it might encourage more companies to get involved, and even engineers currently working at major firms could see better pay opportunities."

Last year, leakers posited that Xiaomi engineers were working on proprietary new-generation mobile chipset. The giant Chinese technology company has produced proprietary SoC designs in the past—most notably 2017's Pengpai/Surge S1 (blink, and you missed it)—but has largely relied on a wide swatch of Qualcomm solutions for deployment in smartphones. According to a fairly fresh ITHome news report (via a source at Sina Technology), Xiaomi has established a "chip platform department" under the umbrella of its mobile phone product development division. The exact nature of this newly-formed team remains semi-mysterious, and how it intermeshes with current (rumored) proprietary chip design efforts. The megacorporation's speculated "dedicated chip platform department" is said to be working on a "Xuanjie" SoC series.

Qin Muyun—a former senior director of product marketing at Qualcomm—is purported to be the new department's leader. Insiders believe that Muyun will answer directly to Xiaomi's CEO: Lei Jun. Over the past half decade, company engineers have accumulated chip designing experience in multiple lesser technology fields—ITHome lists: "imaging, fast charging, power management, communication, and display" aspects. Xiaomi leadership could be "shaking up" its first-party SoC development projects. Two weeks ago, rumors turned up online regarding a node process downgrade—from 3 nm to 4 nm. Smartphone industry watchdogs reckon that Xiaomi's forthcoming flagship chipset design will perform on the level of Qualcomm's first generation Snapdragon 8 mobile processor (from 2021).

According to reports from last year, Xiaomi was expected to unveil an oft-rumored proprietary mobile chipset design at some point in 2025. By October 2024, the Chinese technology giant allegedly reached the tape-out phase of its first 3 nm SoC—at the time, insiders posited that Xiaomi was seeking a manufacturing partner. Months earlier, a prototype design was linked to TSMC's 4 nm "N4P" node process—this rumor raised many smartphone watchdog eyebrows. Unlike many other Chinese firms, Xiaomi was reportedly allowed to select a fairly advanced manufacturing process at Taiwan's premier foundry service. In a past weekend news article, Wccftech outlined interesting circumstances: "(US) export controls have yet to affect Xiaomi, which is supposedly on track to launch its first in-house chipset later this year. However, while we reported last year that the company was scheduled to unveil its custom 3 nm SoC in 2025, we were disappointed to learn just the specifications of this version that will utilize TSMC's 'N4P' process. According to more details, this silicon will not sport any homegrown cores like Qualcomm has adopted for the Snapdragon 8 Elite."

Late last week, Jukanlosreve highlighted another leaker's prediction—regarding the technological foundations of Xiaomi's mystery flagship mobile processor. Fixed Focus Digital's Weibo post mentioned the "N4P" node, as well the utilization of current generation Arm Cortex-X925, Cortex-A725 and Cortex-A520 units. A speculated Imagination Technologies "IMG DXT 72-2304" integrated graphics solution is touted to outperform Qualcomm's Adreno 740 iGPU; as featured in their Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (2022) SoC. As highlighted by Wccftech's report, one of the publication's associates has deemed Fixed Focus Digital to be an unreliable source of inside track info. In response to Jukanlosreve's tweeted question, Mochamad Farido Fanani opined: "that's right, how does Xiaomi use N4P in its new chipset? But this guy always guesses blindly." Older leaks—based on "N4P" rumors—projected performance levels roughly on par with Qualcomm's first generation Snapdragon 8 chip. This model was introduced at the tail end of 2021.

On the heels of a weaker than expected 2022, International Data Corporation (IDC) has lowered its forecast for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) headsets in 2023. Global shipments are now expected to reach 10.1 million units this year, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Augmented and Virtual Reality Headset Tracker. Despite the revised outlook, total AR/VR headset shipments are expected to grow 14% in 2023 and accelerate over the 2023-2027 forecast period with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.6%.

According to TrendForce's latest research, global smartphone production totaled around 289 million units for 3Q22, showing a slight QoQ drop of 0.9% and a YoY drop of 11%. The smartphone market thus exhibited an extremely weak demand situation as the "iron law" of positive growth in the third quarter was broken after being in effect for years. The contraction of smartphone production during this year's peak season was mainly attributed to smartphone brands giving priority to consumption of channel inventory for whole devices and maintaining a fairly conservative production plan for 3Q22. Moreover, they had kept lowering their production targets due to strong global economic headwinds.

Regarding the performances of the major smartphone brands in 3Q22, Samsung posted around 64.2 million units in device production, showing a QoQ increase of just 3.9%. This was the result of the brand scaling back production since 2Q22 and maintaining a conservative outlook on the future market situation. Due to persistent inventory pressure, Samsung is expected to again post a QoQ decline for 4Q22. In the aspect of product development, Samsung has been the leader in foldable smartphones. This year, the global market share of foldable smartphones is estimated to reach 1.1%; and within this segment, Samsung is expected to hold a market share of almost 90%. As for 2023, the global market share of foldable smartphones is forecasted to climb to 1.5%, and Samsung is forecasted to retain a market share of almost 80% in the segment.

Worldwide tablet shipments were down 8.8% year over year in the third quarter of 2022 (3Q22), totaling 38.6 million units, according to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. This was the fifth straight quarter of decline for the tablet market. Chromebook shipments also struggled in 3Q22, falling to 4.3 million units and a year-over-year decline of 34.4%. Both markets have now shifted from supply constrained industries to ones that are demand challenged as consumer and education spending has slowed in the face of economic uncertainties.

Chinese vendors continue to do well in emerging markets where there is low-end demand. Sanctions from many vendors also enabled Chinese vendors like Huawei to perform well in the Russian market. Meanwhile, the emergence of low-priced Chinese OEMs like Realme, Xiaomi, Oppo and others, has fueled strong competition in the lower range devices. However, these gains still couldn't offset the decline experienced by the main tablet vendors.

Qualcomm. introduces Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform, a headworn Augmented Reality (AR) developer kit to enable the creation of immersive experiences that seamlessly blur the lines between our physical and digital realities. With proven technology and an open, cross-device horizontal platform and ecosystem, Snapdragon Spaces delivers the tools to bring developers' ideas to life and revolutionize the possibilities of headworn AR. Snapdragon Spaces is in early access with select developers and is expected to be generally available in the Spring of 2022.

Qualcomm Technologies is a pioneer in Augmented Reality with over a decade of AR research and development. Utilizing these years of innovation and expertise, Snapdragon Spaces offers robust machine perception technology that is optimized for performance and low power for the next generation of AR glasses. The Snapdragon Spaces platform provides environmental and user understanding capabilities that give developers the tools to create headworn AR experiences that can sense and intelligently interact with the user and adapt to their physical indoor spaces. Some of the marquee environmental understanding features include spatial mapping and meshing, occlusion, plane detection, object and image recognition and tracking, local anchors and persistence, and scene understanding. The user understanding machine perception features include positional tracking and hand tracking.

Xiaomi today unveiled its latest breakthrough in heat dissipation - Loop LiquidCool Technology. Inspired by cooling solutions used in the aerospace industry, Loop LiquidCool Technology utilizes a capillary effect which draws liquid cooling agent to the heat source, vaporizes, and then disperses the heat efficiently towards a cooler area, until the agent condenses and is captured via a unidirectional closed looped channel. Compared to conventional vapor chambers solutions, this new technology has twice the cooling capabilities and ranks as the most efficient smartphone cooling solution. Xiaomi aims to bring Loop LiquidCool Technology to its products in H2 2022.

This new technology features an annular heat pipe system that is composed of an evaporator, a condenser, a refill chamber, as well as gas and liquid pipes. Placed at heat sources, the evaporator has refrigerant that evaporates to gas when the smartphone is under high workload. The gas and airflow is then diffused to the condenser, where the gas condenses into liquid again. These liquids are absorbed and collected through tiny fibers in the refill chamber—which refills the evaporator—making it a self-sustaining system.

There appears to be no shortage of new TWS headphones being announced, but these ones are slightly different from the competition, as they have 27 year Sennheiser veteran Axel Grell behind them. The grell TWS/1 is the first product from grell, a brand from STRAX, which is also home to Urbanista, WeSC and several other brands that mostly focuses on audio or mobile accessories.

The TWS/1 does as you'd expect, focus on audio quality, but also includes all the kind of features you'd expect from current generation TWS headphones, such as ANC, Bluetooth 5.2 and support for the SoundID app from Sonarworks. The TWS/1 is based on Qualcomm's QCC5141 Bluetooth SoC which sits in the premium tier of Qualcomm's product stack and features a pair of DSPs as well as a system processor and an application processor.

Xiaomi today took another bold step in the exploration of future technology with its new bio-inspired quadruped robot - CyberDog. The launch of CyberDog is the culmination of Xiaomi's engineering prowess, condensed into an open source robot companion that developers can build upon.

CyberDog is Xiaomi's first foray into quadruped robotics for the open source community and developers worldwide. Robotics enthusiasts interested in CyberDog can compete or co-create with other like-minded Xiaomi Fans, together propelling the development and potential of quadruped robots.

Xiaomi is preparing to release their next-generation Mi OLED gaming television lineup with support for NVIDIA G-Sync. Xiaomi has posted three teasers on their Weibo account about the upcoming TV promoting its OLED panel and G-Sync support however they are yet to announce any details about potential resolutions, refresh rates, or prices. The TV may be part of the NVIDIA Big Format Gaming Display program which all include dedicated G-Sync modules however no confirmation has been given by either company. We can deduce that the TV will support HDMI 2.1 given the inclusion the NVIDIA G-Sync support and the lack of bandwidth offered by HDMI 2.0. Xiaomi will release more details for the Mi OLED TV at an official announcement on August 10th.

The recent wave of COVID-19 outbreaks in India has weakened sales of retail storage products such as memory cards and USB drives, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. However, demand remains fairly strong in the main application segments due to the arrival of the traditional peak season and the growth in the procurement related to data centers. Hence, the sufficiency ratio of the entire market has declined further. NAND Flash suppliers have kept their inventories at a healthy level thanks to clients' stock-up activities during the past several quarters. Moreover, the ongoing shortage of NAND Flash controller ICs continues to affect the production of finished storage products. Taking account of these demand-side and supply-side factors, TrendForce forecasts that contract prices of NAND Flash products will rise marginally for 3Q21, with QoQ increases in the range of 5-10%.

The US Government, specifically the Department of Defense (DoD), has under the Trump administration blacklisted the Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi. This was a way to impose sanctions on the Chinese company as it was believed that Xiaomi was involved with the Chinese military, thus the Trump organization had problems having US investors taking a share of it. However, the company has issued legal proceedings against the US government for making such claims, and now the US govt., administrated by the President Joe Biden, has reached an agreement with the company. Xiaomi managed to prove that it is not owned or controlled by the Chinese military, so the US DoD has removed the company from its blacklist.

This has caused the company shares to soar on the Hong Kong stock exchange by as much as 6.7% after the news appeared. "The Biden Administration is deeply concerned about potential U.S. investments in companies linked to the Chinese military and fully committed to keeping up pressure on such companies", said Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council.

Demand for DRAM exceeded expectations in 1Q21 as the proliferation of WFH and distance education resulted in high demand for notebook computers against market headwinds, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. Also contributing to the increased DRAM demand was Chinese smartphone brands' ramp-up of component procurement while these companies, including OPPO, Vivo, and Xiaomi, attempted to seize additional market shares after Huawei's inclusion on the Entity List. Finally, DRAM demand from server manufacturers also saw a gradual recovery. Taken together, these factors led to higher-than-expected shipments from various DRAM suppliers in 1Q21 despite the frequent shortage of such key components as IC and passive components. On the other hand, DRAM prices also entered an upward trajectory in 1Q21 in accordance with TrendForce's previous forecasts. In light of the increases in both shipments and quotes, all DRAM suppliers posted revenue growths in 1Q21, and overall DRAM revenue for the quarter reached US$19.2 billion, an 8.7% growth QoQ.

Demand for PC, mobile, graphics, and special DRAM remains healthy in 2Q21. Furthermore, after two to three quarters of inventory reduction during which their DRAM demand was relatively sluggish, some server manufacturers have now kicked off a new round of procurement as they expect a persistent increase in DRAM prices. TrendForce therefore forecasts a significant QoQ increase in DRAM ASP in 2Q21. In conjunction with increased bit shipment, this price hike will likely drive total DRAM revenue for 2Q21 to increase by more than 20% QoQ.

TrendForce's investigations find that India has become the second largest market for smartphones since 2019. However, the recent worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country has severely impaired India's domestic economy and subsequently dampened various smartphone brands' production volume and sales (sell-in) performances there. TrendForce is therefore revising the forecasted YoY growth in global smartphone production for 2021 from 9.4% down to 8.5%, with a yearly production volume of 1.36 billion units and potential for further decreases going forward.

TrendForce further indicates that the top five smartphone brands (Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo) have either set up assembly plants in India or sought assistance from EMS providers with operations in the country. Hence, the share of made-in-India smartphones has been on the rise over the years, even though the majority of the domestically manufactured devices are still for meeting the demand of the home market. Judging from the current state of Indian smartphone manufacturing, TrendForce expects the second wave to reduce the country's smartphone production volume for 2Q21 and 3Q21 by a total of 12 million units, in turn resulting in a 7.5% YoY decrease in smartphone production in India for the whole year.

The third-generation semiconductor industry was impaired by the US-China trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic successively from 2018 to 2020, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. During this period, the semiconductor industry on the whole saw limited upward momentum, in turn leading to muted growth for the 3rd gen semiconductor segment as well. However, this segment is likely to enter a rapid upturn owing to high demand from automotive, industrial, and telecom applications. In particular, the GaN power device market will undergo the fastest growth, with a $61 million revenue, a 90.6% YoY increase, projected for 2021.

Global DRAM revenue reached US$17.65 billion, a 1.1% increase YoY, in 4Q20, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. For the most part, this growth took place because Chinese smartphone brands, including Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi, expanded their procurement activities for components in order to seize the market shares made available after Huawei was added to the Entity List by the U.S. Department of Commerce. These procurement activities in turn provided upward momentum for DRAM suppliers' bit shipment. However, clients in the server segment were still in the middle of inventory adjustments during this period, thereby placing downward pressure on DRAM prices. As a result, revenues of most DRAM suppliers, except for Micron, remained somewhat unchanged in 4Q20 compared to 3Q20. Micron underwent a noticeable QoQ decline in 4Q20 (which Micron counts as its fiscal 1Q21), since Micron had fewer work weeks during this period compared to the previous quarter.

Global sales of smartphones to end users declined 5.4% in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphone sales declined 12.5% in full year 2020.

"The sales of more 5G smartphones and lower-to-mid-tier smartphones minimized the market decline in the fourth quarter of 2020," said Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner. "Even as consumers remained cautious in their spending and held off on some discretionary purchases, 5G smartphones and pro-camera features encouraged some end users to purchase new smartphones or upgrade their current smartphones in the quarter."

MediaTek today unveiled its new Dimensity 1200 and Dimensity 1100 5G smartphone chipsets with unrivaled AI, camera and multimedia features for powerful 5G experiences. The addition of the 6 nm Dimensity 1200 and 1100 chipsets to MediaTek's 5G portfolio gives device makers a growing suite of options to design highly capable 5G smartphones with top of the line camera features, graphics, connectivity enhancements and more.

"MediaTek continues to expand its 5G portfolio with highly integrated solutions for a range of devices from the high-end to the mid-tier," said JC Hsu, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of MediaTek's Wireless Communications Business Unit. "Our new Dimensity 1200 stands out with its impressive 200MP camera support and advanced AI capabilities, in addition to its innovative connectivity, display, audio and gaming enhancements."

Access to affordable electronics isn't looking much of a reality for US citizens, as the US government (presently in the outgoing days of Trump's administration) has now announced the addition of Chinese tech company Xiaomi to its military-connections blacklist. The move, enforced via a presidential executive order, now also demands U.S. investors to divest, or sell out, of affected holdings of any companies on the blacklist, by Nov. 11 this year. This addition to the US blacklist is done in accordance with the US National Defense Authorization Act of 1999, and doesn't place XIAOMI in the Entity list, of which Huawei is a part of, which would impede the Chinese tech giant from acquiring US technology and components for fabrication of its products.

The US Department of Defense (DOD) said in a statement that "The Department is determined to highlight and counter the People's Republic of China's (PRC) Military-Civil Fusion development strategy, which supports the modernization goals of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) by ensuring its access to advanced technologies and expertise acquired and developed by even those PRC companies, universities, and research programs that appear to be civilian entities". Xiaomi has been classified as one of nine "Communist Chinese military companies".