Xiaomi is an electronics company that is privately owned by a Chinese company. They are the third biggest distributors in the world, and are indicative of China’s thirst for a bigger share of the Smartphone market. The founder and CEO is Lei Jun, and he is the twenty-third richest person in China, which is pretty impressive considering that China is the world’s most populated country with over 1.35 billion people living there.
Looks like Xiaomi cannot keep up with their own expansion plans
Xiaomi claimed they would enter ten new markets in the year 2014, but in 2014, they only managed five. This means that any plans they had to surpass Apple or Samsung in the coming years will have to wait.
Xiaomi are shipping 200,000 Smartphones to India every week
This doesn’t mean they are doing badly, as they are selling out in India so quickly that they cannot get deliveries there fast enough to meet demand, and there are 1.2 billion people living there. Xiaomi have had to charter their flights into India in order to try to meet demand. They are currently shipping 200,000 per week, and apparently, even that is not enough.
Lei Jun says Xiaomi will hit the top in 5 to 10 years
He is not shy about admitting he wishes to knock Apple and Samsung off their top perch, and was even bold enough to claim he could do it in as few as five years, but given their stunted expansion plans, this may be more difficult than he first imagined. It may take more than ten years for the company to internationalize the way that Apple and Samsung have.
Low cost phones through not owning the factories
Many Smartphone manufacturers actually own the factories that make their phones, but Xiaomi create such low cost phones by outsourcing the manufacturing operation to other companies. Usually, the companies they outsource to are local companies, which is probably why they have not entered Brazil yet because it would cost a fortune to manufacture phones in Brazil because of import tariffs.
The 5.5-inch, 4G Redmi Note in Asia and the Middle East
This is a large screen phone that is currently a best-seller and is expected to reign supreme in the Asian market. If predictions are correct, then it is going to smash records as it sweeps across the Asian continent. The only thing stopping them is if they can produce and ship them fast enough.
Will Xiaomi beat Apple or Samsung?
Despite both companies losing some of their market share to Xiaomi, it is going to be a few years before Xiaomi is able to knock either of these companies off the top spot. The world is watching.
