By A company I’ve never heard of – BYD (Build Your Dreams) – was at Mobile World Congress showing off their wares and I thought I’d pass along the memo. Interestingly enough the company started in the battery industry, got into cell phones, then jumped into Automobiles – they sold 500,000 autos in Asia last year – and finally have been exploring renewable energy.
But since you’re interested in Android, take a look:
These aren’t very high powered handsets, but as you can see the only two “branded” devices they have are available in India where smartphone penetration is much lower than America and most of Europe. While you might not be amused, this is exactly what countries with developing telecommunications industries need – affordable access to smartphones.
As Eric Schmidt said in his keynote last night, the great thing about the growth of smartphones in the past couple years is that it’s giving people a voice who were never heard before. Whereas information was formerly only accessible to the elite, smartphones are forcing a shift. Android is certainly a catalyst in that movement and I’m sure BYD would like to help build that dream, too.
Talk a blatant rip-off of a Nexus One.
Never heard of BYD. Warren Buffet has a stake in it.
Never heard of BYD? Warren Buffet has a stake in it.
BYD was supposed the first company to mass market electric vehicles in the US, but failed to make it.
Exactly, Warren Buffet is one of the major investor behind BYD. And BYD is one of the largest battery manufacturer in the world — take off the lid of your smartphone and you probably see a BYD fine-print in the battery~
big rip off nexus one
BYD is actually quite big. And their logo is an interesting take on the BMW logo (as is the name). But yeah, unlikely that Americans/Europeans know of that company, unless they have been in China or closely follow the tech world, sometimes there are announcements from there. AFAIK their electric car (a saloon, I’d say somewhere around the size of a 3 to 5 series BMW?) is in use as a taxi in some Chinese towns, and it seems to be quite ok (though probably a death trap, like most Chinese cars).