6 ms·

China's mini Apple takes slice of smartphone pie

39 points by nikcub 14y ago

ricardobeat 14y ago
The article doesn't even show one of their phones. The mi-1 looked just like a Samsung phone, the mi-2 kind of resembles the iPhone 4. Looks like a standard knock-off business to me, what's special about them?
- happywolf 14y ago
  XiaoMi was special because it was the first one (or even the only one for a good half year) to offer a smart phone with sub-RMB2k (~US$320) price point. Samsung and Apple phones were and are still selling for RMB4K+ (~US$640). Don't underestimate the price difference: it could very well be a typical worker's whole-month salary.
happywolf 14y ago
I have followed China's handphone scene quite closely and want to chip in: XiaoMi no doubt has garnered a respectful number of fans early this year with its first generation of phone, XiaoMi 1. However, XiaoMi (the company, as well as its phones) are not as glamourous as it used to be because of two reasons: First, its lack of supply of XiaoMi 1S, and now XiaoMi 2, coupled with various hardware/software issues, has caused a lot of bad publicity. On the other hand, companies like HuaWei are showing their manufacturing and logistics prowess. Huawei's Ascend P1 is well-received ever since it is in the market. Second reason is nowadays a lot of China companies jump into phone-making business. In fact, beside the traditional phone makers like Huawei and ZTE, the top China Internet companies: Baidu, Tencent, Shengda, and Ali all have shown interest some point to jump in. However all these phones are Android-based running on ARM (usually Qualcomm). This leaves very little room for the phone makers to differentiate themselves apart. The fact a lot of phones allow users to install third-party ROMs actually worsens the effort to lock-in users. What I foresee ahead is a cut-throat price war which happened to the ShanZai (Clone) phones these smart phones replaced. History does repeat itself =)
r3m6 14y ago
Xiaomi's phones run Android, so what sets them apart? Just the price?
- happywolf 14y ago
  Yes, UI-customized Android. You can install the XiaoMi ROM on other Android phones as well
- yareally 14y ago
  They run a version of Android called Miui (http://en.miui.com/ http://en.miui.com/). It's based off of AOSP (Android Open Source Project) and also some off of Cyanogenmod (http://www.cyanogenmod.org/ http://www.cyanogenmod.org/), another custom ROM for those unfamiliar. However, it's diverged to have little in common with either AOSP or Cyanogenmod in the past few years. They more or less try mimic an iphone-like experience on Android, only with more customization and features. I'm not a fan of it really due to the fact it's closed source and I won't touch any Android ROM that doesn't post its source. Quite a number of people like it, but there's many other options out there.
  - acchow 14y ago
    Presumably the parts of AOSP they modify are open sourced? Or do Chinese companies ignore licenses?
    - yareally 14y ago
      They ignore them, sadly. They did a PR stunt claiming to be open source a while ago, but all they did was release some patches to apply Miui to AOSP if one wanted to do so, but they infrequently update it as Miui updates itself every week (https://github.com/MiCode https://github.com/MiCode). They don't have to really give any of that out since it's all Apache Licensed. However the ironic part is the areas of the Android source they must disclose under GPL, they avoid sharing. They don't release the kernel for any of their devices as well and that's a huge GPL violation. I would presume if they did release it for their own phones, it would be on here with the rest of their stuff. The rest of their official sites (there's a lot of non-affiliated English and other language sites that label themselves as Miui) are in Mandarin and much harder to navigate if you're an English speaker. Doing a google search for Xiaomi MI2 kernel source, turns up nothing positive about their kernel or about them and GPL though.
aresant 14y ago
I found the photo of the founder clad in blue jeans and a black polo shirt in front of a large, clean presentation to be arresting. It instantly evoked the negatives that I read again and again about Chinese companies: brazen "pirating" of innovative products (in this case, Jobs himself!) with slight bastardizations (polo instead of turtleneck). It took me a minute to recover and read the rest of the article and the comments, which suggest there is actual innovation happening, likely on the supply side, that lets Xiamoi sell at a disruptive price point.
- Zariel 14y ago
  I really hope this is sarcastic post that you can be offended by a person wearing clothes, I could chose to dress like Al Capone, would that invoke terrors of Mafia like memories?
  - bdcravens 14y ago
    Pretty sure Capone dressed like many others and didn't have a unique style. Wearing black shirt + jeans everyday (or perhaps as a public persona) is obviously intentional. I'd say those are like a football coach always wearing a fedora (Tom Landry) or a rapper always wearing a giant clock around their neck (Flava Flav) to name a couple of examples. That said, I really don't care if they copy Jobs. I can think of several entrepreneurs I'd love to copy in an attempt to channel whatever insights they might have had.
- bentlegen 14y ago
  TIL wearing a black shirt and blue jeans is "copying" Steve Jobs. By that measure you should probably be angry at this guy: http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/files/2009/08/89460317.jpg http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/files/2009/08/89460317.jp...
  - ceol 14y ago
    > TIL wearing a black shirt and blue jeans is "copying" Steve Jobs. When you're the founder of a major smartphone company doing a presentation of your tech in a black shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes, yeah, you're copying Steve Jobs. For reference: http://www.buzzom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/steve-jobs-vs-lei-jun.jpg http://www.buzzom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/steve-jobs-... It's painfully obvious that's the look he's going for.
so898 14y ago
You know why this shit phone sold well? Because the advertisements of this shit are almost everywhere in China. Chinese now get one idea: if I want to buy a smart phone, there are only two choice, Xiaomi or iPhone. However, most people get another idea after they use Xiaomi for a time: Xiaomi is just a shit. This company, really spends all of their money on their advertisement. That really makes their phones become shit.
- happywolf 14y ago
  I really doubt you ever used a XiaoMi phone, or been in China. First of all, you mentioned you saw XiaoMi 'everywhere in China'. Where did you see XiaoMi advertisements? Here in Shanghai, I do see Samsung and even ZTE ads very often and I still fail to remember I had ever come across of any XiaoMi ads in Puxi. If they are 'everywhere', the Metro must be covered somehow, right? Sorry, no luck, I didn't see any. XiaoMi does do marketing, but mainly on Weibo, which is the China version of Twitter. Second, XiaoMi has fallen so far in supplying enough phones that people have been waiting for weeks (A lot of people this is XiaoMi's starvation campaign, well, it makes sense a few months ago, but not likely now since competition has been so fierce). So, up until now, if you wanna buy a smart phone in China, XiaoMi is usually not available at the counter, and you may be amazed to know Samsung has really invested in marketing and channel development in Greater China these days ;)
- jdthomas 14y ago
  "Xiaomi has already sold 300,000 of its latest phone model, launched in October." It doesn't even look like the phone sold well; it sold out, but not well. Numbers like that will not be concerning to Apple, HTC, Samsung, et. al.
anovikov 14y ago
Nice, these copycats now took the next step: instead of copying Steve's stuff, they copied Steve himself. Kinda cool.
- andybak 14y ago
  Pierre Menard, the author of Don Quixote...

39 points by nikcub 14y ago

The article doesn't even show one of their phones. The mi-1 looked just like a Samsung phone, the mi-2 kind of resembles the iPhone 4. Looks like a standard knock-off business to me, what's special about them?

happywolf 14y ago
XiaoMi was special because it was the first one (or even the only one for a good half year) to offer a smart phone with sub-RMB2k (~US$320) price point. Samsung and Apple phones were and are still selling for RMB4K+ (~US$640). Don't underestimate the price difference: it could very well be a typical worker's whole-month salary.

happywolf 14y ago

I have followed China's handphone scene quite closely and want to chip in: XiaoMi no doubt has garnered a respectful number of fans early this year with its first generation of phone, XiaoMi 1. However, XiaoMi (the company, as well as its phones) are not as glamourous as it used to be because of two reasons: First, its lack of supply of XiaoMi 1S, and now XiaoMi 2, coupled with various hardware/software issues, has caused a lot of bad publicity. On the other hand, companies like HuaWei are showing their manufacturing and logistics prowess. Huawei's Ascend P1 is well-received ever since it is in the market. Second reason is nowadays a lot of China companies jump into phone-making business. In fact, beside the traditional phone makers like Huawei and ZTE, the top China Internet companies: Baidu, Tencent, Shengda, and Ali all have shown interest some point to jump in. However all these phones are Android-based running on ARM (usually Qualcomm). This leaves very little room for the phone makers to differentiate themselves apart. The fact a lot of phones allow users to install third-party ROMs actually worsens the effort to lock-in users. What I foresee ahead is a cut-throat price war which happened to the ShanZai (Clone) phones these smart phones replaced. History does repeat itself =)

r3m6 14y ago

Xiaomi's phones run Android, so what sets them apart? Just the price?

happywolf 14y ago
Yes, UI-customized Android. You can install the XiaoMi ROM on other Android phones as well
yareally 14y ago
They run a version of Android called Miui (http://en.miui.com/ http://en.miui.com/). It's based off of AOSP (Android Open Source Project) and also some off of Cyanogenmod (http://www.cyanogenmod.org/ http://www.cyanogenmod.org/), another custom ROM for those unfamiliar. However, it's diverged to have little in common with either AOSP or Cyanogenmod in the past few years. They more or less try mimic an iphone-like experience on Android, only with more customization and features. I'm not a fan of it really due to the fact it's closed source and I won't touch any Android ROM that doesn't post its source. Quite a number of people like it, but there's many other options out there.
- acchow 14y ago
  Presumably the parts of AOSP they modify are open sourced? Or do Chinese companies ignore licenses?
  - yareally 14y ago
    They ignore them, sadly. They did a PR stunt claiming to be open source a while ago, but all they did was release some patches to apply Miui to AOSP if one wanted to do so, but they infrequently update it as Miui updates itself every week (https://github.com/MiCode https://github.com/MiCode). They don't have to really give any of that out since it's all Apache Licensed. However the ironic part is the areas of the Android source they must disclose under GPL, they avoid sharing. They don't release the kernel for any of their devices as well and that's a huge GPL violation. I would presume if they did release it for their own phones, it would be on here with the rest of their stuff. The rest of their official sites (there's a lot of non-affiliated English and other language sites that label themselves as Miui) are in Mandarin and much harder to navigate if you're an English speaker. Doing a google search for Xiaomi MI2 kernel source, turns up nothing positive about their kernel or about them and GPL though.

aresant 14y ago

I found the photo of the founder clad in blue jeans and a black polo shirt in front of a large, clean presentation to be arresting. It instantly evoked the negatives that I read again and again about Chinese companies: brazen "pirating" of innovative products (in this case, Jobs himself!) with slight bastardizations (polo instead of turtleneck). It took me a minute to recover and read the rest of the article and the comments, which suggest there is actual innovation happening, likely on the supply side, that lets Xiamoi sell at a disruptive price point.

Zariel 14y ago
I really hope this is sarcastic post that you can be offended by a person wearing clothes, I could chose to dress like Al Capone, would that invoke terrors of Mafia like memories?
- bdcravens 14y ago
  Pretty sure Capone dressed like many others and didn't have a unique style. Wearing black shirt + jeans everyday (or perhaps as a public persona) is obviously intentional. I'd say those are like a football coach always wearing a fedora (Tom Landry) or a rapper always wearing a giant clock around their neck (Flava Flav) to name a couple of examples. That said, I really don't care if they copy Jobs. I can think of several entrepreneurs I'd love to copy in an attempt to channel whatever insights they might have had.
bentlegen 14y ago
TIL wearing a black shirt and blue jeans is "copying" Steve Jobs. By that measure you should probably be angry at this guy: http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/files/2009/08/89460317.jpg http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/files/2009/08/89460317.jp...
- ceol 14y ago
  > TIL wearing a black shirt and blue jeans is "copying" Steve Jobs. When you're the founder of a major smartphone company doing a presentation of your tech in a black shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes, yeah, you're copying Steve Jobs. For reference: http://www.buzzom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/steve-jobs-vs-lei-jun.jpg http://www.buzzom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/steve-jobs-... It's painfully obvious that's the look he's going for.

so898 14y ago

You know why this shit phone sold well? Because the advertisements of this shit are almost everywhere in China. Chinese now get one idea: if I want to buy a smart phone, there are only two choice, Xiaomi or iPhone. However, most people get another idea after they use Xiaomi for a time: Xiaomi is just a shit. This company, really spends all of their money on their advertisement. That really makes their phones become shit.

happywolf 14y ago
I really doubt you ever used a XiaoMi phone, or been in China. First of all, you mentioned you saw XiaoMi 'everywhere in China'. Where did you see XiaoMi advertisements? Here in Shanghai, I do see Samsung and even ZTE ads very often and I still fail to remember I had ever come across of any XiaoMi ads in Puxi. If they are 'everywhere', the Metro must be covered somehow, right? Sorry, no luck, I didn't see any. XiaoMi does do marketing, but mainly on Weibo, which is the China version of Twitter. Second, XiaoMi has fallen so far in supplying enough phones that people have been waiting for weeks (A lot of people this is XiaoMi's starvation campaign, well, it makes sense a few months ago, but not likely now since competition has been so fierce). So, up until now, if you wanna buy a smart phone in China, XiaoMi is usually not available at the counter, and you may be amazed to know Samsung has really invested in marketing and channel development in Greater China these days ;)
jdthomas 14y ago
"Xiaomi has already sold 300,000 of its latest phone model, launched in October." It doesn't even look like the phone sold well; it sold out, but not well. Numbers like that will not be concerning to Apple, HTC, Samsung, et. al.

anovikov 14y ago

Nice, these copycats now took the next step: instead of copying Steve's stuff, they copied Steve himself. Kinda cool.

andybak 14y ago
Pierre Menard, the author of Don Quixote...