“What a difference two years makes. In late 2014, the financial media became obsessed with a small smartphone company called Xiaomi,” Bob Ciura writes for Seeking Alpha. “The company was founded in 2010 and was growing rapidly. By early 2015, the hype turned into full-blown mania. Analysts fell in love with the Xiaomi story. Xiaomi was seen as a real threat to Apple and was being lauded as the ‘Apple of China.'”
“Fast forward and hardly anyone ever talks about Xiaomi anymore. It virtually disappeared from the financial media, and only recently resurfaced, albeit for all the wrong reasons,” Ciura writes. “A recent article in International Business Times suggests Xiaomi’s valuation has plunged to less than $4 billion in the private markets.”
“The lesson we can glean from the Xiaomi case is that Apple’s brand is too strong to be undone by low-cost competition, even in international markets where Apple’s brand equity is not as high as it is in the United States,” Ciura writes. “Just as cheap competition from Xiaomi and others did not stop Apple in China, moving forward, Apple won’t be stopped in India either… Apple won out because of its premium brand, high-quality devices and the benefits of its ecosystem. Cheap competition simply can’t fully replicate the Apple experience.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Xiaomi makes Samsung look like original thinkers. Hugo Barra, who used to be in charge of Google’s Android division, is a Xiaomi VP. Plus, the knockoff outfit is led by an even more despicable slime bucket than Samsung:
“[Steve] Jobs will die someday, so there are still opportunities for us. The meaning of our existence is just waiting for him to kick the bucket.” – Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun, August 30, 2011
The “Apple of China?” More like The BlackBerry of China.
Xiaomi can’t FOAD fast enough.
SEE ALSO:
Where it all went wrong for China’s Apple iPhone-knockoff maker Xiaomi – August 19, 2016
Xiaomi phone shipments slump by 38 percent in China – August 17, 2016
China’s Apple iPhone-knockoff maker Xiaomi banned from peddling phones in India – June 27, 2016
Don’t be silly, Xiaomi is no threat to Apple – January 19, 2015
Xiaomi, which makes billions ripping off Apple, warns people not to buy knockoff versions of its devices – January 12, 2015
Chinese Xiaomi copycat hit with patent infringement lawsuits, sales bans – December 23, 2014
China’s Xiaomi made a meager $56 million profit in 2013 – December 15, 2014
Xiaomi’s MIUI 6 Android skin mimics Apple’s iOS 7 – August 18, 2014
7 things Chinese copycat Xiaomi blatantly ripped off from Apple – July 24, 2014
Xiaomi MiPad? Seriously? Apple must be absolutely furious – May 15, 2014
The Death Spiral: It’s what happens to those who steal from Apple – November 10, 2014
Apple’s iPhone can soon reap 100 percent of world’s smartphone profits – November 17, 2015
Apple’s iPhone owns 94% of smartphone industry’s profits – November 16, 2015
Apple iPhone owns over 90% of smartphone profits, so why do others even bother fighting over Apple’s scraps? – October 8, 2015
Apple’s iPhone juggernaut continues with record-breaking sales while Android peddlers fight over scraps – September 28, 2015
Apple’s iPhone owns 92% of smartphone industry’s profits – July 13, 2015
Poor man’s iPhone: Android on the decline – February 26, 2015
Study: iPhone users are smarter and richer than those who settle for Android phones – January 22, 2015
Why Android users can’t have the nicest things – January 5, 2015
iPhone users earn significantly more than those who settle for Android phones – October 8, 2014
Yet more proof that Android is for poor people – June 27, 2014
More proof that Android is for poor people – May 13, 2014
Android users poorer, shorter, unhealthier, less educated, far less charitable than Apple iPhone users – November 13, 2013
IDC data shows two thirds of Android’s 81% smartphone share are cheap junk phones – November 13, 2013
CIRP: Apple iPhone users are younger, richer, and better educated than those who settle for Samsung knockoff phones – August 19, 2013
It strikes me that these cheap knockoffs try to offer 100% of what Apple does, but there’s no way they can. They can’t compete on the hardware and they don’t control the software or have the infrastructure of apps that Apple do. Surely a more stable solution would be to not compete head on with Apple, there is surely a market out there for people who for whatever reason don’t/won’t buy an iPhone, but want a solid phone that does more than just make calls, but isn’t instantly crippled by out of date, over complicated software. It seems to me that if you try to copy an iPhone you’re just going to make the differences that much more glaring once people actually use it.
Rule 1 you get what you pay for!
Run a full page ad of these names and quotes of dorks that fell for this.
The oldest aphorism applies: Lead, Follow, or get the hell out of the way before you are run over (ei: sell out now.)
BlackBerry of China?
BlackBerry failed because they didn’t want to copy Apple.
Xiaomi is failing because they did. (But didn’t bother to copy the quality)
Nah. No comparison IMHO. Blackberry actually invented original stuff and were pioneers for a short period of time. Their problem was that they got stuck in mud of their own making and as Bo pointed out above, got run over.
Xiaomi: Just another wannabe, too lazy and uninspired to create. They were a FAIL from day one.
I am proud, very very proud to one star this comment.
Pride before fall.
You own your ignorance, as usual Birdseed. (0_o)
Actually, he provided a fairly accurate description of what happened to both companies and why.
Every year the news media finds some new company to push forward as the company that will destroy Apple’s iPhone business. I’m not sure why this is so necessary. Companies come and go. Most of those companies are not as well-established as Apple and their business models aren’t necessarily sound. It’s all about how their sudden burst of market share will somehow continue to grow in an unlimited fashion.
It’s weird how there are so many people out there are hoping for Apple to fail. Are there also Mercedes-Benz and BMW haters as well, hoping for some new car company to put those older established companies out of business? I just don’t get it. Cornering a quick burst of market share doesn’t guarantee a long-term successful business.
Quality components are expensive and yet these companies are selling smartphones at one-third the price of iPhones. How can that possibly be? They don’t have that much volume to warrant economies of scale. People are always claiming that these low-priced smartphones are better quality than what Apple is making. Is that even possible? It just doesn’t seem likely. Knockoff products are usually a compromise. They’re only meant to look identical but usually cheat on materials or construction in order to sell for a cheaper price.
Anyway, now it’s OPPO and Huawei and some other brands that are set to derail Apple’s iPhone business because supposedly they’re gobbling up huge amounts of market share. It’s guaranteed every year there will always be some company(ies) the news media joyfully swears will destroy Apple’s iPhone business. It’s just sick. There should be more than enough consumers to go around so at least a few companies can always thrive. Toyota has never put Mercedes-Benz out of business as long as they’ve been selling cars for decades.
Somehow it seems a substantial part of the value of a BMW or MB lies within the imagination of what one has, rather than the actual object.
Forgive me a long and very cruel chuckle – BWAHAHAHAHAHA!! The wishful wannabes are like shooting fish in a barrel, something the doofus analysts have yet to figure out. An entrenched leader with the largest ecosystem is hard to beat, especially tied to high quality devices. These other guys are rowing with one oar in the water while Apple sails by with a nuclear powered yacht.
Once again, the ANALysts were only looking at revenue growth and volume. NO ONE was paying attention to the fact that the company had almost ZERO profit.
Historians: Note that the story of Xiaomi is the fate of ALL businesses based on robbery, imitation and short-term thinking. Bye-bye to one and all of you.
To the creators, inventors and innovators go the profits. Leaches are never loved. 😥
Leeches, I suppose you meant. It’s not often I get an opportunity to play the spelling nazi card against the likes of you.
I count on you dahling to correct my spelling. I am not innately good at language in general but have been working at it for decades. I also count on my copy of Spell Catcher to help me with spelling. (Seeing as its developer died years ago, I don’t know what I’ll do when it no longer works in OS X/macOS). In the case of ‘leaches’, it doesn’t complain. So I had Spell Catcher look up ‘leaches’ to explain why it sees not need for correction and here’s what it told me:
1. leach
• (verb) [leached; leached; leach·ing; leach·es]
– remove (a soluble part) with a solvent
• leach (noun) [leach·es]
• leach·abil·i·ty (noun)
• leach·able (adjective)
Such is the stuff that drives me crazy about English. With my memory (as opposed to my Dad’s, whose is perfect even at age 93) I expect to run into leech versus leach again on into the future. *sigh* I but try.
When I see the word leeches, I can’t help but recall Humphrey Bogart towing the shabby tramp steamer African Queen through a marshy estuary of the Ulanga River with a rope, and Katharine Hepburn later deleeching the poor soul. Then I think about their last-gasp mission to destroy a German gunboat, and the quirky luck that allowed them to pull it off. That movie is all about the existence of human nobility, rising to meet insurmountable opposition.
Then I think about the crawling horror of the 1959 sci-fi flick The Giant Leeches, which brings me back to the tawdry reality of MDN and the execrable trolls it attracts that foul the nest of comments.
Your Dad is 93. That is a remarkable achievement. Longevity is hereditary, or so I’ve been told, so you have a chance of outliving your trollish critics, even if they are only fourteen years old!
😉 My dad taught me how to think, a great mind. He’s got a bunch of ongoing, permanent health problems. But he keeps pushing on, even making the evening dinners for he and Mom. He can’t see, can’t read. But audio sources keep his mind going.
I’ve never seen or had an opportunity to see “Attack of the Giant Leeches.” Deprived childhood. Oh look, there’s a MST3K rendition! It’s on my watch list. As I suspect you’ll discover in the near future, strange and maniacal sci-fi inspires much of my current writing.
As for the trolls, I don’t think of them past the brief encounters. I have no idea how old they are as I’ve met some ‘adults’ who are just as childish.
A lovely cool day here today, at last. We had a community garden brunch and solemn ceremony honoring the fallen of 9/11. It was a nice gathering of the neighbors, a way to keep in touch and share. That’s what I enjoy thinking about.
Stay great and daring! 😀
I was a tourist in New York City in the last days of August 2001.
I remember marveling at the vertiginous interior of Trump Tower, with its glass elevators and atrium, looking down on all the pitiful ant-sized people, myself fighting a compulsion to just go ahead and jump.
I remember craning my neck looking up at the World Trade Center from lower Manhattan, and declining to tour this wonder of the world for fear of the woozy sway of the skyscraper, for fear of stumbling and falling from a precarious stairway to heaven.
I remember the turbulent white-knuckle flight west out of Islip, laying over at Nashville and drinking cheap scotch at the airport waiting out a nasty storm before transferring flights and getting home to New Mexico.
The memories are indelible because of what happened soon afterward—! And I am haunted by thoughts of being aboard one of those hijacked airplanes, had I delayed my departure by just a few days. What would I, what would any of us have done in such a crisis?
We can’t know. We can only respect the heroism of those who acted decisively in the face of evil, and cross our fingers and swear that we would have done the same.
I remember the turbulent white-knuckle flight west out of Islip, laying over at Nashville and drinking cheap scotch at the airport…
Spit it out!
We can only respect the heroism of those who acted decisively in the face of evil, and cross our fingers and swear that we would have done the same.
Let us raise a glass of good old scotch to the victims and the heroes of that assault from within and without the USA! May our country survive and thrive through, beyond and despite it! 🇺🇸 🌇