H Xiaomi is the king of innovation and Value For Money devices, while at the same time shaping some of the most significant changes we've seen in the Android space
Back to 2011, the landscape with the Android Smartphonee was far from ideal for those looking for a budget device. Some of the most popular phones around at the time include the HTC Wildfire, the Samsung galaxy mini and ZTE Blade.
The elusive dream for all of us at the time was to find some device that had great specs at an affordable price, and it took the arrival of Xiaomi to upgrade the value of smartphones as we knew them back then.
Now, 11 years later, the impact that Xiaomi's philosophy has had on the entire smartphone industry is now recognizable and undeniable by all.
Understanding the scope of Xiaomi's contribution to the smartphone space requires one to do a little historical review, to understand how big this company's contribution is to the entire Smartphone industry.
It was the 2011 when Xiaomi introduced its first phone – the legendary Xiaomi Mi 1. At that time in the field of Smartphones the Nokia was still the dominant player with the Symbian as her operating system of choice. THE Samsung had already become the largest manufacturer Android smartphone to legendary HTC to take her first steps. But none of these companies offered really exciting and affordable smartphones.
The modernization of the hardware (Hardware)
The smartphone industry today, by and large, revolves around the concept of value. Sure there are extreme prices on some devices, such as the latest foldables that are judged mainly, but not exclusively, on the ingenuity and innovation they offer, but the price they command is completely prohibitive for many of us to acquire.
So it all started with Xiaomi Mi 1, which was released with the powerful chipset Snapdragon S3, 1 GB RAM and high resolution screen. While its main competitor at the time was its flagship Samsung – the Galaxy S2, which was released with similar specifications, butand the Mi 1 was hundreds of dollars cheaper.
Xiaomi pioneered the concept of premium hardware at low prices.
Until 2014, Xiaomi was ready to finally enter the international markets as well. With the launch of the legendary Mi 3, Xiaomi had perfected the model of selling its phones with very small profit margins, and flash sales through online stores became the norm for Xiaomi.
These two strategies followed by Xiaomi helped reduce dealer profit margins and the cost of holding large inventories, resulting in the company being able to sell 18,7 million units of Mi 3 within the year, with stocks of the device released globally running out within minutes.
It didn't take long for Xiaomi to make inroads in India as well, and by 2017, Xiaomi managed to surpass its sales for the first time Samsung, taking from it the crown as the most popular brand in India. Today, Xiaomi owns the 21% of the smartphone market in India, maintaining the number one position, while in the global market, Xiaomi ranks third comfortably, just following her Samsung and Apple.
Xiaomi's creation of its new brands Redmi and Poco aimed mainly at lovers of devices that have good performance at the lowest possible price, further helped the company's growth in international markets.
Since then, Xiaomi has significantly changed its model and started focusing itself on devices with premium character and specifications, and through its subsidiaries such as Redmi and the POCO, managed to level all markets globally, with a multitude of devices that belong mainly to the middle price category, but with specifications that would envy many of the flagships of other manufacturers.
Limiting them its profit margins at just 5% after taxes from 2018, Xiaomi further ensured its continued competitiveness, and while the road to profitability was paved with more smartphones, Xiaomi had an additional ace up its sleeve.
The ecosystem strategy
Xiaomi has made a strong entry into the ecosystem space, which today consists of hundreds of partner companies and sells everything from smart bulbs and robot vacuums to toothbrushes, TVs and even shoes. But the ecosystem's push was propelled perfectly, through a big weapon at its disposal in the Android operating system space – the all-knowing MIUI.
You see, Xiaomi has been known for the very early on MIUI Skin which had created, long before it even manufactured its first Smartphone. Xiaomi did not start its career as a hardware manufacturer, but had focused on software (MIUI). It enabled for the first time all Smartphones that were in circulation at the time (2011) from other companies, to install its own MIUI Skin, which offered those who wanted a lot of customization with themes, wallpapers, ringtones, music streaming and more, and MIUI even today is still probably the most important factor revenue for Xiaomi. In fact, the company calls itself internet company and not a hardware company.
Such was Xiaomi's foresight in this area that it took several years for Apple to enter the same space of the ecosystem created by Xiaomi, through services such as Apple TV and Apple Music. Today, various software and subscription services make up a healthy chunk of Apple's revenue, but in 2013, Apple was basically a hardware company, not a services company.
Later other companies also followed the same framework of software ecosystem, but few of them managed to copy the success that Xiaomi has in this field.
When Xiaomi went public in 2018, just eight years after the company was founded, Xiaomi was valued at approx. 50 billions of dollars, making it the third most valuable smartphone maker in the world. Xiaomi's game of building a software ecosystem on top of hardware has paid many dividends for the company, and it has become world-renowned for what the ecosystem it built from scratch has to offer in just a few years.
Xiaomi's rampant growth through its software (MIUI) unfortunately came with a dark side. In its early years of development, the brand became notorious for pushing ads throughout its software.
From system apps to the lock screen, Xiaomi's success in selling devices that were loaded with ads in their software opened the door for other software companies to be able to replicate Xiaomi's model. Today, even Samsung devices are not completely ad-free.
Xiaomi may now have minimized ads on its devices, but unfortunately it did permanent damage to the perception of Android as a safe operating system.
Today, Xiaomi has pulled back from embedding ads in the phones it sells in the global market, however, the stigma of ad-laden software has stuck in the minds of many when its name is mentioned. In fact, it could also be said that the way Xiaomi managed the ads in its MIUI Skin, did permanent damage to the perception many have of Android in general. Even today, many of the cheap Android Smartphones released by various manufacturers are criticized for this practice of advertisements, although it is not as intense as it used to be.
The Xiaomi of 2022 is noticeably different from the company it founded Lei Jun in 2010, but it hasn't strayed too far from its core philosophy. MIUI still underpins every phone Xiaomi releases today, and the company's ambitions to create a unified ecosystem have never been more successful. Certainly, the sheer amount of competition Xiaomi faces from other companies such as Realme and her entire family BBK, means that the philosophy it has followed over the years has been copied by many other manufacturers and companies, and it is impossible to deny the legacy the company has left as the king of performance for the price of all its devices.
Whether you agree with everything Xiaomi has done over the years or not, it's impossible to deny that the company is still the king of Value For Money devices today, and Xiaomi has set many of the best value standards in the space. of Android to date, even if it also introduced some questionable practices in its admirable run over the years.
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