So... where's the rest? Xiaomi walks away from IPO with less than hoped Xiaomi, the hugely hyped Chinese tech company, raised less money than it wanted in a private placement this week – the biggest Middle Kingdom IPO since Alibaba in 2014. Seeking to raise over $6.1bn on the Hong Kong exchange, Xioami is estimated to have pocketed $4.72bn. But it's still plenty with which to attack markets in the …
Not really. Their flagship phones cost half as much as flagships from Samsung, Sony etc, and from my experience actually run better and more stable. Not to mention they don't come with all that bloatware that can't be removed like Facebook etc.
Bought a Mi 6 for 320€, the value for the price is incredible. I sure as hell won't buy another Sony/Samsung again, not after the experience with two flagship Xperias...
The problem is that they have also put their brand name on a bunch of cheap rebadged rice cookers, wifi switched light bulbs and other crap that got a plain white box and an unjustified 300% markup
If you go to your favourite cheap-chinese-crap.com site and put in Xiaomi it looks a lot more like Aldi than Apple
They find a decent product, with nice design and add it to their catalogue.
Get updates occasionally when they launch a new set and varies between little rubberized USB fans and short-throw laser-projection TVs. All well made and nicely designed either by them or as a co-brand.
Not sure I agree with your comment on the markup. Yes, after they launched their fans a load of clones sprang up - but demonstrably not as good (I'm OK with $5 including shipping). Laser projector was identical to I think a Sony, but significantly cheaper.
Bought all manner of other small bits and pieces as well - favourite maybe a cobranded screwdriver set they did with Wiha. Way cheaper than a proper Wiha set, but excellent quality and just a lovely bit of design.
I maybe think of them as they old high street chain Habitat - a nicely curated set of nicely designed stuff that's well made and only a bit more than the lowest price for a similar product (but a lot less than a big brand).
Though I'd like a Mix 2s. If it had a micro-SD slot.
If you can cope with the larger bezels top and bottom consider the variants targeted at emerging markets, where people are rather more demanding about the basics of performance than they are in the West. I've got a Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X, which I think has now been superseded by the Redmi Note 5 Plus, but the 4X has brilliant battery life, works fast (running Nova Launcher as a personal preference), and has a choice of two SIM cards or one SIM and and an SD card. I'm a light user, so YMMV but with a bit of care I can get a week's use out of the phone between charges. Call quality and reception are better than a mid price Samsung. And if you buy from a UK based grey importer via Ebay with a credit card, you've got multiple levels of financial recourse if the product fails. So far the two we've got in the household fleet have been good, just with a glitch on reconnecting to wifi after an OTA update - using WPS to reconnect fixed that.
Second the comments on the Redmi Note 4x - one each for me and the missus. The price was so low that I had no compunction about using GearBest. If only there was a little more information about GearBest's purchasing options, which are rather confusing - but the product is fine.
It occurs to me that I bought them on the recommendation of someone here - might even have been Ledswinger.
"The problem is that compared with other internet giants, or even other hardware leaders like Apple, Xiaomi hasn't built a strong enough moat to keep users within its ecosystem."
Wrong. That's exactly why I like my phone (Mi Mix2 for anyone wondering) - it's not constantly trying to get me to use their services, or tie me in. Building stronger lock-in would not be a good thing
Is it perfection? No, but it's a damn good phone and cost a fraction of what Samsung are asking.
Xiaomi has begun an expansion into Europe by promising razor-thin margins on hardware – making up the rest on services
I have a Xiaomi phone and laptop and the hardware is very good for the money. They certainly are bundled with loads of "MIUI" services but I never use any at all, partly because only some are in English. They will need to look again at services if that's where they consider the money is.
The hardware is great, but they ignore firmware bugs for far too long, are not listening enough to what their loyal users want, and have been pissing away the brand value on tat.
The loss of wifi mentioned above is a classic example; not a word from Xiaomi, it was left to customers to figure out what they had buggered up with the OTA; ditto the USB MFT issue earlier this year.
Yeah, I own THREE Xiaomi phones.
No, I dont own a Xiaomi unmbrella.
you can only get by with 5% margins if Apple does all your research and your major sales point is basically "Looks just like Apple, but way cheaper".
Soon enough, there'll be another copy-cat that works on even thinner margins and the people who buy such crap will flog to that.
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