Billionaire entrepreneur and LeEco chief executive Jia Yueting is throwing down the gauntlet is his high-stakes market share battle with Apple, charging that the tech giant is "outdated" and losing momentum across China.

LeEco is best known as the "Netflix of China," but the company also offers a growing assortment of tech products, among them smartphones, TVs, mountain bikes and electric vehicles.

Earlier this month, the company launched its self-driving supercar, known as the LeSEE supercar, which is marketed to rival Tesla's Model X.

Jia Ready to Take on all Comers

Speaking before a room full of some of China's most powerful business leaders, the 43-year-old Jia recently boasted there isn't a tech conglomerate anywhere that scares him, including Apple, which also not so coincidentally announced that it was venturing into the world of driverless vehicles.

"We think the difference between us and Apple is very large," he said. "Apple is a mobile phone company focused on hardware and software. LeEco is focused on the Internet first, and only then on software, and finally on hardware."

Yueting went on to blast Apple's technology as "obsolete," adding that the individual apps it still relies on were fine in the beginning but have now outworn their usefulness.

"This was the right choice during the first generation of mobile net, when CPUs and mobile network speeds were not fast enough," he said. "However now we're moving into the next era of mobile Internet, these problems no longer exist."

Yueting hinted those are some of the reasons he feels sales for Apple products have stalled in China, once the tech giant's second largest marketplace. He added the company should now be concentrating on developing more cutting-edge products.

"The iPhone was still a leader five years ago after being launched in 2008 but now the concept has fallen behind," he said. "We believe the next generation of mobile Internet will be more open, more ecosystem oriented instead of being a closed loop."

Latinos are Engaged in Digital

Whatever direction the industry takes on, the Latino market figures to go a long way in determining how it will shake out.

According to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, 71 percent of all Hispanics own a smartphone, compared to just 64 percent of the overall adult population.

In addition, a recent Experian Marketing Services survey found that 53 percent of Hispanic smartphones owners now have an Android and 34 percent have an iPhone.

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