Chinese Smartphone Maker Xiaomi’s Revenue and Profit Slides

This photograph shows the Xiaomi logo at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the telecom industry's biggest annual gathering, in Barcelona on February 27, 2023. (AFP)
This photograph shows the Xiaomi logo at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the telecom industry's biggest annual gathering, in Barcelona on February 27, 2023. (AFP)
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Chinese Smartphone Maker Xiaomi’s Revenue and Profit Slides

This photograph shows the Xiaomi logo at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the telecom industry's biggest annual gathering, in Barcelona on February 27, 2023. (AFP)
This photograph shows the Xiaomi logo at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the telecom industry's biggest annual gathering, in Barcelona on February 27, 2023. (AFP)

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp on Friday reported a record drop in fourth-quarter revenue as the company weathered a slowdown in consumption and disruptions due to China's COVID-19 curbs.

Sales in the fourth quarter of 2022 reached 66.05 billion yuan ($9.6 billion), down 22.8% from 85.58 billion yuan a year earlier.

The numbers were slightly ahead of analyst expectations, but they mark the fourth consecutive revenue drop for the company, and its steepest on record yet.

Net income fell to 1.46 billion over the period, down 67.3% from 4.473 billion yuan a year earlier.

The company's revenue for 2022 was 280.04 billion yuan, a drop of 14.7%, while net income came in at 8.52 billion yuan, down 61.4%. Both figures fell short of analyst expectations.

Overall consumption in China dragged on most product categories in the fourth quarter, as the abrupt lifting of strict COVID-19 curbs led to a rapid spread in infections across the country.

All major smartphone brands experienced a sales slump in China over the period, based on research firm Canalys. Xiaomi, however, took the largest hit with shipments dropping 37% year on year, the Canalys data showed.



Alphabet to Roll out Image Generation of People on Gemini after Pause

A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)
A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)
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Alphabet to Roll out Image Generation of People on Gemini after Pause

A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)
A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)

Alphabet's Google said on Wednesday it has updated Gemini's AI image-creation model and would roll out the generation of visuals of people in the coming days, after months-long pause of the capability.

In February, Google had paused its AI tool that creates images of people, following inaccuracies in some historical depictions generated by the model.

The issues, where the AI model returned historical images which were sometimes inaccurate, drew flak from users.

The company said it has worked to improve the product, adhere to "product principles" and simulated situations to find weaknesses.

The feature will be made available first to paid users of the Gemini AI chatbot, starting in English and later roll out the model to bring more users and languages.

Google said it has improved the Imagen 3 model to create better images of people, but it would not generate images of specific people, children or graphic content.

OpenAI's Dall-E, Microsoft's CoPilot and recently xAI's Grok are among other AI chatbots that can now generate images.

The search engine giant also said over the coming days, subscribers to Gemini Advanced, Business and Enterprise would have access to chatting with "Gems" or chatbots customized for specific purposes.

Users can write specific instructions for particular purposes and create a Gem, saving them time from rewriting prompts for repetitive use cases.