Move over Apple and Samsung, the latest tech rivalry is in town - and it’s to do with a router aimed at pregnant women.
Many expectant mothers in China are now concerned that WiFi signals cause enough radiation to hurt their unborn babies.
Needless to say, Qihoo 360 and Xiaomi are arch rivals and both have vested interest in multiple competing segments including wireless routers, smartphones and other back-end networking equipment.
Qihoo 360 unveiled the device, an upgrade to an existing product, which has three settings it describes on its website as wall penetration, balance and "pregnant women", BBC reported. According to Inquisitr, Xiaomi accuses Qihoo of employing scare tactics in order to boosts its sales performance. The "pregnancy" setting reduces the router's power so that up to 70 percent less radiation is emitted, according to the company's website. Unfortunately, Xiaomi's routers doesn’t offer the same setting found on Qihoo's.
While it's natural that people are fearful of the term "radiation", there's a key distinction that Qihoo appears to be missing, willfully or otherwise. The truth is, Qihoo's router isn't any safer than anyone's regular WiFi router, but it will most likely be a hot item, thanks to China's superstitious consumers.
Two Chinese tech companies have recently clashed over the issue of a wireless router setting specially targeting pregnant women.
"We aren’t scientists. We haven’t done many experiments to prove how much damage the radiation from Wi-Fi can cause". "We leave the right of choice to our customers".
A study conducted by the World Health Organization claims that exposure to low level radiation like those coming from Wi-Fi routers doesn’t have any direct effect to an unborn baby's overall health.
This is irresponsible marketing.
"Based on a recent in-depth review of the scientific literature, the WHO concluded that current evidence doesn’t confirm the existence of any health consequences from exposure to low-level electromagnetic fields".
It is true that there's a lot of money to be made in the IT business, but companies such as Qihoo must exercise responsible marketing and not prey on superstitious people to gain an advantage.
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