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

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

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.

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

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

I declare war on...dill pickles. Now come buy my sweet pickles. <i>yawn</i><p>Also, a nit: it is sad to see a journalist refer to the "lead" of his/her story.

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".<p>The first meizu store I went to, there was a guy selling rugs inside.<p>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.<p>The technology malls are filled with Apple, HTC, Samsung and even Sony phones. Zero obvious brand presence for Chinese phones.<p>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.

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&#38;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?<p>EDIT: For what it's worth, here's a review that Engadget did of the phone back in September 2011: <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/27/xiaomi-phone-review/" rel="nofollow">http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/27/xiaomi-phone-review/</a>

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: <a href="http://player.youku.com/player.php/sid/XMjk1MzcxNTY4/v.swf" rel="nofollow">http://player.youku.com/player.php/sid/XMjk1MzcxNTY4/v.swf</a>

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.