Posts Tagged ‘xiaomi’

Xiaomi Looks to Conquer the IoT Market

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in IoT

Seven years since the launch of Xiaomi’s first smartphone in August 2011, the Chinese electronics and software company headquartered in Beijing is now expected to become the biggest public listing the world has ever seen, with a valuation of at least $50 billion in IPO. Xiaomi is among the top five brands in China—alongside Huawei, Apple, Vivo, and Oppo—and it’s also the second largest smartphone seller in the subcontinent, after Samsung. Its market share in India, which has recently overtaken the United States to become the world’s second-largest smartphone market in the world after China, has grown by over 290 percentbetween Q3 2016 and Q3 2017. According to market researcher IDC, the surge can be attributed to Xiaomi’s brick-and-mortar expansion as well as its partnerships with major retailers.

From Smartphones to Smart Gadgets

But Xiaomi’s huge success cannot be attributed solely to its geographic expansion. “They’re firing on a lot of cylinders,” said seed investor Hans Tung of GGV Capital. “The word of mouth effect that users have and become fans of their product are across the board not just on smartphones, but also on TVs, on a lot of gadgets for home.” In fact, IDC’s latest estimates for the wearables market in the third quarter of 2017 speak clearly: Xiaomi and Fitbit tied for the first place, both with a market share of 13.7 percent, while Apple’s market share was only 10.3 percent and Huawei’s 6 percent. Apart from wearable devices, Xiaomi’s ecosystem of IoT gadgets includes the Mi Robot Vacuum Cleaner, Mi Smart Speaker, Ninebot Mini, Mi LED Desk Lamp, Mi Air Purifier, Mi Water Purifier, Mi Drone, and many others. Most of Xiaomi’s smart gadgets are manufactured under its MIJIA crowdfunding platform, which has become a treasure trove of new products and innovation. Apart from a few notable exceptions, Xiaomi typically sells its gadgets only in China, although they are readily available via third-party retailers on AliExpress and several other websites. Xiaomi products have become so popular and successful around the world that Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun revealed on Christmas day 2017 that “Xiaomi’s IoT platform has over 85 million units of IoT devices, 800 smart devices, and 400 partners,” making it the world’s largest IoT platform for smart hardware.

Xiaomi IoT Devices Are About to Get Smarter

To cement its position on the Chinese market, Xiaomi has recently announced a partnership with Baidu, a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products, often described as China’s answer to Google. “Exact details of the tie-up are not being disclosed right now, but the two firms said will immediately explore opportunities in voice recognition, deep learning, and computer vision, in addition to more work with DuerOS,” reported TechCrunch. DuerOS is Baidu’s operating system, and its purpose is to assist enterprise developers in deploying their artificial intelligence solutions. According to Baidu, DuerOS can turn any product with a microphone and speaker into a smart device with world-class AI speech and image recognition technology. Xiaomi is also planning to launch 80 IoT products in South Korea, which is why it has partnered with Naver, the biggest search company in South Korea and parent company of Japan-based chat app firm Line. Xiaomi wants to include Naver’s AI platform Clova in its IoT devices and strengthen its position on the South Korean market.

Conclusion

It is estimated that the number of Internet-connected devices will reach 21 billion by 2020. According to Statista, the global Internet of Things market is projected to grow from $2.99 trillion in 2014 to $8.9 trillion in 2020, attaining a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 19.92 percent. Xiaomi naturally wants to capture the lion’s share of the market, and the company wants to accomplish it by bringing its products to more markets around the world and by establishing strategic partnerships with other tech companies to innovate at a pace very few companies can compete with.

Xiaomi as an Example of a Successful Post-Mobile Company

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development, Technology trends

Xiaomi has seen an astonishing level of success, since the company was founded in 2010 by serial entrepreneur Lei Jun, who was named Businessman of the Year by Forbes in 2011. The company is now the third biggest smartphone manufacturer and has 16.4% share of the Chinese smartphone market.

But this $45 billion company led by a man who happily admits that being greatly influenced by Steve Jobs doesn’t want to be regarded as a smartphone business. Xiaomi insists that they are an internet company – a new kind of company that deals primarily with rapid innovation, community building, and lifestyle.

They see that in our post-mobile, interconnected world, tech companies have become much more than providers of useful gadgets. Our entire work and personal lives revolve around tightly integrated ecosystems developed by companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and, of course, Xiaomi.

But to understand how Xiaomi got there and where the company is going, we have to understand how they managed to sell over 70m smartphones in 2015 alone.

High-End Products Without High-End Prices

Xiaomi is often compared with Samsung and Apple, even though the company targets a substantially different market. Their bread and butter are devices with high-end specifications and affordable prices. Such products appeal mainly to tech-savvy people and members of the younger generation who don’t have enough disposable income to afford often obscenely expensive flagship models from premium smartphone manufacturers.

In India alone, there are more than 700 million consumers under the age of thirty. When Xiaomi’s devices go on sale in this market, the company often sells their entire stock in just a few seconds. For example, the entire first batch of Mi 4 smartphones in exactly 37 seconds, according to GSMArena.

A flagship device from, let’s say, Samsung is going to cost you around $600, but a device with similar or even better specifications from Xiaomi sells for just $400. And if you lower your expectations just a little bit and look at Xiaomi’s mid-range smartphones, then you are suddenly dealing with prices and value unrivaled by any established mobile manufacturer.

The younger market that Xiaomi targets is also a lot more passionate and vocal about their gadgets. There’s no need for Xiaomi to spend large sums of money on advertising – their own fans will spread the word out.

Lifestyle Company

In an interview for Wired, Lei Jun said, “Think of Xiaomi as a company that is bringing innovation to everyone. We put an emphasis on high-quality products that help to create a connected lifestyle for everyone as we move into a new era of technological innovation. This doesn’t only mean smartphones, tablets, TVs, routers — we invest in startups that form what we call an ecosystem. They make products that are sold on Mi.com, ranging from power banks to wearables to air and water purifiers, so we have hundreds of products that come together to create a lifestyle.”

This “lifestyle approach” could be the key to Xiaomi’s total dominance in the second part of this decade. As their core audience gets older, they are going to settle and shift their collective gaze from smartphones, tablets, and laptops to refrigerators, microwave ovens, water and air purifiers, air conditioners, smart light bulbs, smart weighing scales, and all those other products that Xiaomi is investing their time, money, and effort into.

In this new environment, a smartphone is going to be a sort of central hub that brings everything together. Similarly, a Mi account is going to be a form of personal identification that unlocks not just an online cloud storage – but the entire world around us.