Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Round Table.
The Super Bowl of technology is in full swing at CES 2025 happening right now in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Chinese tech companies are making waves with groundbreaking innovations in AI, smart home appliances, electric vehicles, and so much more.
Which Chinese company or trend are you most excited about?
We'll discuss. And from unforgettable experiences to live's little joys, we're spilling all the feels in Round Table's happy place.
Join us for your weekly dose of sunshine.
Coming to you live from Beijing, this is Round Table.
I'm He Yang. For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Yu Sun in the studio.
First on today's show, the Consumer Electronics Show or CES is in full action this week in Las Vegas in the U .S.
from January the 7th to 10th.
In the tech world, CES is often likened to the Super Bowl of American football or even dubbed Kuzi -Chuan -Wai or the tech CCTV Spring Festival Gala among China's tech -savvy industry insiders, enthusiasts, and watchers.
Highlighting is major influence.
So as we dive into this event, it's clear that China's tech giants are driving some of the most exciting trends and I'm really curious to hear what trends you guys are most excited to see unfold on the global stage, but before we do that, let's set the stage properly.
What is CES? Yeah, exactly.
I think we have to start there because if you're not a tech enthusiast, then you might not even know what CES is.
I don't consider myself to be a tech enthusiast in the purest definition, but I do love fun new gadgets and new technologies and new toys and that's what CES is all about.
CES stands for Consumer Electronics Show and what it is, it's this annual technology trade show and it has a long history.
It started back in 1967 in New York City and it has since become the premier event for showcasing the latest innovations in consumer electronics.
As you mentioned, Till Young, they do it every year in January in Las Vegas and it's such a great setting, I think, for I don't know, cool setting to have that show there.
About a hundred thousand people attend every single year and they have thousands of exhibitors from all around the world, including tech giants and startup and industry leaders.
They highlight, again, the cutting -edge advancements across so many different sectors.
AI this year was everywhere at CES, also robotics, smart home devices, as you mentioned, automotive tech, health innovations, and so, so much more.
Every year, it's a really, really big deal in the world of tech and it's always covered across news media outlets.
Yeah, and this year the theme is innovation for all and emphasizing how technology can address global challenges and enhance everyday life.
And when we're seeing the, you know, posters or just banners of the CES, we can see there are so many, that is obvious, right?
These humans or like these pictures are made of AI or they are AI like kind of posters.
So it is actually reflecting that, I think, you know, the position of AI in technology industries.
And also, you know, when mentioning CES, many like industry insiders also bring up another major consumer electronics show, it's IFA, the Burling International Consumer Electronics Exhibition.
And some people describe, you know, the difference between these two shows as this CES focuses on painting the big picture, while IFA focuses on making these into reality.
Oh, okay. Yeah, because CES, some of the things that are displayed at CES are available now, right?
You can buy them now, but also there are things displayed at CES that are just perhaps ideas or will be available in the future but not available just yet.
I've never heard of the other one though, IFA you call this?
Yeah, I've never heard of that one before.
So some brands, like you said, like they participate in CES, like mainly to actually pitch ideas and attract investment with just some presentation on just PowerPoint and people call it like PowerPoint launches.
But it is like undeniable that these concept only presentations often showcase the prevailing trends in the world or even in tech industry.
And in fact, it could even be said that CES, which is at the beginning of the year serves to set the tone for the consumer electronics industry in the year ahead.
You're a big tech guy, would you like to go someday?
Yeah, of course. Yeah, me too.
Like you're seeing these cutting edge technologies in the firsthand, it is absolutely thrilling things to do.
Oh, yeah, it's on my bucket list of things to do.
Oh really? Yeah. And again, I'm not a huge, huge tech guy, but I still think it's so fun and so cool.
Yeah. And I have to admit, I wasn't so looking forward to going to this event.
But after listening to you guys, my interest has peaked.
Oh, wait until you hear about some of the things we'll talk about.
And then maybe your interest will be peaked even further.
Okay, let's see what are some of the key highlights already so far that the Chinese companies have put on a show?
Of course. So first of all, we can see, according to some media reports, CES 2025 has attracted over a lot of Chinese companies.
So over 1300 Chinese companies this year, compared to with last year's 1115.
And Chinese participation accounts more than a quarter of the 4500 registered exhibitors in 2025.
And one, I think, one of the, I think, to me, of course, the astonishing technology is Xreal or AR glasses.
This is a name of an AR glass company.
This is the global debut of these Xreal One series, which enhances immersive experiences through ultra high performance and their like spatial computing chips, which they said is also very powerful.
And you can actually see through these AR glasses and go through all of this computing power with a really, really low lateness.
Yeah. Oh, these things are so cool.
What you do is you put these on, they look like sunglasses, but they're not.
Basically, what it is, is you have a screen right in front of your face.
It's the equivalent, check this out, it's the equivalent of a 147 inch screen, 4 meters from your eyes.
And previous versions of these glasses, as far as I know, you had to attach something, I think, to block out the light from outside because that would take away from the visual experience, right?
But now you get this crisp, bright screen right in front of you.
There are different settings.
You can pin the screen so that when you move your head back and forth, the screen will stay in one spot.
And this allows you to look at different things, or you can set the glasses so that the screen will move with you so that when you move your head, the screen in front of you moves as well.
It's just, oh my gosh, these things are so cool.
Yeah, actually, this makes you feel like you're just wearing the sunglasses, but you're sitting in a whole big theater.
Yeah, it makes you feel like you're wearing a movie theater on your face.
Well, that reminds me of Apple's Vision Pro a little bit.
Comparable. But that was a bit on the heavier side, as I read from consumer reports as such.
And there are so many interesting things and innovations happening.
This smart cleaning company, DreamTech, from China.
Well, we've talked about Robo Cleaners in the past, in a previous show this year.
But this is really taking stuff to the next level.
PCMag called this robotic vacuum cleaner one of their best products from CES 2025.
This is the world's first robotic vacuum with biometric multi -joint mechanical arm technology.
Now, that is a mouthful, but here's what this little champion can do.
It looks like your standard robot vacuum cleaner, right?
But it opens up and a little arm comes out.
It can pick up things for you.
It can pick stuff up.
So what the writer from PCMag was talking about in terms of what he saw, he said he saw an example.
The vacuum cleaner left its little dock and it came out and there was a sock on the floor and it went over to the sock and the little arm came out, picked up the sock and went back and dropped it in a little box and then went back to its house.
Yeah. And also one another point is that they launched this cleaning tools for pool.
And another company called Ninebot, it is a short distance transportation and service robot company.
They also released a range of new products, including the fully upgraded three -generation electric scooters and the Segway NaviMo X3 smart lawn mower.
I think it is something that really surprised me.
The lawn mower? Yes, because… Oh, but Huyang, we could sit here all day.
All day. Yeah. Tell us about the lawn mower.
Yes. I'm really glad to see these companies have ambitious localization or global expansion plans to these Western countries because, for example, products like pool cleaning robots or lawn mowing robots may not have a huge demand here in China, but there is a much greater demand for them abroad.
And when you have these things in your home, I feel like it is just truly brings the concept of smart technology from a sci -fi movie to reality.
Because imagine just when you're just stepping out of your house in your lawn, there is a just robot and there's another robot cleaning your pool.
It's just something really futureing your stuff, doorstep, the robot vacuum cleaner.
I was watching a video or sorry, the robot lawn mower.
And again, yeah, that's fair.
Maybe not in Beijing.
There wouldn't be a huge demand for that.
But in rural parts of the United States or Canada or other countries, there absolutely would be.
So what you do is… and it looks like a robot vacuum cleaner, actually.
It's about the same size, maybe a little bigger.
And what you do is you take your smartphone and you map out your lawn and then the robot… Actually, they can map out for you.
It's not perfect in terms of that, but you can go back and change the setting so it can become almost perfect.
And then you can set the schedule, you can set the blade height, so you can tell it how low or how high to cut your grass.
And then you set the schedule, and then it just goes out and mows your lawn for you.
You can also divide the schedule.
So people have like a front lawn and a back lawn.
So you can divide it into two and tell it when to mow the front lawn, when to mow the back lawn, how high or low to cut the grass.
It's really, really cool.
Yeah. Well, as a Chinese person who don't own so much lawns, but I can understand as I've spoken to people about this and lawn mowing, usually you hire somebody, it takes money or you have to do it yourself.
If the robot can do it for you, then… Why not?
It sounds great. And a lot of what you've just said just reminds me of episodes of Love, Death, Robot, and maybe even Wall -E or some of these other movies.
Now it's kind of hard to tell whether it's the movie that inspired these products or the products inspired the movie to some extent or whichever way round.
And what do you see as possible trends with… We've only named a few out of the many, many exciting new products that are being on display.
I think one trend is a lot of cross -industry integration becomes the norm.
One thing is that we can see a lot of domestic car manufacturers are attending CES and they are also cooperating with a lot of Western or global international chip companies to actually develop their own intelligent like auto -mobile systems.
And as technology advances, the boundaries between industries are increasingly blurred, as we say, cross -industry integration has become a standard practice and collaborations at CES.
And we can see such as those between Xreal and BMW, Xreal and Romtai, which is a health care company, as well as Xiaopeng's land aircraft carrier concept vehicle showcase, how Chinese companies are breaking traditional industry barriers and sharing resources and complementing each other's strength and fostering
innovation through collaborations.
Yeah, I was on an EV car website and what they were saying there is that, you know, speaking about cross -collaboration, tech companies want to be inside your car in a big way because they see it as the next great platform for streaming video and gaming and your favorite applications.
And not only the tech companies, but the car companies want this too because they fear that if they don't do these types of cross -collaborations that they'll be the company that's left behind from all their competitors.
So these car companies and tech companies, they're pulling out all the stops to make it happen from investments in big tech players to outright mergers to partnerships with unexpected players.
And I was reading about some of the writings about the Chinese EVs at CES this year.
From the American car riders perspective, they were absolutely blown away.
They couldn't believe the technology at play.
One of the riders stepped into a Chinese EV and put his foot on the brake.
And when he put his foot on the door closed, and he was like, whoa.
And his co -worker who is very knowledgeable about the Chinese car market said, that's pretty normal actually.
And the guy was like, really?
And then another vehicle he stepped into and he said that the display was like having a flat screen TV in your car.
And they were just, you know, comparing the American car market to the Chinese EVs and saying, yeah, we're not where they are, that's for sure.
Yeah. And speaking of something that can be perceived as normal, because when you were like describing how these AR glasses are amazing, they are, you know, and when you're saying you can look at the screen, like maybe the screen can go with you or just be fixed as a like a theater screen, but actually
that is something is quite normal.
But still these kind of technologies need a lot of high end sensors for you to like not only locating yourself, but also your surrounding environment.
So of course, these companies and when we're talking about collaboration, a lot of these companies, of course, they are in one like area or industry, but when they would like to expand, you need to create a whole ecosystem for your own like own company.
And then this is the trend that we're seeing right now hearing CES.
And clearly what you guys are saying, I think signifies that technological innovation drives development.
And we're seeing these products and technologies showcased by Chinese companies at CES demonstrating their growing innovation capabilities.
And in a way, it's kind of showing that China now can produce and design these really high, pretty high end and high tech products, which can be industry leaders and can really, I think, inspire others in the industry as well to innovate and create better products.
One hundred and ten percent true.
The trends that these Chinese companies are representing is big time technological innovation.
These stand out products, some of them are just mind blowing the technologies on display from these Chinese companies at CES.
It's demonstrating their innovation capabilities.
I'll give you another example.
Lenovo, have you heard of Lenovo before?
Of course. Yeah. Well, so they introduced...
Did you see the video on this?
They introduced the world's first rollable laptop.
Oh yes. It has a 16 .7 inch display that expands.
So let me paint this picture for you.
Almost everybody has a laptop, right?
So you open up your laptop screen and it looks like your standard laptop.
And then you press a button and the screen rises up from the base to 16 .7 inches.
It does. I'll admit it looks a little bit awkward because we're just not used to seeing a laptop with a screen like that because it becomes more vertical than it does horizontal.
But still, when we're talking about being industry leaders in terms of innovation, that's one example we can use for sure.
Absolutely. And just like what we mentioned, like these AR glasses or other robotic companies, they are releasing their high end or advanced technologies.
We are not sure that some of these may like actually or truly replace some of our smart devices or change the whole world in industry.
We are custom too, but they are absolutely like open up a wider realm of possibilities for our imagination.
And also what I see as kind of interesting here is what it shows or sort of insinuates of these different industries in China in the tech world.
That is competition is fierce in the Chinese market.
And you can see in a way when people applaud how amazing these products are, then it's testament to how competitive the Chinese market is at home because these companies really have to strive for excellence and also add an affordable price point because the Chinese consumers in such a massive number
are very picky. And we're very selective of the stuff that we're shelling our money out for.
So for these companies to go out of China to expand further, it's also looking for new markets and looking for new growth points and leaving some of this maybe overly crowded market at home.
And they're doing exactly that.
Xreal, their company's products, they've entered markets in the US and Europe and Japan and Korea.
Nine Bot International for that company, International Sales account for half of the company's business.
Their products sell to over 100 countries, which is impressive.
DreamTech, another company, their international business continues to grow rapidly.
Their global shipments are up 39 .7 % year over year in 2024.
And they hold top market share in places like Europe and Southeast Asia.
They're doing so well internationally.
So the market might be crowded here.
And I think that's a really cool thing that you mentioned before, that tech that might be considered ho -hum in China is not considered ho -hum internationally.
China is leading the way in terms of innovation in so many different fields.
And for this to be on display for other people from other parts of the world to see that tech is not ho -hum, this is brand new, very cool innovation happening in other parts of the world, which speaks to why they're so successful.
And also, I think the market expansion and influence of these Chinese companies at CES reflect a kind of a trend toward accelerating globalization and by actively participating in international exhibitions and forming these global partnerships and expanding into overseas markets as these companies that you
mentioned, Steve, Chinese tech firms are increasing their international competitiveness and they are gradually integrating into a global supply chain and value chains and competing in global markets.
Well, certainly we've seen increased participation of the Chinese companies this year, especially compared to last year.
But when I looked at the figures, actually 2018 was the year with the most number of Chinese companies participating at this event called CES.
And also when we talk about setting up business and expanding to different continents, countries, et cetera.
Well, there are very visible tariff and political tensions right now.
So I think these are definitely some very realistic obstacles for companies to look into when they're trying to expand their footprint across the globe.
And here at, well, not here, when we're talking about the CES, I think at least we're seeing what is at the forefront of these different sections or sectors of the tech world, which is really exciting for all of us.
And before we go to the next topic, what is, you know, one takeaway you would like to leave our listeners about this big tech trade show?
What do you think you should?
Um, one thing is that it is absolutely like honorable and proud that seeing a lot of these domestic companies, like they are actually, you know, when we're seeing articles about CES in Chinese media, we're seeing that a lot of it's, they're saying these companies are showing their muscles on CES.
So I think absolutely they at the moment that they are showing their advantages and advancements and technologies in these fields, they are also like representing China's power and, you know, pursuit in technology advancement.
Yeah. And I think just from a personal point of view, even if you're not a big techie, still it's fun to find out the newest products that are available.
And it doesn't mean you're going to buy it per se, but, you know, just see what's out there, see what companies are making now, seeing what people are doing now with their technological advancements and innovation.
And I think you'll have a good time checking out some videos and stories online.
Yeah. And businesses can do business and can strike partnerships.
I think that's one of the really exciting things that could come up from these trade fairs coming up during the second half of the show, what becomes of the broken hearted?
They hire a coach and go on a retreat we discuss right after this break.
