Xiaomi sold its first phone on 2011. Now, three years later, according to Quartz, it is valued at $9 billion which is higher than Blackberry’s $7.5 billion valuation and we all know how big the latter manufacturer is. Founder, Lei Jun, is even hailed as the Steve Jobs of China. It is certain now that he doesn’t just look the part. Xiaomi is known for selling high spec smartphones at ridiculously low prices. It sells its flagship smartphones at less than half the price of what big manufacturers like Samsung, HTC and others charge for their devices.
Xiaomi’s strategy seems to be to capture market share as fast as possible and then use its services to make up for the high cost. Unlike other manufacturers, Xiaomi doesn’t not spend a lot in marketing. You hardly see any promotional videos or ads for Xiaomi phones. Despite minimum marketing effort, Xiaomi has a huge fan following in Asian tech forums and currently the Asian market makes up almost all of it’s sales. To cite recent success, its latest offering from, the Mi2s, sold more than 200,000 units in less than a minute online. Most of the times Xiaomi’s phones require preorder and later run out of stock. Demands are even pouring in from Europe and America and Xiaomi plans to ship there soon.
Currently Xiaomi’s product portfolio includes the Mi-1, Mi-1s, Mi-2, Mi-2s and Mi-2A. The Xiaomi Mi3 is also slated to be released on August 16 2013.
