G.A. Viray
It’s crystal clear, Samsung is the leading smartphone brand, even Forbes says so… But are they really still leading in the smartphone industry? Maybe they are, as of the moment, but in the near future, maybe not!
So which company is sneakingly beating the smartphone king Samsung?
Have you heard of the smartphone Xiaomi? They are leading in China at least.
What is Xiaomi, by the way?
According to Xiaomi’s official website, Xiaomi, a Chinese company, was founded by Lei Jun who was also one of the co-founders of Kingsoft, an office software company (Think: Microsoft). Xiaomi is actually a young company established in 2010. But their being a newbie in the industry does not make them lag behind the other smartphone giants. Currently, Xiaomi is valued at over 10 billion USD. They are a big company too, with over 3,000 employees.
Number 1 in China, and now, 3rd globally
In a news from Computer World, Xiaomi is now the third largest smartphone vendor, and just this February 17, International Data Corporation (IDC), a market intelligence firm, stated that in China, Samsung is already behind Xiaomi’s smartphone sales. Xiaomi actually had a 12.5 % share in the market in 2014, and Samsung just a small percentage behind with a 12.1% market share.
Why Xiaomi?
IDC said that Xiaomi products focus on making their smartphones affordable, but at the same time has competitive specifications.
Xiaomi’s focus on selling low-cost phones with decent specifications, as well as the hype that it created through its flash sales, helped it to obtain the top position.
A copycat, eh?
ABS-CBN reports critics actually slam Xiaomi for “copying” other popular smartphones like the iPhone 6 Plus. Well, indeed, if you search on Youtube you will see hundreds of videos comparing Xiaomi’s smartphones to other mobile phones like Apple, Samsung, Asus, and Huawei among others.
Our verdict?
Well, I only know Xiaomi for their ads in Lazada, they do not have physical stores or concept stores in the Philippines, but if they do ask us to try their smartphones, we would be willing to evaluate them fairly. The closest I have ever known about it was when my husband told me that one of his Chinese bosses has a Xiaomi Mi 4 smartphone and said that it was actually very similar with a Samsung smartphone. He actually watched a lot of Youtube videos about it explaining to me that it was a good one at a low price.
So, will this be the end of an era for Samsung smartphones? We’ll just wait and see, but for now we will be waiting for Xiaomi to become more available in stores and malls here in the country.
Do you own a Xiaomi smartphone? Tell us about your experience. Leave a comment below.
I don’t think it’s a good conclusion that Samsung will no longer lead the smartphone industry just by basing on the fact that a good phone is leading in one country. The US is still the biggest market in the world. If it can’t invade America, it won’t invade the world. To draw a better conclusion, the US should be a better basis or Europe, perhaps. Plus, China products have bad reputation all over world. So I think this article is a huge fallacy.
Impossible. Samsung parin.aanhin ko ang mura kung madaling masira. Tska china?di ewan ko nlang sa qualitu nyan.
I have a mi3 before and its really affordable yet performance, camera and screen is on par with flagship smartphones, and the battery life? even much better than any flagships! i mean maybe this company can get out of the shadows of being tagged as “made in china” because it can really compete globally. No wonder with the figures shown and a leader who’s from google. They can manage to outpace their competitors. Two thumbs up xiaomi!
The article only implies that it “might” defeat Samsung. Xaomi is number 1 in China and now number 3 in the world so it might be number one in the future if samsung wont do something. Who would have thought Nokia would go down? If it happened to Nokia, it “might” happen to samsung.