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You should read Thompson's article "Xiaomi's Ambition" (http://stratechery.com/2015/xiaomis-ambition/ http://stratechery.com/2015/xiaomis-ambition/ and linked f

by cwp 12y ago

You should read Thompson's article "Xiaomi's Ambition" (http://stratechery.com/2015/xiaomis-ambition/ http://stratechery.com/2015/xiaomis-ambition/ and linked from this article). Basically, he argues that Xiaomi is built around serving a market that neither Apple or Google are serving: young people that are technically savvy but don't have the funds to be early adopters. There's a whole generation of them in China that have grown up during China's boom. There aren't many of them in the US, but that's not the same thing as "outside of China." Xiaomi will probably find a lot of fans in South Asia (particularly India), South America (Brazil) and Africa (Nigeria, South Africa).

npalli 12y ago
Wasn't Xiaomi temporarily banned in India because of concerns that it is uploading data to China? This lack of confidence is going to be a roadblock if the end goal is take over the home. My understanding is that Xiaomi sells very little in India (some flash sales in tens of thousands of units). I know it is a smash hit in China. We'll just have to see.
- arihant 12y ago
  Xiaomi was banned over patent issues for like a week before they resolved it. The issue you are referring to, the Indian Air Force "warned" the use of Xiaomi devices because they tracked them uploading data to China. Xiaomi responded with an update which had one-click Mi Cloud turn off switch to stop that from happening. They were uploading meta data for their cloud services just like any other company. Xiaomi also announced a new datacentre in India to mitigate this concern. But they never got banned over this. Xiaomi sold less than 2 million devices in India in 4-ish months. But to put things in perspective, they sold 8-9 times more than Google's Android One phones, another program targeting the same market. They sold the flagship Mi3 only for a couple weeks and then continued selling lower end device. They are launching Mi4 here this month, so that number will now probably go higher.

by cwp 12y ago

npalli 12y ago

Wasn't Xiaomi temporarily banned in India because of concerns that it is uploading data to China? This lack of confidence is going to be a roadblock if the end goal is take over the home. My understanding is that Xiaomi sells very little in India (some flash sales in tens of thousands of units). I know it is a smash hit in China. We'll just have to see.

arihant 12y ago
Xiaomi was banned over patent issues for like a week before they resolved it. The issue you are referring to, the Indian Air Force "warned" the use of Xiaomi devices because they tracked them uploading data to China. Xiaomi responded with an update which had one-click Mi Cloud turn off switch to stop that from happening. They were uploading meta data for their cloud services just like any other company. Xiaomi also announced a new datacentre in India to mitigate this concern. But they never got banned over this. Xiaomi sold less than 2 million devices in India in 4-ish months. But to put things in perspective, they sold 8-9 times more than Google's Android One phones, another program targeting the same market. They sold the flagship Mi3 only for a couple weeks and then continued selling lower end device. They are launching Mi4 here this month, so that number will now probably go higher.