Xiaomi History

Written by Phin Upham

Started in 2011, Xiaomi is an upstart in the Chinese tech scene. The company debuted four new models of Smartphones last year, and its sales are up 150% over 2012. It has managed to craft out a chunk of the market with feature-rich devices that are affordable.

Xiaomi is a hot selling brand. One of its runs sold out of its production of 100,000 Smartphones in less than two minutes. The company manages to stoke the fires with flash sales, where they take a razor thin margin of profits in place of a larger market segment. Then they make their true income downstream through the sale of software on their devices.

The founder, Lei Jun, is often compared to Steve Jobs for his presence. His business model however is very different from Apple’s. Apple makes most of its money from the sale of devices, then attempts to corner the market on media and takes a commission on software sales. Xiaomi makes almost all of its revenues through the sale of software.

Revenue from 2013 hit $5.2 billion, which is another substantial bump in profits. It’s also enough to propel the business into new territories like India and Southeast Asia, where it believes the next wave of Smartphone users is incoming.

Xiaomi has used the Android operating system on its phones, and it even poached Hugo Barra from Google. Barra was a product manager there, but his services with Xiaomi have helped the company stay unique. Lei Jun has stated that this year, Xiaomi will attempt to sell 40 million devices worldwide.