Xiaomi corporation is a $60 billion USD company listed on Hongkong stock exchange.

Xiaomi was officially established in April 2010. It is an Internet company with mobile phones,
smart hardware and Internet-of-Things platforms as its core. When it established, they have a
slogan which is “Born for fever”, it can mean characteristics of low price and high-cost
performance and deeply imprinted them in the minds of consumers; at the same time, and they
also have a mission which is “let everyone enjoy the fun of science and technology”.

At that time, the smartphone industry was already an extremely low-margin and cut throat
business. The industry was consolidating with top producers like Samsung and Apple gaining
market share while old incumbents like Nokia and Blackberry are drifting into the abyss.
Everyone thought that the smartphone war was over. And yet within three years of its founding,
Xiaomi moved from a brand no one has ever heard of to become the largest smartphone brand in
China by 2013.

Xiaomi has been established for only 11 years, but it has achieved a lot of achievements in the
market. On 2018, Xiaomi was officially listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. In the quarter
2 of 2019, their revenue reached RMB 54 billion, and Xiaomi was listed on the Fortune 500, and
their ranking is 468. They took only 9 years to become the youngest that make in on Fortune
500; in overseas markets, only in India, there are more than 3,000 offline Mi stores, mostly
located on second-tier cities and rural areas. In many countries in Europe, Xiaomi has opened
more than 100 Mi stores. And in the end of 2019, they have entered more than 90 countries
around the world, and entered the top 5 markets in 42 countries and regions, with overseas
market revenue they have reaching more than 48% of total revenue.

One of the reasons that make this

company to become successful is its
founder, Lei Jun. Lei Jun is a tech mogul
even before founding Xiaomi. He started his
career in Kingsoft corporation, one of the
key software companies in China back in
the early 2000s. He led the company to its
Initial Public Offering back in 2007.
After that, he retired from the business. And he became a venture capitalist. He has quite good
success betting on startups like UCWeb and YY. So, even before he started Xiaomi, Lei Jun was
a well- respected tech legend in China. In fact, by starting Xiaomi, he was risking his life-long
reputation as a successful tech mogul and facing the uncertainty as a startup entrepreneur again.
However, he explained why he felt that there is a need to create another company at the age of 40
when he was already deemed successful by the society. He felt that he has yet to achieve his life-
long dream of creating a Chinese company that has global appeal and respect. He wanted to
create a company that is on par with global well-respected brands like Sony and Apple. So, in
2010, he founded Xiaomi with 13 other staffs and they chose the smartphone industry as their
first battleground as it was the fastest growing sector around that time.

On top of that, he was able to see a problem that he can solve in the industry. At that time, the
industry is dominated by well-known brands like Apple and Samsung. However, these brands
are selling very high-end phones that are quite expensive. And at the end of the other spectrum,
China has many knockoff brands selling cheap smartphones of poor quality. No one was truly
serving the market. So, their idea was to create a smartphone using the same suppliers and
components that the big brands are using, but selling it at a much cheaper price. But what is
interesting is, instead of jumping straight into manufacturing the phone, they went about by
creating a pool of potential customer base first. Because they know that without the distribution
network and the manufacturing expertise, the component suppliers might not even want to
supply to Xiaomi in the first place. Therefore, the team started out by creating an Operating
System for android phones in the market. In China, because Google is not official available in
the market, android phones in China are not running the Google Android Operating system. And
in 2010, the android versions in China are not very well refined yet. So, Xiaomi create their own
version of Android called MIUI. It was an instant success, gaining millions of users within the
first year. From that userbase, Xiaomi launched their first phone, the Xiaomi Phone in August
2011 through online sales only. So instead of working with telecommunications and distributors,
Xiaomi chose to only sell their phone directly to customers through their online channels. And
from that, Xiaomi sold more than 7 million phones in the first year of launch. And it was due to
its promise of selling a high-quality phone at a very affordable price. The first Xiaomi Phone was
selling for just RMB1999 at that time when other comparable phones are selling well above
RMB5000. This strategy of being transparent with their customer and matching high-quality
with affordable pricing has become a core principle for Xiaomi and that strategy worked. Xiaomi
took over the top spot of all the top smartphone brand in China by 2013. Their phones also
become the top selling products on e-commerce platform like Taobao and JD.com.
 However, with its success, it was also attracted more competition. Other Chinese brands
started copying Xiaomi’s strategy. By 2015, Xiaomi experienced its first decline in sales and its
top spot was overthrown by new brands like OPPO and VIVO. That was a key turning point for
Xiaomi as the company turned its attention back to the core of their business, their products.
They focus more on Research and Development, in creating better and more innovative products.
Today, Xiaomi holds one of the most intellectual property patents among all of Chinese tech
firms. It also started to diversify more
aggressively overseas into markets like
India and Europe. It diversifies its
products range to more Internet-of-
Things products as well. Today, Xiaomi
produces and partners with other Internet-
of-Thing’s designers and manufacturers
across a wide range of electronics.

The four core products and services of Xiaomi; MIUI, Xiaomi smartphones, Internet-of-
Thing’s products and Internet Services. The first product, MIUI, is an Android operating system
customized by Xiaomi. Based on the original Android system, MIUI upgrades Android in more
than 100 places. On 2010, MIUI was officially released, and there many users interested in this
Operating System. The second product is smartphones. Xiaomi Mobile is a high-quality with a
low price’s smartphone designed by Xiaomi. The design of mobile phone is completed create by
the internal hardware team of Xiaomi. The mobile phone operating system can uses the this
operating system independently developed by Xiaomi. The third product is Internet-of-Thing’s.
It is a product that make customers have more convenient on your daily life. For example, they
produce and sell products such as air conditioners that you can control with your smartphone or
Smartwatch which is tracking your daily activities and there also have many other things that
Xiaomi produce like electric scooter, monitors, headphones, hair dryer, air purifier, vacuum
cleaner, security cameras and even televisions.
And the last one, it is about the services that is internet services. They get the revenue from
advertising which distribution channels primarily consist of mobile apps and Xiaomi smart TVs.
And also, from online games and paid subscriptions by users of premium content. Xiaomi
provides more than 7,000 published games and some exclusive games to their consumers. And
the last one of their services is E-commerce. Xiaomi also owns Xiaomi Youpin, which is its E-
commerce platform based on the Xiaomi ecological chain.

Xiaomi rebounded and shown tremendous growth after 2016. Its revenue grew from just
RMB68 billion in 2016 to more than RMB205 billion by 2019. More importantly, the business
finally turned profitable back in 2018, the same year it went public on the Hong Kong stock
exchange. Xiaomi has a philosophy of treating their customer as a friend. This means that it will
always try to be transparent, its product will be of high quality and it not overcharge its
customers. This is actually baked into their company’s policy; it was stated in its IPO Prospectus.
And Xiaomi promises that it will never charge more than a 5% net margin on its hardware
products to its customers. This company seem that it will be massive potential in the future. The
growth of Internet-of-Things devices will continue to be huge for many years to come and
Xiaomi is one of the few companies globally with the widest Internet-of-Things product range
right now. Combining that with its affordable pricing strategy, Xiaomi has a good chance of
reaching even more customers in the future. From there, when the customers start to use their
hardware, Xiaomi can introduce more software services to the customers. That could improve
their profits margins for the business. Today, software services are actually one of their main
profit contributors. Cause of the Covid-19 pandemic, though the smartphone sales seem decline
in the quarter 1 of 2020, Xiaomi is the only brand among the top five smartphone sellers, to
achieve comparatively sales in the first quarter of 2020. It saw a 1.4% Year over Year from
2019, during the first quarter of 2020.

https://www.scirp.org/pdf/ojbm_2021050615114404.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344944477_XIAOMI_-
TRANSFORMING_THE_COMPETITIVE_SMARTPHONE_MARKET_TO_BECOME_A_M
AJOR_PLAYER

https://startuptalky.com/xiaomi-success-story/