Coolpad Group
Coolpad was originally the smartphone brand of Yulong.[8] In 2002, an overseas holding company, China Wireless Technologies Limited was incorporated in the Cayman Islands, for the shares of Yulong; China Wireless Technologie's shares were floated in Hong Kong stock exchange in 2004, which was considered as an international/offshore market for mainland Chinese companies and citizens.[9]
In 2003, China Wireless made the first Chinese CDMA1X-based smartphone, with color display and hand writing input.[5] In the next year, the company made a dual SIM-slot phone.[5] In 2005 the company made a phone with dual SIM-slot which could operated simultaneity in both GSM and CDMA-based mobile networks, which was the first manufacturer in the world to invent it.[5]
In 2012, Coolpad was one of the major brands that Chinese would buy in the domestic market, along with Chinese brands Lenovo, Huawei and ZTE[10] (The big 4)[5] and import brands Samsung, Apple Inc. and Nokia.[10]
China Wireless was officially renamed Coolpad Group Limited at the end of 2013.[11] In the eve of termination of the tie-in sales agreement with the majority state-owned mobile phone carrier China Mobile in 2014,[12] the group started to sell their products via online stores.[13]
The group was included in Forbes' Asia's Fab(ulous) 50 Companies once, in 2015 edition.[14] However, the company was suffered from the poor sales of their 3G smartphones in 2015 financial year, which saw a 41% drop in total revenue; thanks to 3% increase in revenue of 4G smartphones and extraordinary profit by selling part of the stake of Coolpad E-commerce, the company avoided a net loss but a net profit of HK$2.3 billion. In December 2014 the company formed Coolpad E-commerce, a joint venture with Qihoo 360 in 55-45 ratio, but in mid-2015, chairman and largest shareholder, Guo, sold part of the shares of Coolpad Group to Qihoo 360's competitor, Jia Yueting of LeEco Group, despite Jia used an overseas holding company Lele Holding, instead of domestic incorporated LeEco (aka Beijing Leshi Holding) to acquire the shares. LeMobile, a subsidiary of LeEco, was also a producer of smartphone.
In December 2016, Coolpad Group sold 80% stake of a subsidiary "Shenzhen Coolpad Mobile Tech", which runs the smartphone brand "ivvi",[15] to another Chinese technology company SuperD that specialize in virtual reality and augmented reality.[16] Coolpad Group retained 20% stake in Coolpad Mobile.
According to a research by Canalys, neither Coolpad nor sister brand LeMobile (of Jia's Le.com) were the major brands of the domestic smartphone market, in any of 2016,[17] nor in the first quarter of 2017.[18]
Since acquired by Jia Yueting, Yulong/Coolpad Group also sold mobile phone parts to Lesai Mobile HK, associate company of Coolpad Group (they shared the same largest shareholder Leview Mobile HK). The connected transaction was renewed on 16 May 2017; in 2016 the transaction value in the connected deal was HK$192.774 million.[19][20] The shares of Coolpad Group was also suspended from trading since 31 March 2017, as the external auditor requested the company to provide more information, in order to verify the 2016 financial statements of the company.[21]
In October 2017, the company also entered real estate industry by signing a cooperative agreement with a Chinese developer, in order to re-develop its old headquarters in Shenzhen: "Coolpad Information Harbor".[22][23] In November 2017, Jia Yueting resigned as the chairman and a member of the board,[24][25] 4 months after he was resigned from sister company Le.com. Two more non-executive directors also followed Jia to resign,[24][25] including former CEO Liu Jiangfeng, who already resigned as CEO in mid-2017. Jia soon sold all the shares he held in January 2018.[26]
Coolpad then shifted to sell phones in the United States market. However, days after vice-chairman and CEO Jiang Chao appearance in the Consumer Electronics Show, he was removed from the board and other positions in January 2019.[27] In April 2019, after a net loss of HK$2,674 million in 2017 financial year,[28] the company had announced that the net loss of 2018 financial year had decreased to HK$409 million, despite the revenue of the company had also decreased.[29]
