China Baoli, who bought 30% of Yota Devices at Fund Telconet, creates a joint venture with a major Chinese smartphone manufacturer Coolpad for the joint development of mobile devices with two screens. This is reported by “Vedomosti” with reference to the reporting of the China Baoli published on the Hong Kong stock exchange.
According to the Vice-President of the China Baoli Theo Ede, it is about the production of a new model of the smartphone YotaPhone 3. Previously the primary design work was made by Russian developers, but now the development of smartphone completely will move to Shenzhen, China.
The company will employ about 60 engineers from China Baoli, another 200 employees from Coolpad. According to a press release, the new company will be engaged in the development, distribution and sales units in China.
For all the time since the start of sales and end of September 2015, Yota Devices has sold only about 63,000 smartphones, 43 000 of them in the YotaPhone 2. And by the end of last year the number of sold smartphones reached 96 000.
Former CEO of Russian Yota Devices and now head of the Chinese division of the China Baoli Technologies Service Ltd Vladislav Martynov, sure, if a new investor does not make any strategic mistakes, YotaPhone 3 to go on sale in a few million, and to increase the speed of business.
The appearance of YotaPhone 3 has been scheduled for the end of this year. But a number of financial and technical reasons forced the company to delay its release in 2017.
