China’s largest and fastest growing smartphone company, Xiaomi, will start selling smaller electronics accessories to test the waters in the U.S. within the next months, a potential challenger to Apple’s significant market share. Valued at $45 billion in December, the company became China’s fastest-selling mobile brand through direct online sales thanks to their low cost and heavy reliance on user feedback.
They will begin by introducing headphones and smart wristbands because of “the United States carrier-sales and phone subsidy structure, which eliminates Xiaomi’s cost advantage.” The company is reportedly close to securing a manufacturing partner in Brazil which would offer a huge advantage by helping them avoid an almost 60% tax on imported electronics in South America’s largest economy. Brazil will be the first country in which Xiaomi will sell their now famous Mi smartphones outside the Asian continent.
The industry will monitor the company’s ability to make a successful entrance into American market, testing the effectiveness of their emphasis on consumer feedback and strategy of attracting consumers through fan events and social networking, as well as their general reception by U.S. and South American customers.
Source: Reuters of Feb 12, 2015.
China is already the world’s largest smart phone market, but it is dominated by Android and by models that offer far fewer features at a correspondingly far lower cost. For example, as iPhone and rival “high end” phones increase their screen sizes, there’s now lots of capacity and lower prices for smaller sizes. Such “cheap” phones are hard to find here, where which phone you have is in part a status symbol. But in the developing world having “a” phone is in itself a status symbol, you don’t need “the” phone of the moment (as emphasized by the ads I see on Netflix and Hulu).
A corollary is that Apple may have peaked as a firm, as happened long ago in the PC market where it was undercut by generic “windows” boxes. The only country in which the iPhone is the leading brand is in Japan…