Xiaomi (pronounced she-yow-mee) is one of the fastest-growing tech companies in the world. It’s the sixth-largest handset maker on earth and No. 3 in China, behind Samsung Electronics and Lenovo Group, according to research firm Canalys. Xiaomi’s recent growth is impressive, and its potential is even greater. In 2013, the company says, it sold 18.7 million smartphones almost entirely from its own website, bringing in $5 billion in revenue. Earlier this year, Lei set an internal goal of selling 40 million smartphones in 2014, then raised it to 60 million. In a financing round last August, venture capitalists gave Xiaomi a $10 billion valuation, about on par with 30-year-old PC maker Lenovo and Silicon Valley darlings Dropbox and Airbnb. At the same time, Xiaomi has branched out from smartphones to tablets, the large-screen HDTVs, a set-top box and home router, phone cases, and portable chargers, as well as a $16 white plush toy bunny – Mitoo, the company mascot, who wears a red-starred Chinese army hat.
The technology establishment’s biggest threat comes from the east.
I do not read the news the same way. We provided the east with facility plants, and they are not dumber than we are (they’re asians after all) so it was pretty obvious that sooner or later…
Kochise
How does that not make it a threat to the established Western players? The “why” or “how” is irrelevant, only “what” — “what” being that they’re gaining in size, market-recognizance, technical know-how and are encroaching on the established players’ markets.
It’s a bad thing for them, but it’s most likely just a good thing for the consumers. Competition in the market rarely has hurt consumers for long.
If ever
Depends on if they can actually get these phones in stores over here in the west. I’d really like to check out phones like the OnePlus One, but I’m not aware of anywhere I can physically put my hands on one. And I actually follow this stuff… your average tech tard won’t have a clue that these phones even exist.
Within a decade China will regain it’s normal status as the world’s greatest economic and technological power. It held this position from 4000BCE to about 1840.
Expect a lot of Westerners to be driving a Chery car, watching a Hisense TV and washing clothes in a Haier washing machine by 2020.
Make that 1000BC til 1500AD and it might be more accurate. China regressed by policy long before Europe was a player in that area of the world (much like the muslim world did in century later), and were already a third-world country by 1800s.
Hum… maybe I am wrong on this, myself and the people that really know about history.. Portugal was AFAIK the first and the last Global Empire… man educate yourself before saying rubbish. The fact that China is growing as they are now, it proves one thing and one thing only; they did a good on copying/stealing trade secrets and others while doing outsourcing for major western and japanese players.
Edited 2014-06-08 17:22 UTC
Last month there was an article on the German magazine Spiegel how the western companies are only now realizing the huge mistake they made by moving their whole production and knowledge to Asian countries.
Their problem is that they cannot remove the said knowledge.
Years ago a colleague told me that China will sell products at a massive loss for many years so that everyone else loses their own manufacturing capability. Then the Chinese will steadily raise prices because they have no competition.
unclefester,
I think this is something many of us have known for a long time, yet the corporate executives in charge can’t help themselves. When they offshore thousands of jobs at lower costs, they can give themselves a huge bonus from the cost differentials caused by offshoring. It’s the obvious thing to do in their positions, and when the international power struggle repercussions finally take place, the executives are already sitting on top of a fortune. It seems the people who loose out are invariably the middle class working families.
Not invariably – middle class working families in China do benefit, I suppose…
Well, European companies are already producing products in Europe again instead of producing in China because China is too expensive for products sold in Europe.
China had a year over year wages growth of over 10%.
And oil prices are high thus transport is expensive.
Similar things have happened in the US too.
Not a very, very large scale, but still.
Why do think cloths are made in Bangladesh instead of China now ?
As someone that has spent significant time in south east asia there are some points which make me wonder about how big the “Threat” really is. My personal opinion is that there are some very big cultural divides which are yet to be acknowledged by many Chinese manufactures. As an example we use custom built chinese servers for the company that I work with right now. they are _very_ high density and work out to be about 40% cheaper than the biggest discounts that the tier1/2 vendors will offer. Overall reliability is very good (as good as Dell/IBM/HP which we also have in older DC’s). However the overall vendor relationship management and end user experience is horrid. All of the boards are shipped with dmidecode showing the same serial number, model number etc. Their attitude is that it’s a throw away server and we should upgrade to a newer version to get a bios fix. Which is fine except a constantly moving hardware platform leads to other problems.. The same problems are seen on many of the chinese android handsets.. still being sold on Gingerbread?.. WTF.. Chinese TV’s that have such buggy “smart tv” that it is practically unusable after a year when the API’s change at the remote ends.. or there is a security hole in your TV and no fix ever gets released..
You can buy cheap.. and get cheap crap.. or you can buy cheap and get a good vendor. More often than not you buy cheap, get cheap in China and from what It seems it’s cultural. I am hoping that something changes with some of the newer vendors (oppo/xiomi etc) that are hitting the streets.. but we will only know in 2-3 years time.
The Samsung Galaxy Ace (released January 2011) is still being sold new in Australia with Froyo (2.2).
Edited 2014-06-07 09:00 UTC
I have seen a lot of the same thing in the “generic” products, but the thing that sets Xiaomi apart is that they actually make a really great, user-friendly Android distribution and update it regularly. This is one company whose brand name is somewhat akin to Apple in standing for good user experience. So I think they have a very decent shot at making a mark in the rest of the world.
Also as for the cultural aspect, even though there is a glut of cheap tech manufacturers there that doesn’t mean that they’re all embraced by the general population as widely as you might think. Just like elsewhere people do value quality and also brand-name cachet, which is why Apple, Samsung and Lenovo are so successful there (although Lenovo in particular is willing to sell outdated phones and just coast on its brand name). I went to a tech market in Beijing wanting to buy a budget tablet and the woman selling it to me asked me why I would want to buy a Chinese tablet instead of an Apple or similar. I bought it anyway because it was cheap, and as it turned out, it had buggy Wi-fi drivers that made it near-unusable and was incompatible with a lot of Android apps, so she was right.
Edited 2014-06-08 06:52 UTC
“The technology establishment’s biggest threat comes from the east.” what a ridiculous statement. The technology establishment are companies like Samsung that are Eastern. The east is not a threat, it has been the reality for decades.
Hardware comes from the East. Software comes from the West