A vulnerability in Guard Provider, a pre-installed app on mobile devices made by Xiaomi, allowed unsecured network traffic in both directions and could have allowed a threat actor to connect to the same Wi-Fi network and carry out a man-in-the-middle attack, the security firm Check Point says.

The smart speaker market enjoyed a boom in 2018 with global shipments reaching 78.0 million units, a rise of 125% from the 34.7 million shipped in 2017, the analyst firm Canalys says.

Chinese smartphone companies increased their share of the European market in 2018 even as the total shipments to Europe for the calendar year fell 4% to 197 million units.