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Comment by sjg007 | Hacker News Reader

Amazon is basically at this point a diversified conglomerate. For almost every tech startup, there is an Amazon solution. That and online retail is growing. Their biggest consumer facing risk is the 3rd party market, knockoffs and basically cheap Chinese crap. We are basically back to brand name vs generics... at least for some electronics. Also anything you can buy at Walmart, Target and Amazon is usually cheaper or the same price at Amazon.

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,,cheap Chinese crap''

Why do you need to say crap?

I have a Xiaomi robot vacuum cleaner that was cheap and it's amazing at the same time (much better than other US robot vacuums that I tried before).

I bought my girlfriend a Xiaomi Mi 9T mobile phone, it's working great as well (after hiding the Mi software crap, but I had to do the same on my expensive Samsung 9S Plus as well)

Right? Roborock S5 is a solid device. And most devices (Walmart and Target and everywhere else) are also manufactured in China.

They're saying crap because they're not referring to a Xiaomi phone or vacuum cleaner. They're referring to the 'Xiaonni Vacuum 3800' that's $5 in parts, sold for $500, because people confuse it with the one you're talking about. It's like the issue with Hoverboards a couple years back. The race to the bottom caused battery safety issues, and everyone lost trust in all of them because of a few cheaper ones with crappy charging circuits.

I guess this was true before Xiaomi built a brand by buying up mostly good Chinese companies. Having a few unified brands make a lot of sense for building trust between Chinese companies and people in the world.

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