The Chinese car giant Geely, of which Volvo is part, is going to make smartphones. The owner of the Geely has set up a new company for this purpose. The company talks about high-end smartphones that should appear worldwide.
Geely CEO Eric Li has launched a new company to make premium smartphones and possibly other “smart electronics,” Zhejiang Geely Holding Group wrote in a press release. That new company is called Hubei Xingji Shidai Technology Co. Ltd and is located in Wuhan in China.
Concrete details about the company’s smartphones and the name under which they will be sold are not yet available. According to Reuters, an internal memo has leaked stating that Geely plans to launch its first smartphones worldwide by 2023. The company expects to sell three million in its first year.
According to the memo, Geely is investing 1.3 billion euros in the project and is aiming for a turnover of the same amount in the first year that it starts selling smartphones. If that only concerns the sale of smartphones, that amounts to 433 euros per smartphone. The company aims to achieve a total turnover of about 20 billion dollars within eight years and grow to three thousand employees.
Geely is a Chinese car manufacturer that owns the Volvo, Polestar, Lotus and Proton brands, among others. The company also makes its own satellites and wants to bring a satellite constellation into low earth orbit as a tool for self-driving cars.