Monday, August 04, 2014

Xiaomi Overtakes Samsung in China Smartphone Market

According to Wall Street Journal's recent article, market research firm Canalys released the latest survey report showing that Chinese smartphone maker, Xiaomi, just beat the South Korea rival Samsung in the second quarter. Officially became the market leader of Chinese smartphone market.

Xiaomi led China’s second-quarter smartphone shipment rankings with 14% market share, following by Samsung, Lenovo and Yulong each with 12%. It’s quite a jump from the first quarter, when Xiaomi’s 10.7% market share trailed Samsung’s 18.3% and Lenovo’s 11%. And an even bigger leap from a year ago, when Xiaomi only held 5%.

Canalys analyst, Jingwen Wang said in an interview that that the popularity of devices in Xiaomi’s budget Redmi series – including the Redmi, Redmi 1S and Redmi Note – helped account for the second-quarter boost.

Jingwen Wang mentioned “The aggressive pricing points for top-notch products is an important reason that led to its success.”  She also said. “Both its Mi (flagship) series products and Redmi series products are price-competitive devices and feature top-notch chipsets, displays and cameras.”

Analysts also pointed out that the key to success is that Xiaomi has its own e-commerce site. Successful marketing efforts and software development have also helped it stand out among a wide field of low-cost phone makers in China.

“The installed base of its own interface MIUI, which has a lot of localized improvements, is more than 50 million in the world,” Wang said.The company also sells its phones close to the manufacturing cost, making profit through services such as mobile applications.

Xiaomi has been criticized at times for its stylistic borrowings from Apple, Samsung and other rivals. During an interview with Wall Street Journal las fall, Lei told that he did not want to be Jobs, only to be innovative like him.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/08/04/xiaomi-overtakes-samsung-in-china-smartphone-market/

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