Quartz Daily Brief—Xiaomi’s rapid growth, BMW’s China payout, Etihad strands passengers, the war on sledding
Good morning, Quartz readers!
What to watch for today
Gadget launches at the Consumer Electronics Show. Tech companies are unveiling a barrage of new devices in Las Vegas, including wearables and cheap 3D printers. Samsung CEO BK Yoon will give a CES keynote on the Internet of Things as his company grapples with falling sales.
Germany offers a sneak peak at euro zone inflation. Analysts think consumer prices rose just 0.3% in December from a year earlier. That would be bad news for the wider euro zone, which is due to release broader inflation data on Wednesday.
The trial of the alleged Boston Marathon bomber begins. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev faces the death penalty if convicted of the 2013 bombing that killed three people and injured more than 260.
A severe case of the Mondays. Researchers say workers could suffer from “social jetlag,” as holiday sleep patterns and post-festivities blues throw off their internal clocks and increase fatigue.
Over the weekend
Ryanair capped a 2014 turnaround. The budget airline carried 6 million passengers in December, up 20% from a year earlier, crediting lower fares and a customer service charm offensive after deciding to stop “unnecessarily pissing people off.” Ryanair shares rose to an all-time high.
Etihad Airlines passengers had a very long weekend. San Francisco-bound passengers were stranded on the Abu Dhabi tarmac for 12 hours due to severe fog, resulting in a 28-hour journey and a slew of angry complaints on social media. On a separate Etihad flight, Dusseldorf-bound passengers were similarly stranded for 13 hours, then rerouted to Vienna after an elderly man died en route.
BMW agreed to pay nearly $1 billion to its Chinese dealers. The German auto manufacturer said it would pay a 5.1 billion yuan ($820 million) subsidy to distributors after they complained it was ramping up production and saddling them with higher sales targets, despite slowing demand. The subsidies are designed to cover losses incurred by the dealers last year.
Xiaomi tripled its smartphone shipments in 2014. The Chinese gadget maker sold 61.1 million units last year, up from 18.7 million in 2013, and said it will expand into new countries throughout the year. Annual revenue rose 135% to 74.3 billion yuan ($11.9 billion).
The euro fell on Grexit fears. A disputed report that Germany is bracing for Greece’s departure from the shared currency, plus speculation that the European Central Bank is preparing a round of quantitative easing, pushed the euro to a nine-year low. Separately, oil prices hit a five-and-a-half year low due to concerns about weak demand.
Japan’s manufacturing sector grew for the seventh month. The Markit/JMMA purchasing managers’ index rose to 52.0 in December, marking a steady expansion in factory activity. Despite dipping into recession in the third quarter, the economy appears to be growing again due to higher consumer and corporate spending.
Mark Zuckerberg vowed to read more books. The Facebook CEO will try to complete one book every two weeks as his annual goal for 2015, inviting Facebook users to read along and discuss with him. First up is The End of Power by Moisés Naím.
Pope Francis named 20 new cardinals. The latest appointees, most of whom are eligible to vote for the next pope, hail from 14 different nations, as the leader of the Catholic church continues to reshape its hierarchy with an emphasis on developing countries.
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Quartz obsession interlude
Matthew Phillips on the socioeconomic appeal of the Downton Abbey television series: “Over and over, the series emphasizes the duty felt by members of nobility to provide jobs. For instance in season one, when Matthew Crawley—a middle-class professional from Manchester who stands to inherit the estate—suggests letting an un-needed butler go, Lord Grantham replies: ‘Is that quite fair? To deprive a man of his livelihood when he has done nothing wrong?’” Read more here.
Matters of debate
Actually, 2015 won’t suck. You’ll start eating junk food again, and maybe buy a selfie stick.
Firing Marissa Mayer would be a huge mistake. The Yahoo CEO’s social awkwardness is typical of any major CEO.
To save like the rich, diversify your funds. The top 20% have relatively little wealth tied up in their own homes (paywall).
Xiaomi needs to make something original. The smartphone maker’s IPO is otherwise sure to flop (paywall).
The future of air travel is boring. Fuel efficiency trumps all other innovations.
Surprising discoveries
China censors TV bosoms. A Tang dynasty-era soap opera was censored and forced to find less revealing costumes.
The CIA censors The Americans. The agency reviews all scripts for the spy series, which is written by an ex-CIA agent.
US cities are banning sledding. They’d rather close down their hills than get sued.
Sunday was the busiest night of the year for online dating. The result of leisure time and loneliness.
The real-life Pikachu is being exterminated. China considers the pika a pest.
American football teams in Europe have awesome names. Our dream matchup includes the Ostende Swans vs. the Fighting Turtles of Corbais.
Our best wishes for a productive day. Please send any news, comments, censored TV episodes, and American football mascots to [email protected]. You can follow us on Twitter here and on Facebook here for updates throughout the day.