About Xiaomi. Xiaomi: a story of rapid development

Xiaomi Tech was founded by seven partners on June 6, 2010, and on August 16, 2010, Xiaomi officially launched the first MIUI firmware based on Android.

The company's first smartphone, Mi1, was announced in August 2011. It came with built-in MIUI firmware, based on Android, combining corporate styles Samsung TouchWiz And Apple iOS. There was also a version of the device with pure Android. In August 2012, Xiaomi announced the Mi2 smartphone. It contained Qualcomm processor Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064, 1.5 GHz quad-core Krait chip with 2 GB RAM and GPU Adreno 320. On September 24, 2013, the company announced the sale of more than 10 million Mi2 devices within 11 months. Some Xiaomi devices are produced in Foxconn factories, where Apple iPhone and iPad.

On September 5, 2013, CEO Lei Jun announced plans to launch a 47-inch 3D TV running Android OS, which will be assembled at Wistron Corporation's plant in Taiwan. Also in September 2013, Xiaomi announced the Mi3 smartphone powered by the Snapdragon 800 processor (MSM8974AB) and a version based on NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 chipset. On September 25, 2013, Xiaomi announced plans to open its first flagship store in Beijing. In October 2013 Xiaomi became fifth mobile brand in China.

The symbol of Xiaomi is a hare wearing a hat with earflaps with a red star and a red pioneer tie around his neck. In 2014, Xiaomi first announced international expansion with the opening of its first store in Singapore. The company's immediate plans include entering the markets of Malaysia and India. On March 17, 2014, RedMi Note (also known as HongMi Note) was announced. RedMi Note is equipped with a 5.5-inch HD IPS display with OGS technology and eight-core processor from .

In April 2014, the company announced the start of expansion into the international markets of 10 countries, including Russia. One of the former Google employees, Hugo Barra, was appointed responsible for this.

In November 2014, the head of Xiaomi announced a plan to become the No. 1 company in the smartphone market.

Company activities

The company's activities began with the development of the MIUI Android firmware.

In 2011, its own was released own phone- the first device with initially pre-installed MIUI, competitive technical characteristics and low price.

In 2012, a second smartphone was released, with more advanced characteristics, and an improved version of Mi-One Plus was also released.

Xiaomi Mi 3 was introduced in September 2013. The first television of this Xiaomi company MiTV.

According to the results of the first quarter of 2014, the company took 3rd place in terms of smartphone sales in the Chinese market (11%), ahead of Apple (10%). In the world, the company ranks 6th (3.8%), but shows a steady growth trend.

On May 15, 2014, Jun presented 2 products at a press conference - the long-awaited MiPad tablet and the 4K sequel to the MiTV 2 TV.

On July 22, 2014, during the annual conference, the company announced the next generation of smartphones called Xiaomi Mi4, and also announced the release of the sixth version of firmware based on Android OS - MIUI. During the conference, the first “smart bracelet” MiBand was presented.

In the 3rd quarter of 2014, Xiaomi, according to IHS iSuppli, for the first time in its history reached third place in the world in smartphone sales. In 2015, Xiaomi released its first action camera, Yi, which is positioned as a competitor to GoPro.

Interesting facts about Xiaomi

• Billionaire Lei Jun, the company's co-founder and current CEO, is called the Chinese Jobs. He owns more than 30% of Xiaomi Tech shares.
• In 2012, Xiaomi Tech had zero profitability of its mobile business, that is, smartphones were sold at cost. In the future, it was planned to make money on services that are integrated into the shell. Investors welcomed the adopted development model of the company. In 2013, the mobile division's monthly revenues increased to 20 million yuan (or $3.27 million), representing less than 1% of the company's total revenues.
• To reduce operating costs, the company advertises its products through microblogs, social networks and meetings of enthusiastic like-minded people. Nevertheless, in 2013, two of their own “offline” stores were opened in Beijing, where you can purchase the company’s products.
• The phones produced by the company are so popular in China that they have become victims of Chinese counterfeiters. Sales of its smartphones, which the company carries out from its website, last only a few minutes. Sales volumes in the home market are also impressive. Xiaomi claims 20 million fans who download up to 5 million apps daily from the company's online store. Plans for 2015 include selling 100 million smartphones.
• According to some estimates, the company's value in 2012 was about $4 billion. By mid-2013, the company's value had increased to $10 billion.
• The Xiaomi Tech team includes a former significant Google employee. Hugo Barra serves as vice president and will help establish access to foreign markets.
• One of the company's shareholders is the Russian venture fund Digital Sky Technologies.
• The company's engineers make fixes and improvements to the MIUI software shell almost weekly.

Each company presenting its products on the market has a wave-like history. That is, if you build a graph, you can see her ups and downs; she may be on the verge of failure or not leave the top of the pedestal for years. The brand in question was able to reach unprecedented heights in a matter of years. In 2010, the world learned about Xiaomi!

About the CEO of Xiaomi

The key figure of the company is general manager Lei Zun previously worked for Kingston for eight years. Here the man reached professional heights - he went from an ordinary engineer to the president of an enterprise. Thanks to his activities at Kingston, the future director of Xiaomi gained experience. Zun was always interested in new technologies and actively invested in startups that he thought were interesting. Thanks to this, he was included in the list of millionaires much earlier than “Grain of Rice” appeared (this is how Xiaomi is translated into Russian). In April 2010, Lei Zun and seven other technology innovation enthusiasts registered a company called Xiaomi Tech.

The era of Xiaomi technology

In the year the company was founded, a new shell is released operating system MIUI, which turned out to be quite understandable and attractive for the consumer. Its main advantage is stability and trouble-free functionality.
The originality of Xiaomi lies in the fact that its first creation was not a mobile device, but an operating system for it. First Xiaomi phone Mi One will be in the hands of users a year after the creation of the OS. In August, an affordable and productive device running on the Android OS with MIUI shell from the Xiaomi brand. Moreover, used in the next smartphone is powerful Snapdragon processor The S4, Adreno 320 graphics and a decent amount of 2GB memory put many other mobile devices on the market to shame.

Xiaomi was able to achieve stunning success in a short period of time. Today, users have the opportunity to use high-performance, yet affordable devices. Thanks to Xiaomi products, the myth that products made in China have low quality, was dispelled!

The company's first smartphones became the hallmark of the young enterprise, which was able to become a competitive player in the global market, causing such giant corporations as Apple and Samsung to worry.

The Xiaomi Mi3 smartphone has a 5-inch display with Full HD resolution, great camera 13MP, a powerful processor, decent design at a price of $300 dollars made the end buyer move away from the usual brands and look at Xiaomi products as an excellent replacement for expensive gadgets.

Having felt success, Lei Jiong and his team of specialists continue to work on new devices. After the next smartphone Mi4 was released, in 2014 the world saw the first tablet from a Chinese manufacturer.

While critics are blaming the brand for plagiarism and using Apple's design ideas, in just under 40 seconds after the start of sales, Xiaomi Mi4 mobile devices ran out, because high performance, attractive design, excellent quality screens were offered for very little money.

The secret to the success of Xiaomi products

It is not easy to understand how a young Chinese company, after several years of active activity, was able to bypass the Korean company Samsung and become a worthy competitor to the manufacturer of Apple products. But in reality, “A Grain of Rice” did not come up with brilliant plans to “shove competitors into the bosom.”

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The company's successful development strategy is as follows:

Affordable price. The manufacturer does not rely only on selling equipment. Our own application store, sale of accessories, etc. are used as sources of profit;

Availability. The manufacturer always works for its consumers, and the most devoted fans have the opportunity to become owners of new products first;

Competent PR management. Xiaomi products today there is no need for special PR, this function is performed by the user by posting information on numerous social networks and blogs;

High quality. The best materials and components are used to produce equipment, which makes smartphones, tablets and other products durable;

Control. The equipment is subject to careful control at the production stage. Therefore, practically no defective devices reach the market;

Regular technical support. Each of the company's devices receives timely updates firmware, which is mandatory requirement modern buyer.

Everything you wanted to know about the word Xiaomi: what it means, how to pronounce it...

We recently found out that our brand is called more than twenty in different ways. Xiaomi, Shiomi, Xiaomi - and these are just some of the options used! Let's figure out how to pronounce Xiaomi correctly?

Let's start with the fact that the most obvious reading - Xiaomi - is incorrect. In the generally accepted transcription system Chinese language The Latin letter X is used for sounds that have nothing to do with “x”. In fact, in various regions of China the name Xiaomi pronounced either as Xiaomi, or as Shaomi(with a very soft “sh”). But generally accepted correct name brand at the international level is Xiaomi, with an emphasis on the last “i”. However, such words with an emphasis on the last syllable are difficult for a Russian person, and the variant with an emphasis on the “o” in the middle has already taken root in colloquial speech. Indeed, it is more convenient to pronounce the brand name in Russian speech this way - so we will assume that this option can also be used.

So, we found out how to read Xiaomi correctly. What does this word mean? Translated from Chinese, it means “Little grain of rice” or “Grain of rice”. I wonder why? There is no short answer to this question. First, you need to understand the importance of rice to the Chinese. Rice is the basis of their diet, a truly iconic cereal for the nation, the meaning of which can probably be compared with what bread means to us in Russia. We may not eat as much bread today, but its symbolic meaning for us is enormous. “Bread is the head of everything,” “Bread and salt,” and many other popular expressions reflect the importance and respect for bread. This is approximately the same role that rice plays in Chinese culture. A rice field requires a lot of careful care, painstaking work, and a huge number of people are employed in working on rice plantations. But this work is the foundation of the well-being of China and its people.

So, the first explanation for the “little grain of rice” is that you need to work hard to lay a solid foundation. In addition, there was obviously a hint that smartphones and other technology today are as popular and necessary for every person as rice, which is on the Chinese table every day.

In addition, explanations of the meaning of the “little grain of rice” often refer to the meaning rice acquired during the Sino-Japanese War in the mid-20th century, when China won with “rice and arms.” And finally, the head of the company, Lei Jun himself, said that the name of the brand also echoes the Buddhist concept, in which XIAO means a single huge grain of rice, which is the size of a mountain!

And finally, we note that there is a special meaning hidden in the Mi logo: it also contains a multi-level meaning. On the one hand, this is an abbreviation of the phrase Mobile Internet (mobile internet), but there is one more meaning - Mission impossible(mission impossible). This is because Xiaomi faced constant challenges that only a true winner could overcome!

The history of any company can be described as a wave-like graph: each brand experiences ups and downs, may be on the verge of oblivion or may not leave the pages of business magazines for years. The brand we are going to talk about today has managed to revolutionize the technology market for everything in four years. In 2010, the company was registered in China Xiaomi.

One head is good, but eight...

One of the key figures in the life of Xiomi and its CEO Lei Jun, worked for eight years (1992 – 2000) Kingston Technology Company, where he worked his way up from an ordinary engineer to the president of the company. It was thanks to his work at Kingston that the future founder of “Grain of Rice” (this is how the name of the Xiaomi company is literally translated) gained experience in porting and working with applications.

Throughout his life, Lay was interested in various technology startups and strived in every possible way to invest in truly interesting projects. Support for startups such as: online store Vancl.com, popular mobile browser UCWEB, video service yy.com and online bookstore JOYO brought “business angel” Lei Jiong a truly impressive profit. Lay was included in the list of billionaires even before the founding of Xiaomi.

In April 2010, about 1.5 years have passed since the release of the first version of the mobile operating system Android. It would be hard to call it perfect, and it was clear that the user wanted more. And while Google developers were slowly fixing bugs and program code errors, April 6, 2010 in China eight fan founders mobile technologies, Internet and Android OS, led by Lei Jiong register a company Xiaomi Tech.

Each of the “eight that turned the world” was familiar with program code and software development firsthand:

• Gong Feng– Head of Google China;
• Hugo Barra– Vice President of Android OS Development;
• Bin Lin– worked at Microsoft and Google (chief engineer);
• Andy Rubin– comes from Silicon Valley;
• Jiangzhi Guang– worked at Microsoft China;
• Guangping Jou- Head of Motorola's division in China.

For several months, Lei Jun and Bing Ling spent days discussing mobile trends.

Bin Ling: “Almost every weekend from early morning until late at night, Lei and I discussed our ideas and vision of what the operating system of the perfect smartphone should be. It was a real passion for good software and bold, practical ideas. Despite this, I was still afraid to leave my job at Google. January 12, 2010 Google of the Year announced its readiness to leave the Chinese market - this was a real call to action"

The loud announcement of the search giant Google was perceived as a challenge and as an alternative to the clumsy Android interface, the newly registered company Xiaomi Tech dares to give its answer.

MIUI: beginning

In 2010, the first version of the mobile phone entered the market. MIUI operating system. At first glance, the abbreviation, difficult to read, is an abbreviation of English pronouns: Me, You, I – “I, you, I”. And the choice of such a name is not accidental - already the first version of the MIUI OS turned out to be incredibly friendly and understandable end user. But its main feature is stable and trouble-free operation.

As a strategy for distributing the new OS, the founder of Xiaomi chose availability for any smartphones, without being tied to smartphones of our own production.

Word of mouth, forums and enthusiastic reviews from users on social networks led to the fact that just three years later the audience of the MIUI operating system exceeded the mark of 30 million.

Era of Xiaomi devices

The uniqueness of Xiaomi lies in the fact that its first product was not a specific device, but an operating system. The company's first material creation in the form of a smartphone is in the hands of users Xiaomi Mi One will only hit summer 2011. On August 18, an inexpensive but productive phone was announced, running Android OS and the proprietary MIUI shell.

Xiaomi Mi One

Release date: August 18, 2011
Price: $310
OS: Android 4.1 MIUI
Screen:
CPU: 2-Core QS 1.5 GHz
RAM: 1 GB
Flash memory: 4 GB
Battery: 1930 mAh.
Camera: 8 MP

Price in $310 , reliability, user-friendly interface and the similarity with the popular, but unavailable in China, iPhone are causing a real sensation in the Chinese consumer market.

Exactly one year later, Lei Jiong delights fans with the announcement of a new version of the smartphone - Xiaomi Mi Two.

Xiaomi Mi Two

Release date: August 16, 2012
Price:$315 (16 GB model)
OS: Android 4.4 MIUI
Screen: 4.3" IPS 1280×720 (341 ppi)
CPU: 4-Core QS 1.5 GHz
RAM: 2 GB
Flash memory: 16 GB
Battery: 2000/3000 mAh.
Camera: 8 MP

More powerful processor Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 (4-Core 1.5 GHz), graphics core Adreno 320 And 2 GB All smartphones running the Android OS, announced in the first half of 2012, were able to handle RAM.

The stunning success was not long in coming. Xiaomi Mi Two receives the status of "great" Chinese smartphone"(Forbes), and in two years the company sells over 25 million devices.

Continuing the tradition of creating affordable smartphones with impressive characteristics, the administrative top of Xiaomi Tech decides to conquer the specific Indian market. The land of “gold ants” is home to many brands that we are unlikely to ever hear about. Most smartphones are truly affordable for the average buyer, but such accessibility usually comes at the expense of performance. Xiaomi took the decisive role in saturating the Indian market with “sane” smartphones by introducing the next smartphone model – Xiaomi Mi 3.

Xiaomi Mi 3

Release date: August 16, 2013
Price:$300 (16 GB model)
OS: Android 4.3 MIUI 5.0
Screen: 5” IPS 1920×1080 (441 ppi)
CPU: 4-Core QS 2.3 GHz
RAM: 2 GB
Flash memory: 16, 32, 64GB
Battery: 3050 mAh.
Camera: 13 MP

With the release of this smartphone model, the myth associated with the fact that “everything Chinese is low quality” was dispelled. Total in 40 minutes from the shelves of an Indian online store Flipkart The Xiaomi Mi 3 line has sold out.

But record sales of new items are only one side of the coin. The Xiaomi Mi-3 smartphone has become key model and the calling card of a young Chinese manufacturer, making it a serious player in the global market and causing a lot of headaches for the marketing strategy of such giants as Apple and Samsung. Worthy 5-inch Full HD screen, good 13 megapixel camera, productive quad-core processor with a frequency of 2.3 GHz and attractive design for humane $300 – all these characteristics really forced the buyer to reconsider his attitude towards “established brands” and look at a young product Chinese company without points of contempt.

Having tasted the fruit of success, Xiaomi Tech, led by Lei Jun, has been working on the next generation of the smartphone for a year. Meanwhile, the exponentially growing number of Mi owners are waiting for a new class of devices from the company - tablets. Heating up the market in August 2014, along with a logical link in the evolution of smartphones Xiaomi Mi 4 Lei Jiong presents the company's first tablet.

Did you want a Retina display running Android OS? You need a powerful, productive tablet that can handle both... office documents the same with games, but at the same time fit in the pocket of a doctor’s coat? After all, what you are looking for is iPad alternative mini? The answer to all these requests was the tablet. Xiaomi MiPad.

The novelty opens new page in the history of the Chinese brand, and a few months later an updated smartphone bursts into the market Xiaomi Mi 4, who put new record in the life of the company.

Xiaomi Mi 4

Release date: July 22, 2014
Price:$320 (16 GB model)
OS: Android 4.4 MIUI 5.0
Screen: 5” IPS 1920×1080 (441 ppi)
CPU: 4-Core QS 2.5 GHz
RAM: 3 GB
Flash memory: 16, 32, 64GB
Battery: 3080 mAh.
Camera: 13 MP

While critics and snobs reproached the young Chinese manufacturer for plagiarism and encroachment on Apple’s design, in 37 seconds after official start Sales of Xiaomi Mi 4 smartphones have simply ended. Increased performance, a design diet (the new product is thinner than its predecessor) and an impressive screen were offered at an almost unchanged price tag in $320 .

To understand how a young and little-known company, which began its rapid development path in an ocean infested with venerable business sharks, managed to surpass the South Korean giant Samsung in smartphone sales in just 4 years ( 15 million Xiaomi devices sold in Q2 2014 vs. 13.4 million Samsung in China) is not easy. But like everything ingenious, the success of the “Grain of Rice” secret is very simple.

Xiaomi's strategy differs from a number of its “colleagues” in the mobile technology market. During the first two years after the release of the first Xiaomi Mi One smartphone, the Chinese brand sold smartphones at a price that differed from the cost of devices by only 20-30 dollars. The administration chose not the hardware product itself, but the accompanying digital component as the main source of profit.

• The price is almost equal to the cost. Our own application and game store, as well as additional optional functions for smartphones, bring significantly more profit than direct sales of the terminals themselves. In the first quarter of this year, another source of profit was opened in the United States - the Xiaomi online accessories store.
• Availability. Xiaomi is always open to communication with the average user, and for those who have become devoted fans of the brand, they have the opportunity to purchase new products in the forefront.
• User = PR manager. Theoretically, today Xiaomi has no need for forced self-PR for its upcoming new product. Loyal users do the work for her. social networks and microblogging services. This is confirmed by 50 thousand sold Xiaomi smartphones Mi 2 online Sina Weibo in just five minutes.
• Regular support. If we take into account the fact that at the beginning Xiaomi development it was the operating system, then even after four years of existence, Lei Jiong remained faithful to this guideline. Each user receives an update to the latest firmware, regardless of whether he is a developer or the owner of an archaic device model.
• Hard work. The generally accepted 40-hour work week is rather nonsense for company founder Lei Jiong. The 45-year-old billionaire still works no less than 100 hours per week. We can see the result of such work in rapid growth shares of Xiaomi.

The Chinese brand Xiaomi is often compared to the American company Apple, and its Lei Jiong is called the Chinese Steve Jobs. It is hardly worth denying such similarities, but such similarities can be perceived not only from the point of view of direct borrowing, but rather from the Chinese response to American arguments.