Belkin Corp., a maker of smartphone cases and computing accessories, aims to launch a product with annual sales volume of over one million units in the Chinese market firstly.
Ben Thacker, vice president responsible for commercial business at it, said in an interview in Hong Kong on October 17 that it was quite optimistic about the Chinese market despite that its growth in the Greater China region was still in an initial period and aimed to launch a product with annual sales volume of more than one million units there firstly.
He reiterated that he was in talks with Lei Jun, CEO of emerging Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Technology Co., Ltd., over cooperation in San Francisco, US in July this year and the latter expected it to launch an accessory product that would create huge market demand in the Chinese mainland.
Belkin is a major accessory partners of US consumer technology giant Apple and is also the biggest maker of IT accessories in the world. Currently, most Apple accessories sold in the world are made by it and more than 60 percent of PC users in the US own at least one Belkin product, each.
China has grown into the biggest smartphone consumer around the globe, thus Belkin wants to establish a leading position there through smartphone accessories. In line with Ben Thacker, the commercial mode of Xiaomi Technology is quite luring and through cooperating with renowned brands including it in the market, Belkin expects to help Chinese mobile phone makers perfect their accessory ecology and achieve its goal of seizing more share there in the meantime. It has been allowed to contract internal teams of Xiaomi Technology in a bid to develop more accessory products for Xiaomi mobile phones. And on the website of the Chinese firm, consumers can have found products by Belkin, too.
Belkin announced a partnership with emerging Chinese mobile phone and digital accessory brand iMore Design yesterday and under the partnership, the latter will provide it with more experience regarding to both products and the market. Ben Thacker pointed out that it was a fact that it saw shares in markets including the US, Britain, and Germany be high, but this did not mean that its products would be sold well in the Chinese one. The Chinese culture was different and the commercial operation mode would be different, too. And cooperating with iMore Design would help it design more products suitable to the market.
