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Xiaomi Tops Chinese Smartphone Market

yellowarse

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<header class="postHeader" style="display: block; font-family: nyt-cheltenham, georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 16px; ">Xiaomi Surpasses Samsung As China’s Top Smartphone Vendor, Says Canalys

[FONT=alright_sansmediumitalic]Posted <time datetime="2014-08-05" class="timestamp" style="box-sizing: border-box; ">20 hours ago</time> by Catherine Shu (@catherineshu)


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Xiaomi
‘s name may mean “little rice” in Chinese, but it’s not so little anymore. According to a report from Canalys, Xiaomi has surpassed Samsung as China’s top smartphone maker, thanks to massive growth over the past year.

The report says that in the second quarter, Xiaomi shipped 15 million smartphones in China, up from 4.4 million devices, or 240%, in the same period a year ago. Samsung, meanwhile, shipped 13.2 million smartphones in the second quarter, down from 15.5 million a year ago. The other top smartphone makers were Lenovo, Yulong, and Huawei.

This means that Xiaomi now holds a 14% share of China’s smartphone market. Canalys says that in Q2 2014, China, the world’s largest smartphone market, accounted for 37% of global shipments, or 108.5 million units. Eight out of the ten top smartphone vendors in China were domestic companies, including Xiaomi, Lenovo, Yulong, Huawei, BBK, ZTE, OPPO, and K-Touch, which together shipped 70.7 million units and took a 65% market share. Samsung and Apple, the only international players on the list, accounted for 20 million units, or 18% of the smartphone market in China.

Xiaomi has previously said that it hopes to sell 60 million handsets this year, and 100 million devices next year.

According to Canalys research analyst Jingwen Wang, Xiaomi’s success in Q2 2014 was helped “by an unanticipated, temporarily under-strength Samsung performance during the quarter.”

“But this is only half the story–Xiaomi has also executed on its strategy to grow volume shipments. It has delivered compelling products at aggressive price points, focused chiefly on its locally relevant MIUI software features and services, backed by effectively targeted marketing.”

Arguably, Xiaomi has been able to deliver “compelling products at aggressive price points” by taking many cues from (many critics argue outright copying) successful competing devices and then selling them at cost. As TechCrunch’s Matt Burns noted last week, Xiaomi can sell its hardware below the market average by spending very little on advertising and for the most part avoiding selling its products in stores, depending on direct consumer sales instead.
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Leongsam

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Xiaomi topping the smart phone market in China is like Perodua and Proton topping the car market in Malaysia. It doesn't mean shit.

2013-2012-TIV.jpg
 

Froggy

Alfrescian (InfP) + Mod
Moderator
Generous Asset
With a population of 5.3million people in Singapore versus a population of almost 30million Malaysians (about 6x of Singapore), last year Singapore registered the following luxury vehicle versus Malaysia

Bently 125 vs 0
Rolls Royce 58 vs 0
Mclaren 25 vs 0
Aston Martin 18 vs 0
Lamborghini 12 vs 0
Ferrari 69 vs 0

even for other common luxury vehicles is really out of proportion to the ration of population

Mercedes 3871 vs 5550
BMW 3730 vs 7057
Audi 1797 vs 3102
Porsche 363 vs 395

Information from LTA - http://www.lta.gov.sg/content/dam/l.../FactsandFigures/MVP02-2_New_Cars_by_make.pdf

I wonder what this tells everyone, Sinkies huat ah!
 

Leongsam

High Order Twit / Low SES subject
Admin
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I wonder what this tells everyone, Sinkies huat ah!

And that's why I always say PAP is the BEST!!!! :biggrin:

I can't think of any other country in the world where luxury cars are the top sellers. You have to hand it to the government. Their ability to create an environment where so much wealth can be generated is unmatched by any other country.
 

yellowarse

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Xiaomi topping the smart phone market in China is like Perodua and Proton topping the car market in Malaysia. It doesn't mean shit.

You can't compare China with Malaysia.

China's the world's biggest and most competitive cellphone market, hence the hoo-ha over Xiaomi toppling the likes of Samsung, iPhone and Lenovo (the world's 3 biggest smartphone makers). Plus the Chinese cellphone market, unlike M'sia's automobile market, is not protected for domestic brands. And Xioami is now #5 in the world by sales volume, not too bad for a company which was founded in just 2010.
 

Leongsam

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Admin
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You can't compare China with Malaysia.

China's the world's biggest and most competitive cellphone market, hence the hoo-ha over Xiaomi toppling the likes of Samsung, iPhone and Lenovo (the world's 3 biggest smartphone makers). Plus the Chinese cellphone market, unlike M'sia's automobile market, is not protected for domestic brands. And Xioami is now #5 in the world by sales volume, not too bad for a company which was founded in just 2010.

It's just a cheap copy. :rolleyes:
 

8868

Alfrescian
Loyal
And that's why I always say PAP is the BEST!!!! :biggrin:

I can't think of any other country in the world where luxury cars are the top sellers. You have to hand it to the government. Their ability to create an environment where so much wealth can be generated is unmatched by any other country.


Boss, for that you need to know the statistic of how many car owners are Singaporean and Foreigners or PRs :smile:
 

yellowarse

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It's an open secret that Xiaomi's founder & CEO Lei Jun models himself after Steve Jobs, right down to the black tee and blue jeans. And he intends to make Xiaomi the next iconic IT brand after Apple.


<header class="article-header page-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.5em; padding-left: 0px; display: block; position: relative; font-size: 1em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); ">Xiaomi’s One More Thing

[FONT=alright_sansmediumitalic]Posted <time datetime="2014-07-30" class="timestamp" style="box-sizing: border-box; ">Jul 30, 2014</time> by Matt Burns (@mjburnsy)[/FONT]

Next Story
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The young electronics company Xiaomi is exploding in China and seems posed to take over the world. In the four short years since its founding, Xiaomi has become the electronics brand to watch in the most populous nation on earth.

Xiaomi is the now the real deal — thanks in part to its unabashed appropriation of design cues from companies like Apple. But if Xiaomi wants to maintain its growth and expand outside of China, it must be prepared to accept the consequences for its tendency to blatantly rip competitors off.

The Chinese market operates under a different set of standards than the U.S. Here, originality is of utmost importance and intellectual property is highly regarded and protected. Though China has IP laws, they are generally considered weaker and are infrequently enforced.

Historically, however, the act of copying is sometimes worth the risk. Apple notably copied Xerox’sgraphical user interface, and likewise, Microsoft copied Apple’s OS implementation for Windows. Both companies had great success — and both took flak for doing so. More recently Samsung stole several notable features from Apple, locking both companies up in endless court battles.
But Xiaomi is a different animal. Where Apple and Microsoft largely cribbed a concept, Xiaomi replicates designs and design elements. The products aren’t clones, per se, in that they aren’t identical down to the individual components or even functions, but the company undeniably looks to other products for design ideas. The company produces some original products, but the design of many of its offerings are more mashups than homages.

This shouldn’t be taken as the ignorant act of an immature company: Xiaomi knows exactly what it’s doing.

There have been many ‘inspirations’ for Xiaomi’s designs, but the company’s focus on Apple is staggering. Last week, CEO Lei Jun, wearing a black shirt and blue jeans, did his best to emulate Steve Jobs while unveiling the new Mi 4. He repetitively talked about Apple’s products. He even specifically stated that his company went to the same manufacturers that produce the iPhone to see what they could make for Xiaomi. And the presentation ended with a slide that stated “One more thing…”, an Apple hallmark.

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[FONT=open_sansregular]It was the only slide in the 95-minute show that was in English.[/FONT]

Don’t Think Different


[FONT=open_sansregular]Apple’s influence on Xiaomi is widely known. Businessweek called the Mi 4 an “iPhone-esque smartphone.” Last year The New York Times called Xiaomi’s CEO Lei Jun a Steve Jobs “knockoff.” Brian Blair, analyst at Rosenblatt Securities, explained to CNBC last year that Xiaomi is not anxious to expand outside of China because the company is still in copycat mode.
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[FONT=open_sansregular]“Samsung was in the copycat mode for a long time,” he added.
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[FONT=open_sansregular]Xiaomi is widely known to take heavy inspiration from other companies’ products and marketing materials, but it most often copies Apple’s. The Mi 4 is Xiaomi’s best iPhone copy yet. It clearly takes inspiration from the iPhone 4s and iPhone 5. And for good reason: The iPhone is widely popular in China but carries a premium price tag.[/FONT]

Then there’s the company’s streaming box, the Mi Box, which bears a striking resemblance to the Apple TV as shown above. And in the case of the MiPad tablet, the company clearly looked at the iPad mini and iPhone 5c for their design choices — even in the MiPad’s marketing photos. TheXiaomi Mi Router Mini looks just like the Apple Magic Trackpad. The Mi Power Bank is a blatant iPod mini rip-off. Worse yet, the camera lens shown on the Mi 3 product page was the Apple Aperture icon — seriously: The lens shown on the phone was, without question, the icon of an Apple product until Xiaomi finally changed it on July 29.
Xiaomi’s focus on Apple is smart. The iPhone is expensive in Xiaomi’s primary market of China, where Xiaomi products are available for significantly less (the Mi 3 sells for about half of Apple’s budget iPhone 5c.) By constantly comparing and contrasting itself with Apple, Xiaomi is capitalizing on an established brand. So far it’s working: Xiaomi is seeing explosive growth in China, ending 2013 with a 271% year over year growth. Bloomberg reports that Xiaomi intends to sell 100 million handsets next year.

But Xiaomi doesn’t just copy Apple.

Xiaomi’s website was filled with what appear to be pilfered images. Many of the images shown on the Mi 3 camera roll on the website and on stage during Xiaomi’s announcement of the device were lifted and cropped. In some cases watermarks were removed. Here’s one stolen from National Geographic. And another from Flickr. Two are ripped from Getty Image users (1) (2). Xiaomi changed the images on July 29 after others noticed the infringement.

This tactic continued on the Mi 4’s product page where at least one image purportedly shot by the phone’s camera has been available online since at least 2006 and is also available for purchase through a stock image site.
Never mind that Xiaomi was passing off professional images as shots captured by the Mi 3’s camera. Again, here, Xiaomi apparently shows complete disregard for the intellectual property of others.

Xiaomi is even cribbing products from startups, and recently announced a virtual clone of the popular Kickstarter project Pressy. It’s essentially a little button that resides in a phone’s 3.5mm headphone slot. This little device raised $695K on Kickstarter in 2013 and is still available for pre-order for $27. The Xiaomi version costs $1-2 and does the same thing.

The Spin Zone

Even with the overwhelming evidence of copying, Xiaomi’s leadership is adamantly denying copying Apple’s design and has launched an all-out PR defensive. CEO Lei Jun apparently does not like the title “Steve Jobs of China.” Former Google VP and current Xiaomi Vice President Hugo Barra is aggressively trying to change the narrative surrounding the company, recently giving several interviews in which he stated that he is “sick and tired of people making sweeping sensationalist statements.”
Barra explained to The Verge and The Next Web that he sees Xiaomi as “an incredibly innovative company.”

It is hard to disagree. Xiaomi is innovating in Android customization for China, in sales methodology and especially in the quality of materials and specifications in its devices given their cost-to-price ratio.

But the fact remains that at even at high organizational levels, the company culture appears to be to ‘copy, not extend’. Whereas Samsung has now learned to lead the CE conversation, much as Sony did in the early 2000s, Xiaomi parrots.
Both Apple and Xiaomi found gaping holes in their home markets left from Samsung and Apple and then filled them with products designed to meet those needs.

Like Apple before it in the States, Xiaomi evolved the user interface for its core Chinese demographic. The smartphones ship with a heavily modified version of Android that allows sports a unique feature set and especially important for the Chinese market, allows for nearly endless customization. Forgoing Google services, Xiaomi launched its own application marketplace, which as of last year, had seen impressive download rates. MIUI is the best version of Android I’ve used and is available for many competitor’s handsets.

Many of Xiaomi’s innovations are centered around retail sales rather than the product designs themselves.

Xiaomi manages to sell its hardware below the market average by spending hardly anything on advertising and largely avoiding selling its products in stores, opting for direct consumer sales instead. According to Bin Lin, Xiaomi President, the company sells its products for nearly the cost of the bill of materials and does not factor in other line items like R&D and shipping. Unlike other top cell phone manufacturers, Xiaomi does not build up a large inventory of products prior to their launch.

So far, Xiaomi sells small batches of its products, sometimes around 5,000 units, allowing the company to hedge its costs while creating a consumer demand with a line-around-the-block mentality.

It must be stated here that all of those decisions are fairly innovative for the Chinese market — and the world, where carrier subsidies and sales generally dominate. It’s working, too. Recent data states that Xiaomi is now second to only Samsung in Chinese smartphone sales. The brand pushed Apple down to third place and is closing the gap on Samsung.

Xiaomi is currently set to expand operations to several new markets. The company launched in Singapore earlier in 2014 and is targeting 10 new markets by the end of the year, including Brazil, Mexico and Russia. VP Barra stated in April that the company intends to utilize the same business model in the new markets.

One More Thing…

The company is young and clearly learning as it goes. Xiaomi is in proven hands with Lei Jun as CEO and ex-Googlers Lin Bin as President and Barra leading its international expansion. Four days aftera public shaming, the company removed all seemingly stolen images and photographs from its website. The Mi 3’s product page no longer shows an Apple logo for the phone’s lens.

Xiaomi doesn’t yet have the clout of Apple or Samsung, and if the company is intent on continuing with its current strategy of stealing the work of others, it will need to stay within countries where that’s acceptable. In the U.S., however, it will learn one more thing: the electronics giants are litigious and have deep pockets. The real battle, then, could still be coming.

Even if Xiaomi does not like the sweeping sensationalist statements comparing it to Apple, the company has earned the distinction. And for the most part, it’s a compliment. Apple, which has also blatantly copied other companies in the past, created a global empire that so far few have challenged. By many accounts, Xiaomi could, one day, challenge Apple — especially if it gets its feet underneath it with regards to original hardware design.

TechCrunch reached out to Xiaomi for comment but had not heard back at time of publishing.
 

Agoraphobic

Alfrescian
Loyal
.................China's the world's biggest and most competitive cellphone market, ....................

And the biggest auto market as well:

Will China Auto Sales Hit 50 Million A Year By 2020? One Chinese Official Thinks So

By Angelo Young
on August 05 2014 3:03 PM

China has been the world’s largest auto market since 2009, and if officials there are correct, it’s going to stay that way indefinitely as it emerges as a major economic player with a burgeoning population of urban consumers with money to spend. Last year, Chinese bought 22.1 million new passenger cars, SUVs, light trucks and vans, compared to the 15.6 million bought in the U.S………………………..


The rest of the article can be found here:

http://www.ibtimes.com/will-china-a...r-2020-one-chinese-official-thinks-so-1649650


Cheers!
 

yellowarse

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
I personally don't consider PRs are Singaporean. They need to renew their status once every 5 years. I got Australia PR but I don't call myself an Australian :smile:

In every other country, a "-ian" or "-ean" always refers to a citizen. It's only in Singapore that PRs are lumped with citizens under the term 'Singaporeans' or 'residents' to obfuscate immigration numbers.
 

Froggy

Alfrescian (InfP) + Mod
Moderator
Generous Asset
Just jumped into the Xiaomi craze. Collected my Redmi Note and 3 pcs of Mi Power Bank10,400mAh, was wondering what's all the fuss about this brand so bought and try for fun.



Was impressed that the response on the screen is pretty quick. Photos are not too bad either at low light I think its less grainy than iPhone 5s. Anyway will post some photos from this device once I could set up my phtobucket there.









Heard a lot of good things about the power bank.
 

singveld

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
i rather eat nails than buy a lousy PRC shit with stupid name xiaomi. xiaomi sound like the name of PRC whore in geylang than a phone.
 

Narong Wongwan

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
With a population of 5.3million people in Singapore versus a population of almost 30million Malaysians (about 6x of Singapore), last year Singapore registered the following luxury vehicle versus Malaysia

Bently 125 vs 0
Rolls Royce 58 vs 0
Mclaren 25 vs 0
Aston Martin 18 vs 0
Lamborghini 12 vs 0
Ferrari 69 vs 0

even for other common luxury vehicles is really out of proportion to the ration of population

Mercedes 3871 vs 5550
BMW 3730 vs 7057
Audi 1797 vs 3102
Porsche 363 vs 395

Information from LTA - http://www.lta.gov.sg/content/dam/l.../FactsandFigures/MVP02-2_New_Cars_by_make.pdf

I wonder what this tells everyone, Sinkies huat ah!

Where you get the data?
I'm surprised not any Malaysian bought a single unit of Ferrari, Lambo or Rolls....or any of those brands listed.
The sultan of Johore himself would easily bought a few.....

Anyway back to topic....
Have tried the xiaomi....was actually eager to try then at only $169. Was amongst the first to order.
After one week later switch back to my apple....nothing great and the touch screen sucks.
 

Jah_rastafar_I

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
i rather eat nails than buy a lousy PRC shit with stupid name xiaomi. xiaomi sound like the name of PRC whore in geylang than a phone.


oh and apple is a good name?

Did you know how surprised the co founder of apple was when steve told him the name.

Its the name of a fruit.

If you judge something just on the name itself then you're dumb but then again you're already biased.
 
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