Already Valued at $4B, China’s Xiaomi Has Declared War on Apple | Hacker News Reader

Already Valued at $4B, China’s Xiaomi Has Declared War on Apple

pandodaily.com

50 pointsnamzo55 comments

Their Android flavor, MIUI, is fairly popular as an alternative to Cyanogen.

Interestingly enough, MIUI is based on Cyanogen.

What is it with the “war” on everything? How about you just make a great product that people want. Easier said than done, I know, but it’s not war.

Remember, this article is from Pando, so it's not surprising that the headline is, um, a little excessive.

This may be the first company in China to be innovating instead of working on the Hiphone 6. Regardless, they will never be taken seriously because Chinese companies reputations are already destroyed.

Never? Japan and Korea have recovered from very similar reputations very nicely indeed.

Sure but Japan and Korea and completely different from China (ok, who knows, maybe there won't be ditch executions in China in 200 years).

I don't know as much about Korea, but Japan had plenty of pretty atrocious human rights violations of its own which it also recovered from.

Yes, China is different. I'm just saying, "never say never".

Last time the Japanese systematically vivisected women and children without anaesthesia, including live amputation of limbs and injection of bacteria was between 1935 and 1945. That is about 70 years ago, not 200.

Absolutely, the Japanese did some pretty heinous things. But Japan and South Korea are different in a way none of the responses have dealt with.

China is still behaving badly and a fundamental change in their government looks generations and generations away, if it is even on the horizon.

This is essential watching to understand China better. IMHO. YMMV. I changed a lot of my opinions after watching this talk.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/martin_jacques_understandin...

You've had too much TV propaganda IMHO. China's bureaucrats nowadays have way more respect for their people than South Korea's elite. No idea about Japan.

I haven't had too much "TV propaganda." Maybe you haven't spent enough time with actual Chinese people. This is just jibber jabber. I'm sure some are in the audience, do you feel respected by Chinese bureaucrats? Come on. That's not even a serious response; it's like one of those "I'm going to make a provocative point that is counter the mainstream. DOWN WITH TV NOW -- NO BIG BOX RETAIL FOREVER!!" bogus statements.

Well .. yeap, TV in 21 century is for the most stupid part of population - those incapable of any independent thinking and research. Japan and SK being close allies to NATO and China enemy number one or two makes for a natural bias in Western TV coverage. I've spend most of the last 14 years doing business in SK and China, which gives me some confidence to confront the "mainstream" TV propaganda.

Edit: just had this open in the next tab: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanholiday/2012/07/16/what-is-m...

Suggested followup: Taiwan also very different culturally from China.

I can't remember the time when Japan and Korea was like China today but you're right, there's no such thing as never. It will just be a lot more difficult for them because they have a history of building crappy products and counterfeit goods. To us they are like a felon trying to find a job. We make judgements based on their history and it will take a lot of convincing to prove themselves.

"destroyed"? My experience is the opposite. In the last decade, I've continuously had to increase my respect for China-made goods every year.

Classic mental mistake of the disrupted.

China have come from making pathetic, health-hazard goods, to now making 'good enough' products, and it won't be long before they are making Apple-quality stuff.

Also, as seen with Microsoft and Google, you don't have to make Apple-level stuff to pose competition.

They already make these products. They only don't design them. ;)

Anyway, on a sidenote... The Apple of yesterday had to prove itself everyday in order not to get killed by bigger players; today Apple has to prove itself every single day in order not to be overtaken by any player. How crazy is that?

"it won't be long before they are making Apple-quality stuff."

Wait, they actually make actual Apple stuff today. I realize these aren't China designs but when we're talking about build quality, the know how is already there although in most cases spoken for by foreign capital.

Where do you think your iPhone is made?

China has been at the forefront of quality manufacturing for quite some time now. It was only a matter of time before some of their design companies started to make proper use of them.

>> Chinese companies reputations are already destroyed.

How so? You have to be known to have a reputation that can be destroyed.

There aren't many Chinese (not to be confused with Taiwanese) brand names in the mainstream in North America. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Haier, and calling them mainstream is stretching it.

I'm sure as Chinese brands expand into the west, their reputations will be cemented more by the quality of their products than the fact they're Chinese. And given that China's already producing some pretty high quality stuff for everyone else, they don't have the same mountains to climb as the Japanese and the Koreans did.

From the article "The name, by the way, translates to “millet” in English, but it is also the combination of two Chinese words that have a powerful resonance here: rice and rifle. As any patriotic citizen will tell you, together those words mean “revolution.” "

Huh? The two characters in xiaomi (小米) are xiao3, meaning "small" and mi3 meaning "rice". In other words, millet. Rifle is qiang1.

Soundalikes are quite important in Chinese language. Perhaps 小 sounds like another character meaning "rifle". Or perhaps, as you suggest, the reporter got it slightly wrong... 小(small) often means "half", e.g. 小时= "little two-hour-period", and 米 also means "meter". So 小米 could mean "half a meter", the length of a rifle, which could've colloquial speech in revolutionary China.

小时 = one hour (or literally "small time period"). I searched through several dictionaries and couldn't find anything related to guns or revolutions that fit with xiaomi.

Yes, I noticed that too, the journalist must have misunderstood that.

Don't see any rifle association there.

With reference to a near-quote from Mao Zedong (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works...):

"We have an expression, millet plus rifles. In the case of the United States, it is planes plus the A-bomb. However, if the United States with its planes plus the A-bomb is to launch a war of aggression against China, then China with its millet plus rifles is sure to emerge the victor."

You pay for the phone, but you get the juvenile nationalist reference for free.

The phrase is "小米加步枪", which comes from a Mao Zedong speech to the 8th route army and militia when fighting the Japanese in WWII. They had no real government or supplies and had to subsist off of millet and fight with single-firing rifles to overthrow their occupiers.

It translates to "millet and rifles", just as the article said. It's pretty common in Chinese to use a part of a famous phrase to refer to its entirety. Actually, Baidu is another company name that does this.

Thanks. That's a much clearer explanation.

Wiki: " Xiaomi is a high-end smartphone, using a Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 (dual core, 1.5 GHz) as its CPU and an Adreno 220 as its GPU,[4] but its price (RMB1999/around USD310)[5] is less than half the cost of a typical dual-core CPU smartphone.[6] "

So they're selling the phone equivalant of a Nexus 7 (decent hardware that deeply undercuts the competition.)

Did I miss something ? Nexus 7 is the same price than the Kindle Fire.

The Fire is a locked down Amazon appliance with a proprietary app store and all manner of restrictions running on a heavily modified version of Android. The Nexus is a proper tablet with access to all of Google's tablet services including Google's unfiltered app store. Sure, you can put some ROM on it, but Joe and Jane Public aren't.

I don't think Joe and Jane Public are going to know the difference between a filtered and unfiltered app store or what an unmodified Android version means.

Nope they aren't. But for damn sure they know the difference between "Amazon" and "Google".

One of them has an ongoing relationship with the customer and probably a credit card on file.

The other is Google.

Yes and the Kindle Fire is substantially lower spec'd and is often claimed to sell at a loss while the Nexus 7 has weaker distribution but is claimed to sell at cost. Exercise left to the reader.

I declare war on...dill pickles. Now come buy my sweet pickles. yawn

Also, a nit: it is sad to see a journalist refer to the "lead" of his/her story.

I don't like the article overall, but don't have a problem with the internal reference. Way too often, titles are written to be provacative and the content of the story is much more mundane, or doesn't even support it. I don't mind an instance where an author elaborates on their lead in an attempt to explain it.

I believe SoftwareMaven was referring to the literal "lead" spelling that the writer used (as the majority of actual journalists use the "lede" spelling), not to the reference.

I was unfamiliar with this. I googled it, and found this discussion: http://howardowens.com/2011/09/18/lede-vs-lead/

I realize it was a sarcastic remark, but pickles can actually be interesting. Here's a pretty fun story http://cambridgebrewing.com/blog/comments/i-have-a-pickle-me...

I'm in China and nobody gives a shit about home-grown Chinese brands. I mentioned to a friend I wanted to check out a Meizu MX and her boyfriend asked "what's that?" To which she replied "Oh, just a shanzai iPhone".

The first meizu store I went to, there was a guy selling rugs inside.

The second meizu store had two very bored looking sales assistants and in the half hour that I poked around and pestered these guys nobody else came in.

The technology malls are filled with Apple, HTC, Samsung and even Sony phones. Zero obvious brand presence for Chinese phones.

In the future this will change, I'm not saying that the Chinese phone industry won't be a powerhouse, but for now temper your excitement.

"Xiaomi appears to have hit a sweet spot in the market, selling high-spec devices that compete with the iPhone on quality, but undercut it substantially in price" This strategy follows Christensen's disruptive innovation to the letter. Interesting to see Apple on the brink of disruption in a consumer category it principally defined.

"This strategy follows Christensen's disruptive innovation to the letter. Interesting to see Apple on the brink of disruption in a consumer category it principally defined."

Sorry I'm not seeing it. Who's to say Xiaomi doesn't end up eating Samsung's lunch instead of Apple?

I mean people in the market for "a cheaper iphone" or "a more open iphone" traditionally that's where Samsung and company have been making money right?

> This strategy follows Christensen's disruptive innovation to the letter.

Really?

They offered a different package of attributes valued only in emerging markets remote from, and unimportant to, the mainstream.[1]

So basically it's the same exact device but cheaper. That doesn't represent "different package of attributes". Sorry, but I'd barely call that "to the letter".

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation#The_theor...

If there's any company I won't be sad to see hit with an Apple lawsuit, it's Xiaomi. The MIUI ROM is great, but it copies the iPhone Look&Feel to an absurd degree. I get that MIUI is all about "usability" and "beauty", but WinPhone has proven usability and beauty can be achieved without blatantly copying Apple.

Would anyone happen to know if the bootloader is unlocked on these?

EDIT: For what it's worth, here's a review that Engadget did of the phone back in September 2011: http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/27/xiaomi-phone-review/

Great to see them doing well. I first heard about the company while exploring different Android ROMs, and the MIUI rom by XiaoMi was the best I've seen overall in terms of stability and usability which cyanogen lacked. Their native apps felt really intuitive to use and it adds a lot of functionality that you normally get from apps and more. e.g. a toggle to turn things on and off in the notification area is an app in the app store, but the quality just isn't good enough and I hate going through a bunch of crappy quality widget apps just to find one that I might like. Cyanogen has most of the features that xiami offers and more, but they're not as well designed nor as stable.

Wow the Xiaomi keynote looks a lot like Steve Jobs keynotes with significantly less production quality: http://player.youku.com/player.php/sid/XMjk1MzcxNTY4/v.swf

there's a guy on stage with a projector in the background. It looks like a million other presentations.

Apple invented the universe and everything in it.

This is just silly, Apple didn't create the universe. They just gave humans knowledge!

Can you buy a Xiaomi phone outside of China? For a $300 phone it looks pretty nice.

I very nearly bought one of these a few months ago, but it was sold out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com