Xiaomi CEO aims match Apple for 'product and experience'

AppleInsider

The CEO of Chinese smartphone firm Xiaomi has announced an intention to compete "fully" with Apple's iPhone, and described it as "a war of life and death."

Xiaomi Mi 11i smartphones

Xiaomi has previously outsold both Apple and Samsung in Europe. Now, however, the company is aiming to focus on the top end of the market.

According to the South China Morning Post, Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun, announced the plan on the Weibo social media platform.

"[We aim to] fully benchmark against Apple in [terms of] product and experience, and become China's biggest high-end brand in the next three years," Lei said in a post seen by the publication. In the same post, he described the high-end smartphone market as "a war of life and death."

Lei repeated Xiaomi's previous intention to invest $15.71 billion in research and development over the next five years.

The opportunity for Xiaomi comes as a US ban on Huawei has created room fo competitors. Xiaomi was previously also on the US banned list, but was later removed from it.

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laurent_g

That's an honorable goal that would benefit their customers.
Kudos if they succeed.

blastdoor

They just assemble components made by other companies, so all they need to do is assemble the best components available. 

Today the biggest missing piece for Android vendors is the SOC. But Qualcomm's purchase of Nuvia might narrow that gap in a year or two. So all Xiaomi has to do is wait around for Qualcomm to make that new SOC available, buy it, and then put out a press release declaring victory. 

They won't match the full Apple ecosystem, but the full ecosystem isn't as relevant for Chinese customers anyway. So, at least in China, I bet Xiaomi achieves something that can pass for their stated goal. 

auxio

laurent_g said:

That's an honorable goal that would benefit their customers.

It would truly benefit their customers if they matched Apple's privacy stance.

robin huber

I’m from Missouri and I say, “show me.”

GeorgeBMac

The user experience for most people is mostly based on Apple's ecosystem.   For most companies it's not hard to duplicate Apple's hardware (or at least come close enough that most users wouldn't know the difference) -- Samsung  does it every year.

But most of the user experience derives from the software and the support and interface structure surrounding the device -- no company can beat Apple as long as they're locked into Android.

The analogy is the companies producing Windows PCs.   They can only set themselves apart by hardware and construction quality.  But that has a very limited impact on the "user experience" -- which mostly derives from software and ecosystem.

I think Huawei would have a MUCH better chance at beating Apple's ecosystem because, as we forced them to do, they have developed their own modern OS and they spend more on R&D than Apple.  But, it doesn't look like they have any intention of fighting that battle.

magman1979

auxio said:

laurent_g said:

That's an honorable goal that would benefit their customers.

It would truly benefit their customers if they matched Apple's privacy stance.

Uhhh, they're a Chinese company with CCP members within the company as per their laws, what are you smoking???

magman1979

GeorgeBMac said:

The user experience for most people is mostly based on Apple's ecosystem.   For most companies it's not hard to duplicate Apple's hardware (or at least come close enough that most users wouldn't know the difference) -- Samsung  does it every year.

But most of the user experience derives from the software and the support and interface structure surrounding the device -- no company can beat Apple as long as they're locked into Android.

The analogy is the companies producing Windows PCs.   They can only set themselves apart by hardware and construction quality.  But that has a very limited impact on the "user experience" -- which mostly derives from software and ecosystem.

I think Huawei would have a MUCH better chance at beating Apple's ecosystem because, as we forced them to do, they have developed their own modern OS and they spend more on R&D than Apple.  But, it doesn't look like they have any intention of fighting that battle.

ROTFLMAO!!! Thanks for my Friday morning FUD laugh!

auxio

magman1979 said:

auxio said:

laurent_g said:

That's an honorable goal that would benefit their customers.

It would truly benefit their customers if they matched Apple's privacy stance.

Uhhh, they're a Chinese company with CCP members within the company as per their laws, what are you smoking???

My tongue was firmly planted in my cheek

GeorgeBMac

magman1979 said:

auxio said:

laurent_g said:

That's an honorable goal that would benefit their customers.

It would truly benefit their customers if they matched Apple's privacy stance.

Uhhh, they're a Chinese company with CCP members within the company as per their laws, what are you smoking???

So what's your point?

13485

GeorgeBMac said:

magman1979 said:

auxio said:

laurent_g said:

That's an honorable goal that would benefit their customers.

It would truly benefit their customers if they matched Apple's privacy stance.

Uhhh, they're a Chinese company with CCP members within the company as per their laws, what are you smoking???

So what's your point?

I'm not sure either, but in one aspect, it could be inferred that Xiaomi and Huawei may receive favorable legal results from the Chinese courts if fending off Apple lawsuits It's been known to happen.

blastdoor

GeorgeBMac said:

I think Huawei would have a MUCH better chance at beating Apple's ecosystem because, as we forced them to do, they have developed their own modern OS and they spend more on R&D than Apple.  But, it doesn't look like they have any intention of fighting that battle.

There are different ways to measure R&D, but at least this source (https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/which-companies-spend-the-most-in-research-and-development-rd-2021-06-21) puts Huawei at $22 billion and apple at $18 billion. That's not a big difference, yet Huawei's R&D is spread out across a much broader product lineup. So I bet Apple spends more on a 'per product' (in some sense) basis. 

Also, effectiveness of R&D expenditures varies tremendously. Apple might not get as much bang for the buck now as they did when Steve Jobs was around, but I'd still bet on Apple to get more for their money than a CCP-backed conglomerate. 

auxio

GeorgeBMac said:

magman1979 said:

auxio said:

laurent_g said:

That's an honorable goal that would benefit their customers.

It would truly benefit their customers if they matched Apple's privacy stance.

Uhhh, they're a Chinese company with CCP members within the company as per their laws, what are you smoking???

So what's your point?

His point was that privacy is virtually non-existent when companies have direct oversight by a government which monitors and filters the internet access of its citizens.

tmay

GeorgeBMac said:

The user experience for most people is mostly based on Apple's ecosystem.   For most companies it's not hard to duplicate Apple's hardware (or at least come close enough that most users wouldn't know the difference) -- Samsung  does it every year.

But most of the user experience derives from the software and the support and interface structure surrounding the device -- no company can beat Apple as long as they're locked into Android.

The analogy is the companies producing Windows PCs.   They can only set themselves apart by hardware and construction quality.  But that has a very limited impact on the "user experience" -- which mostly derives from software and ecosystem.

I think Huawei would have a MUCH better chance at beating Apple's ecosystem because, as we forced them to do, they have developed their own modern OS and they spend more on R&D than Apple.  But, it doesn't look like they have any intention of fighting that battle.

Huawei's "modern OS", aka Harmony OS, was after close examination by various indivisuals, just a fork of Android OS. That Huawei had intentions of a modern OS is not the same as a modern OS.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/harmonyos-hands-on-huaweis-android-killer-is-just-android/

To hear Huawei tell the story, HarmonyOS is an original in-house creation—a defiant act that will let the company break free of American software influence. Huawei's OS announcement in 2019 got big, splashy articles in the national media. CNN called HarmonyOS "a rival to Android," and Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei’s consumer business group, told the outlet that HarmonyOS "is completely different from Android and iOS." Huawei President of Consumer Software Wang Chenglu repeated these claims just last month, saying (through translation), "HarmonyOS is not a copy of Android, nor is it a copy of iOS."

...After hours of poking around on HarmonyOS, I couldn't point to a single substantive change compared to Android. Other than a few renamed items, nothing is different. If anyone at Huawei wants to dispute this, I would welcome an example of a single thing in the emulator that is functionally or even aesthetically different from Android. If anyone wants to cry "it's just a beta!," Huawei says this OS will be shipping in commercial phones this year. There does not appear to be time to do a major overhaul from "Android" to "Not Android."

Forking Android and launching your own rebranded operating system is totally fine. But be upfront about that. Say "HarmonyOS is a fork of Android" instead of "HarmonyOS is not a copy of Android." Don't call HarmonyOS "all-new" when pretty much the opposite is true.

I keep seeing this abut Huawei spending more on R&D than Apple, but looking in to that, it looks hard to prove, mostly because Huawei is a much more diverse, and a private company, or more correctly, a private company with extremely close ties to the CCP.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14735970.2020.1809161

ABSTRACT

One of China's best-known and most successful corporations is Huawei Technologies. Many view Huawei with suspicion, alleging that its opaque structure conceals ties with the Chinese government and Communist Party. However, Huawei claims to be a private corporation controlled by its employees and operating in a purely commercial way. This paper demonstrates how Huawei's strange ownership structure evolved via a series of adaptive survival mechanisms within a state-dominated political and corporate ecosystem. These included profit sharing joint ventures with state-owned enterprises and officials, co-opting a Communist Party branch within the firm, and doing an end run around the PRC Company Law with 'virtual' employee shares. Placing Huawei within this Chinese ecosystem challenges simplistic accounts of top-down government or Party control over the firm. Yet the compromises that ensured Huawei's growth and protection from predation have become maladaptive within the global political ecosystem, where China is increasingly viewed as a threat.

So, I guess we can now substitute Xiaomi for Huawei in all of the above, since Huawei's fall from stardom, hastened by its obvious close ties with the CCP.

chadbag

Good luck to them.    

They need to make sure they understand this has nothing to do with “specs”, which is how so many people look at it.  They need to understand it is about solving people’s problems.  And anticipating and solving probable future problems.  In a way that is natural to the customer. 

Beats

How the fu** could this be legal? To completely ripoff a company’s product and then compete with them?

I never understood it and the people who bend over for the Chinese who don’t give a sh** about them will argue that knockoffs aren’t knockoffs and Apple should just “be better” as if copying is harder than inventing from the ground up.

dewme

Trying to disrupt a market from the top is very difficult, and even more so when you're singularly focused on chasing and beating the top dog at their own game. Apple didn't kill off Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry, et al, by seeing what they were doing and then trying to beat them at their own game by building a better phone with a better keyboard and bigger screen.

Apple didn't try to go through Nokia, Moto, Blackberry, Samsung, etc., to get to the top. Apple went around them.

Apple totally redefined the smartphone in an entirely new and unconventional way, ignoring what the top dogs were doing. By defining their own path of innovation Apple became the instant leader and exclusive member of the path they defined, i,e,, they had no direct competition (for a short period time). Because of Apple's low market share one could argue that they attacked from the bottom, which is classic disruption. The only part that doesn't fit the classic disruption narrative is that the iPhone was very expensive, nothing close to low cost or basic functionality, but from a hardware and UX complexity perspective, the iPhone was far simpler than the smartphones it went around.

The point is that at no time did Apple chase the competition to try to knock off the top dog. Chasing is a reactionary and very expensive strategy especially if you want to beat someone at their own game. Why chase the top dog and try to go through them when you can simply go around them - with a much better hunk of innovation?  

Xiaomi needs to be focused on winning the markets they want to serve with their own innovation. Fixating on beating Apple is a losers game, especially on a level playing field.

paxman

They use the Android platform, right? I would have thought they'd need to start right there. In order to compete fully with Apple and match the user experience they probably ought to be entirely in control of their own os's. 

anantksundaram

They can only hope.

The audacity of thievery...

GeorgeBMac

blastdoor said:

GeorgeBMac said:

I think Huawei would have a MUCH better chance at beating Apple's ecosystem because, as we forced them to do, they have developed their own modern OS and they spend more on R&D than Apple.  But, it doesn't look like they have any intention of fighting that battle.

There are different ways to measure R&D, but at least this source (https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/which-companies-spend-the-most-in-research-and-development-rd-2021-06-21) puts Huawei at $22 billion and apple at $18 billion. That's not a big difference, yet Huawei's R&D is spread out across a much broader product lineup. So I bet Apple spends more on a 'per product' (in some sense) basis. 

Also, effectiveness of R&D expenditures varies tremendously. Apple might not get as much bang for the buck now as they did when Steve Jobs was around, but I'd still bet on Apple to get more for their money than a CCP-backed conglomerate. 

Except for your last point, I would agree.

That one seems based more on ideology rather than fact and reality.  By the way, that conglomerate is owned by its employees -- not a political party -- and it has done an amazing job -- which is why we attacked it.  They were doing too good.

GeorgeBMac

auxio said:

GeorgeBMac said:

magman1979 said:

auxio said:

laurent_g said:

That's an honorable goal that would benefit their customers.

It would truly benefit their customers if they matched Apple's privacy stance.

Uhhh, they're a Chinese company with CCP members within the company as per their laws, what are you smoking???

So what's your point?

His point was that privacy is virtually non-existent when companies have direct oversight by a government which monitors and filters the internet access of its citizens.

Are talking of China or the U.S. -- or any other country?