Surrender your old iphone and get a new Xiaomi Note

With the goal of selling 100 millions phone in 2015, Xiaomi has become more aggressive and hostile especially to Apple.

It is rumours that Xiaomi is going to launch a trade in program soon where you will be able to trade in you Iphone 5s or older Iphone for a free Xiaomi Mi Note, whether it is in good or bad condition!

If you have Iphone 6 or 6 plus, they are willing to trade you for a Xiaomi Mi Note Pro!!

This trade in program would start on several countries which definitely include China which is their main market.

Here is the comparison of flagship phone from several big players.

What do you think of Xiaomi’s trade in program? Would you switch your old iphone for a Xiaomi Note or even Xiaomi Note Pro?

How much does Apple company influences Engineer's take home pay check?

Apple company has always pay their employees well but how about the engineers from their supplier? If you don't get the chance to work in Apple, would you still be rewarded well for working with them as their supplier?

Indeed, it's does pay well if you work as their supplier, provided your company include stock option plan(SOP) as part of your total annual compensation. A lot of companies include SOP or restricted stock unit(RSU) as part of their employees total annual compensation.

Let's us take a look at Avago.

Ever since Avago get to a piece of RF chip business in Iphone6, their stock price increase exponentially. And the bull has no sign of stopping. 

Let's take an example of a senior engineer who just joined Avago 2 years ago and was given 2000 SOP at the starting of year 2013. And he was given another 2000 SOP at his 2013 year end performance review. So at Q1 2015, he would have total of 1500 SOP vested(25% of SOP vested every year). Based on the Avago stock price, how much he would earn?

If we assume the exercising price of SOP is $30, then each SOP will bring him around $80 of profit. Total 1500 of SOP will bring him $120,000. If we convert this to Ringgit, it would be staggering RM432,000 comparing to average annual income of RM80,000 that a senior engineer earned in Malaysia. And this is what's happening in Avago Malaysia right now!

Let's change the focus to manager. If a manager in Avago Malaysia is given 7000 SOP yearly starting year 2013 for easy calculation, how much would he take back home in Q1 2014?

Based on 25% of SOP vested yearly, he would have total 5625 SOP which amount to $450,000! This is around RM1.6 Million! Instant Millionaire!!!!  And he still going to have at least 5625 SOP vested for the next few years, this is crazy, isn't it?  

So the conclusion is that it is still rewarding to work as supplier for Apple if you don't get to work in Apple company, provided you join at the right timing. And it really show you how influence Apple is in impacting the take home paycheck for engineer from other company.

Xiaomi MiPad 2 tablet could have an Intel CPU

It's been eight months since Xiaomi released its first tablet - the Mi Pad - and Xiaomi is planning to launch second generation tablet “MI Pad 2” in the first quarter of 2015.

The Mi Pad 2 as rumors claim, state that the tablet will possess the same form factor as its predecessor, along with the same resolution of 2048 by 1536 pixels.

Coming back to the internal specifications of the Mi Pad 2, instead of Nvidia’s Tegra K1 quad-core 2.3GHz processor, it’ll have a 1.8GHz Intel processor (a variant of the Atom series, presumably) along with 2GB of RAM and MIUI OS built upon Android 4.4.4 KitKat, if the leaked photos are anything to go by. Last but not the least, the pictures also point at a 16GB on-board storage that the tablet could have but the device might come different internal memory variants 32/64 GB. Anyway memory can be expanded by an external micro SD card, upto 128 GB.

If Mi Pad 2 is really using Intel processor, it will definitely help Intel to penetrate into tablet market and reduce the billions dollar loses.

What do you make of these specifications? Rumour or rubbish?