Chinese smartphone manufacture, Xiaomi, is aiming to provide its users with investing services at their fingertips. Partnering with E Fund Management, Xiaomi is making the asset manager's funds available directly from a bundled finance app on the phone. While competitors such as Apple and Samsung have aimed to link user credit cards to their phones and have launched bundled payment services directly on devices, Xiaomi is taking it a step further by adding investment services.
The integration of investment services occurs as a rising number of financial services for investors are being tailored for mobile devices. These include mobile trading platforms, bank account apps, and software for tracking long-term investments. However, these offerings have been launched in the past by financial institutions as available apps for smartphones and tablets, and not directly as part of the bundled apps put on every device by mobile manufactures.
While phones with too many bundled apps have a reputation as being useless bloatware to consumers, Xiaomi is aiming to use its devices to create a marketplace for investment products. On this goal, Hong Feng, Xiaomi co-founder, stated in a quote from the Financial Times, “We're aiming to build a smart platform to help financial partners find high quality clients, while helping our users earn money and borrow money.”
Within China, Xiaomi has developed a reliable brand image. As such, Xiaomi will be counting on leveraging this relationship with its users to be considered a trusted authority when it comes to consumers relying on third party partners that are part of this new investing marketplace.
