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This is bizarre to me.

Xiaomi has been making fitness trackers that are dramatically better than Fitbit's low-end for years:

  - 1/4-1/3 the price
  - 4x+ battery life
  - waterproof
  - more reliable, at least for me (my Flex required 2 replacements in 6 months)

I've been amazed that Fitbit has been able to succeed despite this. I assume people really like the social aspects of the software, which Xiaomi doesn't really do.

If Fitbit had to steal secrets to produce such an inferior product, how the heck did Xiaomi do this? Did they kidnap people from Jawbone (or someone else) and enslave them?

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I guess comparatively few people know of Xiaomi's fitness trackers. I didn't until reading this comment.

There's also a lot of fear of Chinese-made devices.

> If Fitbit had to steal secrets to produce such an inferior product, how the heck did Xiaomi do this? Did they kidnap people from Jawbone (or someone else) and enslave them?

I am similarly curious as to any technical reasons why this would have been considered "necessary".

Possibly someone felt a development death march? Of course, it's entirely possible that Fitbit didn't need to, that this was a matter of lack of morals and some odd combination of laziness, stupidity, and hubris.

The corporate version of a guy who shoplifts a $5 widget but has a wad of cash in his pocket. Sometimes criminals are just stupid.

>I've been amazed that Fitbit has been able to succeed despite this. I assume people really like the social aspects of the software, which Xiaomi doesn't really do.

Because it is a Chinese company, and thus, it is "uncool"

I think this is another exemplary case of Chinese company with a superior product being greatly weighted down by its "Chineseness" in Western markets.

I have a Mi Band, it is great and has amazing battery life (30+ days). The main reason they are rare in the US is that they are neither marketed or sold here by Xiaomi. You have to get them via third party importers.

>Because it is a Chinese company, and thus, it is "uncool"

More like Xiaomi is a weird word to Western ears and eyes, while FitBit is intuitive to pronounce and its rhyming is pleasant to the ears.

Marketing 101: Pick a name for your product that's easy for your customers.

I think there is no shortage of Chinese brand dishing out sums in millions of USDs to all kinds of top tier marketing consultancies just to discover that "uncoolness" stigma keeps chasing them through rebrandings, regardless of how much star CMOs they hire.

As for Xiaomi, they are quite frequent on pages of trendy journals there and there with sponsored articles, yet if you ask an average reader if they even noticed it, most will say no.

They just have to come up with a better brand. Outside of China, "Xiaomi" is not an easy word.

There are innumerable examples of Japanese companies that changed their names to make them easier to market. Panasonic, for example.

More recently out of Korea, look at the rebranding of Lucky Goldstar as simply "LG." Worked wonders.

There are plenty of Chinese brands that are successful in the West. But they are always brands that are appealing to the Western ear. Vizio. Element. TCL. All better names than "Xiaomi."

I suppose that's why nobody buys Samsung phones, Haier refrigerators, Mitsubishi automobiles, etc.

> I think this is another exemplary case of Chinese company with a superior product being greatly weighted down by its "Chineseness" in Western markets.

Or this comment is an example of blaming bad marketing on racism..

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