cheap

BYD promised them very happy by putting very advanced ADAS in very cheap cars. Until the RAM crisis came

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In recent years, BYD had turned its brand new advanced driving system into one of the biggest arguments to confront Tesla. And having this type of technology in affordable cars can be attractive to the consumer, but it has a cost that other companies can hardly absorb. BYD thought so, but the RAM crisis It has stopped him, and the context is now much more complicated. Prices go up. BYD just announced in China a 21% increase in the price of the ‘DiPilot 300’ option (basically its “God’s Eye” in its version with LiDAR), which goes from 9,900 to 12,000 yuan (about 1,560 euros). The company justifies the measure by the “significant increase in global storage hardware costs.” In other words, DRAM memory and storage have become so expensive that they can no longer absorb the cost without passing it on to the customer. Until now, no major manufacturer had so explicitly linked a price increase to the memory market, according to collect South China Morning Post. In detail. The ADAS Modern ones (and especially those that integrate LiDAR like those from BYD) are very demanding on memory. They need high-performance chips to process LiDAR point clouds in real time, run driving models, and store route data. The problem is that this same type of memory is being absorbed en masse by artificial intelligence data centers, which account for most of the global production of DRAM and NAND. The prices of these chips have entered what analysts call a “supercycle,” with increases that according to TrendForce are around 55-60% in conventional DRAM this year, but that in premium automotive segments (which also use DDR5) have reached up to 300% in free market price. A problem of scale. BYD’s colossal deployment makes the problem especially bulging in its case. The company has installed your “God’s Eye” system in more than 2.85 million vehicles as of March 2026, generating approximately 180 million kilometers of driving data per day, according to own data of the signature. At that scale, every extra cent in memory multiplies into millions. On the other hand, BYD closed the first quarter of 2026 with its worst net profit in three years: 4.08 billion yuan, a drop of 55% compared to the same period of the previous year, according to figures published by the company. In this context, maintaining prices without making a move has become unsustainable for the company. They are not alone. Chery, Xiaomi and the Huawei Aito brand prices have also increased on models with similar advanced driving systems in recent months. William Li, founder and CEO of Nio, counted in January that the biggest cost pressure of the year would not come from raw materials, but from memory. What changes for the buyer. The founding promise of “God’s Eye” was that autonomous driving would no longer be an expensive privilege. As we counted almost a year agothe experience of the system on the highway (even in the most economical model, the Dolphin Surf/Seagull, which sells for around 9,000 euros in China at the exchange rate) was genuinely impressive. Lane keeping was impeccable, autonomous lane changes were well executed and traffic management rivaled other premium range systems. BYD even planned to distribute it as standard in all its models, regardless of the price. Although that narrative is not dead, it is beginning to have nuances. At the moment, the version with LiDAR (the most capable) is already a payment option that has just become 21% more expensive. And now what. From Counterpoint Research they point that the blow will be uneven: low-end models simply will not carry this technology, and high-end ones have less price-sensitive buyers. The greatest impact falls on the mid-segment, where BYD’s value proposition was most disruptive. As the markets are, we will have to wait to find out what direction the company finally takes. Cover image | BYD In Xataka | Cuba is experiencing a brutal energy crisis, so a Cuban has used ingenuity to fuel his car: charcoal

If you were waiting for Xiaomi to launch cheap cars, its CEO encourages you to continue waiting seated

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Xiaomi has been in the automobile market for a couple of years (although it is still we are waiting for your arrival in Europe), and in contrast to what the brand offers in other areas such as smartphones, the company wants to position itself rather high in the price table of its cars. Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi, confirmed during a live broadcast on April 17 that the brand has no intention of launching electric vehicles below 100,000 yuan (about 12,500 euros) in the coming years. Here, as expected from the figures, he talks about the Chinese market. Communication. Lei Jun made these statements during a live autonomy test in which he drove a new generation SU7 Pro from Beijing to Shanghai (1,265 kilometers) with a single stop to charge. On the way, he took the opportunity to chat with the chat, a calculated communication strategy that has been noticed. Luckily, during the talk, we were able to find very interesting statements from the head of the brand himself and get an idea of ​​his roadmap. No to the cheap car. According to counted Jun during the broadcast, today’s competitive electric cars increasingly depend on intelligent driving systems, and that type of technology has a high cost that does not fit with a sales price below that barrier of 100,000 yuan in China. According to collect the media CarNewsChina, Lei himself recognized that the new generation of the SU7 It accumulates more than 100 improvements compared to the previous model, with an increase in material costs of almost 20,000 yuan, but its selling price only rose by about 4,000 yuan. For Xiaomi, the equation applied to an entry-level car simply does not add up. Where Xiaomi does want to be. The updated SU7 starts at 219,900 yuan (around 27,500 euros), and the brand’s direction points even higher, as the firm is ready to launch its SU7 Ultra which already competes in the high-performance segment, and in the not too distant future models such as the YU7 GT or a premium variant of the SU7 will also appear, according to they count from ChinaEVHome. We will have to see prices when the firm lands in Europe with its SU7, but everything indicates that Xiaomi wants to consolidate itself within the field of the mid/high range of automobiles. The Chinese car is not synonymous with cheap. Xiaomi is not the only one that avoids the price war in the entry segment. He Xiaopeng, president of XPeng, declared during the presentation of MONA M03 that his company also has no plans to go below that 100,000 yuan threshold. Among the reasons it gave were too tight margins, unsustainable investment in smart technology and real risk of a destructive price spiral. What the numbers say. Sales data in China reinforce this reading. And it is that according to figures collected by CarNewsChina, entry-level electric cars, such as the Wuling Hongguang Mini EV or the BYD Seagull (Dolphin Surf here in Spain), registered year-on-year falls of almost 58% in the first months of 2026, partly due to the end of tax exemptions on purchases. The sedan and utility vehicle segment as a whole also fell almost 20% year-on-year in March. The volume is there, but the profitability is not. Promises. All in all, Lei Jun left a door ajar in the long term. Their goal is for Xiaomi to be among the five largest car manufacturers in the world. Reaching that scale would, sooner or later, require greater price coverage. But for this scenario to come true, there still seems to be time. Cover image | Xiaomi In Xataka | Journey to the center of the Chinese motor (part 2): I have seen the future of cars in Beijing and yes, it is electric (and very cool)

Fed up with paying almost 8 euros for a Guinness, someone thought of setting up an index to find cheap beer

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How delicious is that little beer that you drink right after leaving work or after a paddle tennis game and how angry it is when you find out that they have raised the price. Matt Cortland He paid €7.80 for a pint of Guinness in Dublin in March 2026 and didn’t like it one bit (the price, not the beer). So instead of criticizing the waiter or posting a review on Google complaining like some people do, he adopted another strategy that was slightly more laborious but much more effective (judging by its results): a very complete price index where he would know where to drink the best and at what price. Because revenge, like beer, is served cold. The project. Is called Guinndex and is independent of the very famous Irish beer brand. You go to the website, enter a pub, a city, a county or a postcode in the box and it returns pubs and the cost of a pint, as well as useful information such as its location or its score. Or you zoom in on the map to see with a traffic light map which taverns look cheaper than others. A good way to save if you travel to Ireland and fancy a pint of Guinness. In fact, it has very diverse rankings ranging from how long it takes to earn a pint (depending on salary) to pubs named after animals or the best pub names (praise be the “Hairy Lemon”). Today it has almost 6,500 registered pubs in the 32 counties of the country and almost 1,300 prices verified and rising thanks to anonymous contributions from users. The price index for Dublin. Guinndex Why is it important. Because the Irish Central Statistics Office stopped tracking the price of a pint since 2011, leaving a data gap of more than a decade in a country where Guinness is much more than a beer. And although Guinness is almost a religion in Ireland, it is the same everywhere: no one knows for sure if they are overcharging you compared to the standard price or how much extra. The Guinndex fills that gap with real, verified data, not estimates. Furthermore, it does so publicly and for free, so that it allows obtaining an objective reference so that consumers have information and can put pressure on prices. It’s the market, friend. On the other hand, and leaving aside the anecdote of finding where to drink cheaper, what it shows is relevant: that the cost of carrying out a complex idea has plummeted and streamlined so much that a single dev is capable of setting up a project of this magnitude in just 48 hours when before it took weeks of work, a certain budget and a team. Context. Matt Cortland likes AI, data and Guinness, as he himself admits on the project website. He is an American engineer based in London with strong ties to Ireland: his partner is irishlived and trained there with the George Mitchell scholarship and course the Creative Digital Media master’s degree from TU Dublin. He is not just a tourist they are trying to scam. The project came at a critical time: Diageo, the company that owns Guinness, had applied several price rises in a row and some pubs had taken the opportunity to inflate margins. If you’re not careful, you can pay up to €11 for a pint, although the average price in Dublin is €6.94 and €6.06 nationwide. How has he done it. With an AI agent named Rachel who looked human, understood Irish humor, and had a Northern Irish accent (after several tests, she concluded that this worked best), as its author tells. The task was simple and quick: call, ask the price of a pint of Guinness, say thank you and hang up. Few people discovered that it was a chatbot and there were all kinds of responses, even waiters who offered to buy him a round. During the St. Patrick’s weekend he called 3,000 pubs, answered more than 2,000 calls and more than a thousand pubs provided a price: he already had the Guinndex base. The technical stack was jack, knight and king: the Google Maps API, ElevenLabs for the voice and agent logic, Twilio for making the phone calls, and Claude for extracting Guinness prices from the transcripts. Cortland explains What cost him the most was time, since he only invested about 200 euros. The consequences. The most immediate impact is behavioral: Cortland account that the owner of a pub lowered the price of his Guinness by 0.40 euros and then updated the information in the Guinndex himself. When there is price transparency and it is available to everyone, it is capable of changing behaviors. However, the biggest consequence is the technological moment in which we live: three APIs, 200 euros and a weekend are enough to build a project from scratch, with real utility and that is already changing prices. The bottleneck is no longer money or infrastructure: it is knowing what problem is worth solving. In Xataka | Spain can tell itself as many times as it wants that it hates Cruzcampo. The figures say a very different thing In Xataka | We humans like beer. The big question is whether we like it enough to have invented agriculture Cover | Guinndex and Christopher Zapf

China has shown that the good and cheap electric car exists. So Citröen has had to get its act together

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China is doing very well with the cheap electric car. And if not, tell them BYD Dolphin Surfa 100% electric vehicle that the company finances at just over 3% for 125 euros per month. Without financing it costs 19,990 euros which, after aid, can become 11,780 euros. Saving exceptions like Dacia Springwhich compete in a much lower league, Western manufacturers have no choice but to respond. And Citröen has been the first to do so. 11,700 euros. Citroen has been lowering the price of its ë-C3 for more than a yeara car that was launched on the market for more than 20,000 euros and that, since its launch, has been reduced by almost half. Now, after aid, the Citröen C3 costs 11,700 euros, with an eight-year warranty. What it offers. With a price practically identical to the Dolphin Surf, an almost identical autonomy (220 km under the WLTP cycle), and a technology relatively similar to that of the Chinese alternative, we are finally talking about a price at which the company can be competitive. What China offers. Both vehicles, in their most economical version, have LFP batteries. The main difference is in the charging system: 65 kW for the BYD and 30 kW for the Citröen. The key, however, is not in the specs: it is that BYD has been offering a competitive price since its arrival in Spain, which has catapulted it into the top 3 of the best-selling electric cars in the country. Beyond Tesla. There is no electric car that sells more than the Model 3 in Spain. This is to be expected, given the reliability, range and price of the vehicle. Just below Tesla, we have the BYD Dolphin Surf, which has sold more than 1,332 units so far this year (compared to 2,489 for the Model 3 and 2,023 for the Model Y). Taking into account that they play in completely different leagues, the BYD case is a resounding success. A purely urban car that sells practically twice as much as its direct rivals. The electric C3 has 634 units sold, placing it in the top 9. The ranking points to something very clear: the price is the main purchasing factor for the Spanish electric companyand Western manufacturers will have to tighten their grip if they want to compete with China. In Xataka | The electric cars with the most autonomy that can be bought in 2026

The depressing future of cheap mobile phones, in two graphs that are a death sentence for the low-end

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Quick, make a wish. The motive behind these lines is more difficult to see today than a four-leaf clover: the Realme C71 (which we tested less than a year ago) came on the market with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage and a RRP of 149 euros. A species in extinction, something impossible in 2026. We are facing a paradigm shift in the mobile industry. In recent years we have seen how manufacturers benefited from an excess supply of memories that made it possible to build combinations of RAM and storage at ridiculous prices. That era is over: a recent report from Counterpoint Research confirms that the cost of components is suffering its greatest pressure in a decade and the outlook is bleak: either brands sacrifice their profits or pass the cost on to the consumer. Or both and an extra: the entry range is disappearing in every sense. What has happened to the price of NAND and DRAM. The price increase in the first quarter of 2026 has been abysmal and without close precedents: RAM memory (DRAM) has suffered a quarterly increase of more than 50%. NAND Flash has seen an even more aggressive rise, exceeding 90% compared to the previous quarter As a picture says a thousand words, the graph prepared by Counterpoint Research: Source: Counterpoint Research Price Tracker Why is it important. This phenomenon is not a simple fluctuation or a temporary shortage, it is a structural change that puts the economic viability of many manufacturers in check. DRAM (speed and multitasking) and NAND (storage capacity) are essential in the user experience. Until now, scaling these memories was cheap, but not anymore. In the entry range, the cost of memory already represents almost half of the manufacturing “ticket”, sometimes exceeding the cost of the processor or the screen itself. With current profit margins, absorbing this impact is impossible: either the price is raised, or it is sold at a loss. The market has already revised downwards global shipment forecasts for 2026: Counterpoint estimates a drop of 2.1%, while IDC is more pessimistic and projects a decline of 12.9%, which would exceed the 12% contraction recorded in 2022. Context. The culprit has its own name: generative artificial intelligence. More specifically, the explosion of artificial intelligence infrastructure. The data centers that power AI models are demanding memory on a large scale, thus becoming direct competition with mobile manufacturers for the production of Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. Capacity is finite and AI takes priority for reasons of profitability. If we also take into account that the latest generation processors manufactured in 2nm they have become more expensivewe have the perfect storm. Retail. The increase in the price of memory does not affect all mobile phones equally. This is how the weight of memory is distributed in the total cost of the device: The entry range ($200 or less) is the most affected. With a typical configuration of 6 GB + 128 GB, memories already represent 43% of the total cost of the device. An increase of 30 dollars per unit is estimated. In the mid-range (400-600 dollars) the combination goes from 25 to 36%, which can mean 60 to 80 dollars per unit. In the premium range (over 800 dollars), the increase is more diffuse and they are also exposed to double pressure, that of the most expensive memories and that of the processors, which translates into increases of between 100 and 150 dollars that we will begin to see reflected in the launches of the second half of the year. How will the user notice it?. Counterpoint has estimated these price increases between $30 and $150 depending on the range, but the cushioning is not always going to be so obvious and direct. In the entry range, where the margins are so small, another way out is to cut the catalog to a minimum. We will see manufacturers “killing” the base model to force the jump to the next price step, much smaller catalogs and, above all, technical stagnation. The old 128GB will return as standard and, in the worst case, we will see steps backwards with the use of slower and older memories (LPDDR4X) to try to save the furniture in the mid-range. In Xataka | Best mobile phones in quality price. Which one to buy based on use and seven recommended models In Xataka | Having an AI on my phone that works without an Internet connection is more useful than I thought: this way you can start it Cover | Xataka, Pepu Ricca

Chinese AI models boasted of being good, pretty and cheap. There are only two of those three things

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It is not as well known as its rivals, but Zhipu AI (z.ai) has become one of the most promising Chinese AI startups. It is responsible for the family of open GLM models that have always offered a solvent and, above all, very cheap alternative. That, unfortunately, is no longer so true, but we are witnessing a change in strategy both between it and its competitors in the Asian giant. Chinese AI models are no longer such a bargain. GLM-5.1 is better… Z.ai announced yesterday the launch of its shiny new AI model, GLM-5.1. I did it with my chest out because we are facing a promising evolution of this LLM (744B parameters, 40B assets with Mixture of Experts architecture) that certainly surpasses its predecessors but that in some metrics even seems to be above GPT-5.4, Claude Opus 4.6 or Gemini 3.1. Agentic tasks and those that require autonomy for long periods work better than ever, but if you want to benefit from these improvements, you have to check out: the price of the model is now at least 8% more expensive than previous versions. …but also more expensive. According to prices managed by OpenRouter, the well-known platform that serves as a “distributor” of multiple free and commercial models, the prices of the new Z.ai model have risen significantly. Thus, GLM-5.1 costs between 8 and 17% more than GLM-5 Turbo, also recently launched. It is the second time that the Chinese company has raised prices for its users in 2026, and that is a worrying sign. The excuse, of course, is the same as always. We are in high demand. When Z.ai launched GLM-5 at the beginning of February, it took the opportunity to raise the prices of its plans for programmers between 30 and 60%while the API rose between 67% and 100% (doubling). Its shares on the stock market perked up significantly after the launch and the price increase – logical, investors saw that income was probably going to increase thanks to these increases – but the company indicated that demand was very high and that its models had to reflect that circumstance. From the three B’s to just two. The Chinese open models had been demonstrating remarkable quality and a fantastic price/performance ratio for months. They were good, pretty and cheap, but Zhipu AI has just been the latest to end up raising prices. Most of its competitors have been doing it too: Moonshot AI (Kimi), MiniMax and StepFun did it already in 2025, but Alibaba, ByteDance, Tencent and Baidu have also adopted increasingly ambitious pricing strategies. as indicated on TrendForce. OpenClaw as a trigger. Much of the blame for this great demand lies with AI agents like OpenClaw, which has become viral but has a problem: it consumes tokens at an extraordinary rate. A conversation with ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini has a cost, but the use of tokens in “chat mode” is much lower than that carried out by AI agents, who do not stop “thinking” and analyzing different possibilities and chaining processes to resolve our requests. The Chinese models have become a good alternative if one wants to save because using Claude Opus 4.6 was very expensive —and now, prohibited—, but these models are slowly becoming high-end AI models. At least, for price. I already know how this story ends. What we are experiencing with AI models we already saw with smartphones. Chinese manufacturers broke the market with bargain phones that offered high-end features for mid-range or low-range prices, but then they evolved and over the years most manufacturers have ended up focusing on the super-high ranges and at most have launched “cheap” sub-brands. Xiaomi has done it with Redmi and POCO, for example, and now we are seeing something similar with Chinese AI startups, which gained popularity with good, pretty and cheap models, but are now beginning to transition to that new batch of capable but no longer so affordable models. First they catch you, then they squeeze you. What we are seeing with the Chinese AI models we were also seeing with the models of companies like OpenAI or Anthropic. Both they and their competitors release increasingly better but also increasingly more expensive models, and that means that those tokens that these companies sell us are becoming more and more precious: the quotas for the ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro plans, for example, seem to be running out. faster than beforeand the users they take time complaining about it. On Reddit They have a “megathread” dedicated precisely to that, but here we have bad news: this doesn’t look like it will go down, but rather more. In Xataka | Anthropic has shut down OpenClaw for a reason: it’s building the “walled garden” that Nintendo perfected

Spending a night at one of LVMH’s most exclusive vacation spots isn’t cheap: $70,000 a night

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There are luxury resorts. And then there are places for which there is still no category that does justice to what they offer. He Cheval Blanc Randheli Private Island, located in the Maldives, cobra $70,000 for a single night stay in its facilities. And no, we didn’t miss any extra zeros when writing it. The property belongs to the LVMH hotel divisionthe same group behind luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Moët & Chandon or Tiffany & Co, and what it offers for that price goes far beyond a bed overlooking the Indian Ocean: an island just for you. A resort that was already unattainable for most Cheval Blanc Randheli is located on Noonu Atoll and can only be reached by seaplane from Malé, capital of the Maldives. He LVMH luxury hotel It is divided into two islands: one where the main resort is located and a second island, separate from the main one, whose price can reach $70,000 per night. That is to say, for that price you are not renting accommodation in a villa, nor a presidential suite. It is literally a private island, with its own beaches, its pier, its dedicated staff and more than 8,000 square meters of total area. A proposal for which the word “exclusive” falls short. The luxury resort opened its doors in November 2013 as part of the Maisons collection of the brand. The main complexlocated on the largest island, is the one that welcomes the most guests, with 45 loft-style villas distributed between overwater, garden and beachfront options. Each of them is equipped with private pool infinite edge. The experience offered by this resort begins even before arriving, as guests They travel on the private seaplane by Cheval Blanc after a stay in an exclusive waiting room in Malé. Common facilities include five select restaurants, a Guerlain spagym, water activities and even the only surf simulator with artificial waves in the Maldives. Conventional villa rates at the main resort are now out of reach of most pockets. According to the accommodation portals in the areatheir prices range between $2,268 and $7,688 per night depending on the type of accommodation. The island of millionaires Cheval Blanc Randheli Private Island is an independent island separated by just 50 meters of deep turquoise sea from the main island. It has a surface area of ​​one hectare and is only accessible through a private pier. The island houses an exclusive mansion four bedrooms with approximately 2,200 square meters built, with capacity for up to eight guests. The master bedroom has panoramic views of the ocean, double bathroom, dressing room, office and its own living room. The residence also includes two family rooms on the ground floor and a separate villa for companions who prefer more privacy, making it an ideal option for families or groups of friends. This paradisiacal mansion also has three connected living rooms, a piano lounge, a private bar and a 25-meter-long pool complete the set, creating the feeling of living in a luxury tropical residence in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Beyond the luxury accommodations and equipment for the exclusive inhabitants of this island, it also includes a private spa with treatmentsgym, movie theater, tropical gardens, private beaches, pergola for outdoor dining and meditation pavilions. So that you do not lack anything during your stay, the service It is run by a resident team dedicated exclusively to the island’s guests, available 24 hours a day. A private boat connects the island with the rest of the resort, so that guests can change islands whenever they wish and eat in the restaurants, bars, kids club and diving center of the main complex, without sacrificing an ounce of their privacy. All for the modest price of 70,000 a night. In Xataka | Hotel chains no longer just offer luxury rooms: Ritz-Carlton dives into the superyacht business Image | Cheval Blanc Randheli

that buying a yacht is as cheap as a car

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The man who turned JD.com into the Amazon’s biggest Chinese rivalhas just announced his next project. This time it’s not about packages or deliveries in 24 hours: this time it’s about yachts. Yes, those luxury boats that until now only the richest could afford among the rich. However, his plan is not make yachts for millionaires. That can do any. The challenge is to manufacture yachts that any minimally wealthy family can afford. Their goal is to manufacture yachts at the same price as a car. The “Chinese Jeff Bezos.” Richard Liu is popularly known as the “Chinese Jeff Bezos” for having converted your company JD.com into an online commerce giant with its own logistics capable of overshadowing the almighty Amazon. According to ForbesLiu has an estimated net worth of around $5.5 billion, placing her as one of the China’s biggest fortunes. Liu wants to replicate that philosophy of scale and efficiency that he has honed at JD.com in a completely different sector: boat manufacturing. For this purpose, Sea Expandary has been created. a new company which will not be managed directly by him since he will have his own independent CEO. The planned initial investment is around 5 billion yuan (about $723 million), and the goal is so ambitious that it is hard to believe: that any salaried worker can have his own yacht, just as happened with the car decades ago. Price is what changes the rules of the game. The most striking fact of the proposal is the target price for the boats they manufacture. As I collected Asian outlet SCMP, Liu has stated that: “I hope that one day we can build yachts priced at 100,000 yuan (US$14,502), so that they can enter homes like cars do. Yachts must be difficult for ordinary wage workers and ordinary consumers.” To put that figure in context, according to boat insurance portal Admiral Marine, a small entry-level yacht can easily cost between $50,000 and $200,000. The ambition is that this boat will have enough space on board for a family and that its price will not be an obstacle for Chinese households to buy one. Making boats is complex. Building ships is not an easy task. The nautical sector continues to be one of the most artisanal and labor-intensive, with long production cycles and greater flexibility must be applied in the customization of finishes and uses. To reach that price, Sea Expandary would have to radically industrialize the process, limit the variants it offers to its customers and optimize the supply chain. Furthermore, the new company not only aims to be cheap, but also sustainable. Liu has announced that all Sea Expandary yachts will operate with what he has called new energy technologies that focus on the electrification of engines and renewable energy generation systems. This is a positioning that fits well with the industrial policies that China has been promoting in the renewable energy sector that is already is applying in cars. It’s a good business. The yacht market in China is in full boiling. According to the market outlook By the end of 2025 there were 9,850 vessels registered in the country, and more than half of the total fleet had been registered in the last three years. The Chinese Ministry of Transport said that growth is expected to continue over the next five years. The global yacht market, for its part, exceeded $9.83 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach $14.98 billion in 2035, with compound annual growth of more than 4.3%. China is late to this sector compared to Europe or the US. However, China arrives with a more than proven competitive advantage: its industrial-scale production capacity, lower manufacturing costs and the support of public policies. Liu knows this, and he said it bluntly: “Only by doing this can we truly compete with the world’s leading yacht manufacturers in Europe and the United States.” In Xataka | The ultra-rich trade land for a superyacht during the summer: These are some of these floating mansions Image | Flickr (Fortune Brainstorm Tech 2018), Pershing

Apple has only found one option to make a cheap laptop: make it a mobile

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The new MacBook Neo It costs 699 euros because it has the iPhone 16 Pro chip inside. Not the M4 from a couple of years ago, neither the M3 nor the M2. The A18 Pro: the same processor as many people have in their pocket. Apple has solved the price problem by doing something that until recently would have been unthinkable in its own mental architecture: reuse a mobile chip in a laptop. They put it in an aluminum case with a keyboard and hinge, gave it a new name, and sold it as if it were a different category. It is not. It is something more similar to an iPhone without a touch screen, with a trackpad and keyboard, and with macOS on top. For years, Apple has maintained (implicitly but consistently) that the Mac and iPhone were worlds apart, with different chips, for different uses. ARM architecture unified the foundation six years ago, but the M family and the A family followed separate paths: one for the desktop, the laptop and the tablet; another for mobile. That separation has sustained an entire product hierarchy. The Neo just killed it. Apple is admitting that the mobile chip is sufficient for most customers’ laptops. It is a recognition that has more implications than the price. If the iPhone chip is good enough for a Mac, what exactly the hell were we paying for before? The answer is… Apple’s margin. And the name. And the feeling that a Mac was something qualitatively different from a mobile phone with a keyboard. Now that feeling has a reference price: 600 euros difference between the cheapest MacBook and the most expensive iPhone. And the Neo’s USB-C ports don’t support Thunderbolt because the A18 Pro It doesn’t support it, so that’s not a product decision, it’s an original limitation that Apple has accepted as sufficient. The Neo isn’t exactly a strategic bet either. It’s more like an admission.. Apple had spent years without anything really competitive below 1,000 euros and it knew it, which is why sold the M1 in the United States for $700 as an emergency maneuver. On this side of the Atlantic, the empire of reconditioned and second-hand goods was taking away too many sales. The iPad with keyboard did almost the same thing as the entry-level MacBook Air and cost less, with the disadvantage of iPadOS but with greater versatility due to the touch screen and the option of using it undocked. The only way down was to cross the internal borders that Apple itself had built between its chip families. And there is what the Neo leaves in the air, more interesting than any specification: if the mobile chip is already sufficient for the work laptop of the majority, the convergence between both categories is not a future hypothesis. This is what Apple just put in its window for 699 mutts. In Xataka | Apple made a splash with its cheapest iPhone. And the iPhone 17e is coming to repeat the play Featured image | Apple

Apple is back with the ‘cheap’ MacBook. This time it’s really cheap

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Five devices in three days. That was Apple’s plan for this week, a plan that culminates with the new MacBook Neo. This is a new attempt by the company to bite into the cheap laptop segment and, although we know that ‘cheap’ does not mean the same for us as it does for Apple, in this case… it is true. Next, we go with all the features of a MacBook Neo that targets a very specific segment and that does not come with an M processor, but with that of the iPhone 16 Pro. Yes, we have not missed the mark with the iPhone model. MacBook Neo technical data sheet MacBook Neo screen 13 inch LED screen Resolution of 2,408 x 1,506 pixels 219 pixels per inch 500 nits brightness processor A18 Pro RAM 8GB storage 256GB ports UBS-C 480 Mb/s USB-C 10GB/s Headphone port WEIGHT 1.23kg Camera FaceTime HD at 1,080p Connectivity Wi-Fi 6e Bluetooth 6 battery 36.5 Wh battery 20W charging Up to 16 hours of battery price From 699 euros Laptop body, iPhone 16 Pro heart The design of the MacBook Neo is very reminiscent of the MacBook Air with the latest redesign. At least, on the outside, with those very rounded corners and a somewhat more robust finish. On the sides there are only two ports (two USB-C that do not go at the same speed, but can be used interchangeably for charging) and the two speakers. The body is made of aluminum, the keyboard has good-sized keys and the trackpad is as large as usual, but the pronounced bezels return on the screen. If the iPhone 17e maintains the traditional notch, the cheap MacBook has not switched to the notch of its older brothers. The screen has a maximum brightness of 500 nits (which is not too much, but enough for indoors) and the resolution yields a density of 219 pixels per inch. On the outside it looks like a MacBook but the trick is that on the inside it’s not a MacBook: it’s an iPhone. In your file in the web From Apple, the company does not dwell much on the processor either. It simply says that it is enough for daily tasks. What tasks? Emails, video calls, surfing the Internet… and puts many practical cases in the classroom. We are looking at a MacBook for students or for mobility with up to 16 hours of autonomy. And, again, it is thanks to the fact that its SoC is that of a mobile phone. This is the Apple A18 Pro, the same one that ‘fit’ the iPhone 16 Pro. It is a more than enough chip for daily tasks, for somewhat more demanding tasks such as occasionally editing a video, for consuming content and even for games. But, even if it has a mobile SoC, the system is MacOS, with everything that this implies in terms of productivity, functionality and the interconnection that we are already accustomed to with the iPhone. The iPad is sure to watch with jealousy that an Apple A18 Pro can handle macOS while he rides up to an M5 with iPadOS. MacBook Neo launch and price The MacBook Neo will hit the market on March 11. You can book now and will arrive at two prices: 256 GB capacity with Magic Keyboard for 699 euros. 512 GB capacity with Magic Keyboard with Touch ID for 799 euros. And, like its brothers, it will not include a power adapter. In development…

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