After rumors had begun to swirl about the two companies, Chinese travel site Ctrip’s vice-chair Tang Lan announced officially that the company has made a strategic investment in Fast Hotel Manager, a Chinese mobile app that helps iOS and Android users find and book hotels. The exact sum of the investment was not disclosed.

The partnership between the two companies will have advantages for both. Ctrip has a large userbase, a strong reputation, and a lot of money, but it needs to build strength in mobile (though to be fair the company does already have a number of mobile apps). Fast Hotel Manager gets money out of the deal, obviously, but it should also get access to more of Ctrip’s large userbase, and judging from the low number of app reviews on the iOS and Google Play stores, it could certainly use more users. Read more…

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The impending release of Xiaomi’s next-gen smartphone, the Mi3, isn’t exactly a secret. After all, Xiaomi has a released a new model in the early fall in both of the past two years, and all signs point to the company planning to do that again. Late yesterday, iMobile reported that the new handset is coming August 16, although it’s not clear where that information comes from or how exactly Xiaomi will handle the release (generally the phones’ sales begin with preorder periods).

The phone is, once again, rumored to be pretty powerful especially at its paltry $320 price point. In fact, if the leaked benchmarks are to be believed, the phone will once again be one of the most powerful handsets in existence. That probably won’t surprise Xiaomi fans too much, but music fans will be glad to know that the latest round of rumors also suggests a new “Mi Hi-Fi” feature. Exactly what that means or what it will do isn’t clear yet, but it’s meant to cater to music fans so if you listen to a lot of music on your phone it’s likely to be a neat new addition. Read more…

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