You will lose your job if you continue buy things from Xiaomi
This is not an article to terrify you with some bullshit contents, it means to change your thought about Chinese startups in a new way. And to me the writer , has already never support this company- Xiaomi. If you are about to buy Xiaomi’s products, don’t forget to make a second thought after reading this story.
Brief introduction of Xiaomi
You may have already heard this company before in Fobea, Wall Street Jounal, Business Insider, and some other magazines. If not, it’s a good chance for you to understand this most famous tech startup in china .
At the end of 2011, Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi, attacked smartphone market like what Hitler’s tank army did to Poland 70 years ago. Like thunder, like the bolt and quite successful.
Thanks to its enormous sales and the Internet factors behind it, estimated value of Xiaomi pumped to 50 Billion US dollar.
No wonder its high value is based on climbing smartphone sales. In the business word, Xiaomi has no business model and not core competitive advantages. Its only weapon is most cost-effective devices .
How could Xiaomi make a smartphone so cheap that you can buy one with 1/3 price of other brands? Simple and easy: copy other’s design and innovation, then use its capital advantage and supply chain advantage to provide a much cheaper, same function and exactly the same look smartphones, only to overwhelm its competitors. Xiaomi tasted this sweetness and soon copied to wearable devices, routers. Many startups have already been crushed down by Xiaomi.
Xiaomi’s only way to maintain a high value is to sell more devices to bond more venture capital or private equity firms to be its companions. As these firms in position, Xiaomi gets more capital to win its dirty innovation battle. It’s no different to fascism.
Now, Xiaomi’s threat is not confined to small startups. Some big companies are on Xiaomi’s list.
The real success fact behind Xiaomi
Definitely, Xiaomi is the disruptive innovator in the Chinese market. In years when smartphone are expensive and lame, Xiaomi occupies more than 50% of Chinese smartphone market using its “hungry sales” strategy. This overnight success earned Xiaomi a good reputation. Since then, Lei Jun and Xiaomi are frequently magazine covers and TV show guest.
Xiaomi ‘s success attracted other manufacturers’ attention. Huawei, ZET and OnePlus quickly copied its mode and did quite well, even better than Xiaomi. Everyone would be pissed out by copycats, when it came to its initiator, Xiaomi showed more anger than nothing. Gradually, the market that Xiaomi held are no more under its control. Psychological change in mind, Xiaomi went on a wrong way of being shameless.
Shamelessly stealing
Anyway , Xiaomi One smartphone are Xiaomi’s masterpiece in 2011 if you believe it looks great. This is Xiaomi’s real creation and design. And that’s all. Since then Xiaomi’s smartphones tried its best to look like other’s.
I know you get a lot of propaganda on newspaper and online news sites, but here are some words you should listen to: if you are feeling proud of Xiaomi’s success, you are on the way to lose your job.
Faking numbers and sales
As we have written before, Xiaomi faked its description in Red Mi 2 marketing, which misguided customers to buy its products.
Since December 2015, Xiaomi Air Purifier started its sales to public market, but tricks Xiaomi used in its marketing made its products a laughingstock. User feedbacked on social network saying this ”I didn’t even break the seal of the filter, how could this purifier turn from polluted Red-light to good condition Green-light? And what’s more, App on my phone told me the unsealed filter started loss itself. What a joke.”
Not only this, Xiaomi also faked user responses in its 2014 new product conference. In Xiaomi’s Live Webpage, this company told the public that over 200,000,000 people watched its live conference and got over 200,000,000 user responses. However, mainstream newspaper China Business News exposed that through third-party website, Xiaomi only got millions of visits that day, the to the Live Webpage, only hundreds of thousands of visits.
China mainland market is huge but filled with competitors, so Xiaomi went out proudly but also got face slapped. Xiaomi started to sell Xiaomi smartphone in China Taiwan in 2013 and went through the same hunger marketing successfully in Dec. 2013. But after a few months of investigation, Taiwan authorities wrote a fine ticket to Xiaomi for its faking quantity of smartphones. We all know legal construction in China mainland is not that complete which gave Xiaomi an opportunity to exploit this “advantage”.
Innovation is about to creat jobs…
When we talk about startups, the words ”disruptive innovation” are frequently-mentioned.
A disruptive innovation is an innovation that creates a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network, displacing established market leaders and alliances.
— — Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma.
What’s after innovation? Continuing disruption to an old market or to the bottom line?
Xiaomi reaped what its sows. As Xiaomi tried to enter into the mature market like Euro and North America, it encountered a lot of problems. Before the end of 2015, BlueSpike, a patents company in the USA, sued Xiaomi of infringing one of its patents, almost all Xiaomi’s products were listed. Xiaomi hasn’t even stepped into US and lawsuits came to it, and Xiaomi has to pay for its infringing behavior which covered by lower price. In a mature market, Xiaomi’s tricks won’t work.
Even in India, Xiaomi also caught in troubles. Later 2014, Ericsson sued Xiaomi in India, accused Xiaomi of infringing Ericsson’s key patents. And Indian High Court supported Ericsson’s proposal and baned Xiaomi from selling Xiaomi Smartphone in India. Suddenly, a booming market got cold water poured.
Let’s go to our conclusion. If Xiaomi can copy a new idea without any cost, it can let you lose your job without any cost and without any reason. Imagine this, your are a designer and your products are quite popular on Kickstarter, six month later, you found the same look and same function but half the price Xiaomi product on the market and its sales were 100 times yours. How do you feel about this? Angry?Protest? Or watch your idea became others Golden Egg Chicken?
Please stop buying Xiaomi products and stop talking about Xiaomi’s news, or you could be the next one who suffers.
