Xiaomi: a story of rapid development. Xiaomi - company history (9 photos)

The history of any company can be described as a wave-like graph: each brand experiences ups and downs, may be on the verge of oblivion or may not leave the pages of business magazines for years. The brand we are going to talk about today has managed to revolutionize the technology market for everything in four years. In 2010, the company was registered in China Xiaomi.

One head is good, but eight...

One of the key figures in the life of Xiomi and its CEO Lei Jun, worked for eight years (1992 – 2000) Kingston Technology Company, where he worked his way up from an ordinary engineer to the president of the company. It was thanks to his work at Kingston that the future founder of “Grain of Rice” (this is how the name of the Xiaomi company is literally translated) gained experience in porting and working with applications.

Throughout his life, Lay was interested in various technology startups and strived in every possible way to invest in truly interesting projects. Support for startups such as: online store Vancl.com, a popular mobile browser UCWEB, video service yy.com and online bookstore JOYO brought “business angel” Lei Jiong a truly impressive profit. Lay was included in the list of billionaires even before the founding of Xiaomi.

In April 2010, about 1.5 years have passed since the release of the first version of the mobile operating system Android. It would be hard to call it perfect, and it was clear that the user wanted more. And while Google developers were slowly fixing bugs and software code errors, April 6, 2010 in China eight fan founders mobile technologies, Internet and Android OS, led by Lei Jiong, register a company Xiaomi Tech.

Each of the “eight that turned the world” was familiar with program code and software development firsthand:

• Gong Feng– Head of Google China;
• Hugo Barra– Vice President of Android OS Development;
• Bing Lin– worked at Microsoft and Google (chief engineer);
• Andy Rubin– comes from Silicon Valley;
• Jiangzhi Guang– worked at Microsoft China;
• Guangping Jou- Head of Motorola's division in China.

For several months, Lei Jun and Bing Ling spent days discussing mobile trends.

Bing Ling: “Almost every weekend from early morning until late at night, Lei and I discussed our ideas and vision of what the operating system of the perfect smartphone should be. It was a real passion for good software and bold, practical ideas. Despite this, I was still afraid to leave my job at Google. On January 12, 2010, Google announced its readiness to leave the Chinese market - this was a real call to action."

The loud announcement of the search giant Google was perceived as a challenge and as an alternative to the clumsy Android interface, the newly registered company Xiaomi Tech decides to give its answer.

MIUI: beginning

In 2010, the first version of the mobile phone entered the market. MIUI operating system. At first glance, the abbreviation, difficult to read, is an abbreviation of English pronouns: Me, You, I – “I, you, I”. And the choice of such a name is not accidental - already the first version of the MIUI OS turned out to be incredibly friendly and understandable to the end user. But its main feature is stable and trouble-free operation.

As a strategy for distributing the new OS, the founder of Xiaomi chose availability for any smartphones, without being tied to smartphones of our own production.

Word of mouth, forums and enthusiastic reviews from users on social networks led to the fact that just three years later the audience of the MIUI operating system exceeded the mark of 30 million.

Era of Xiaomi devices

The uniqueness of Xiaomi lies in the fact that its first product was not a specific device, but an operating system. The company's first material creation in the form of a smartphone is in the hands of users Xiaomi Mi One will only hit summer 2011. On August 18, an inexpensive but productive phone was announced, running Android OS and the proprietary MIUI shell.

Xiaomi Mi One

Release date: August 18, 2011
Price: $310
OS: Android 4.1 MIUI
Screen:
CPU: 2-Core QS 1.5 GHz
RAM: 1 GB
Flash memory: 4 GB
Battery: 1930 mAh.
Camera: 8 MP

Price in $310 , reliability, user-friendly interface and similarity to the popular but unavailable in China iPhone are creating a real sensation in the Chinese consumer market.

Exactly one year later, Lei Jiong pleases fans with the announcement of a new version of the smartphone - Xiaomi Mi Two.

Xiaomi Mi Two

Release date: August 16, 2012
Price:$315 (16 GB model)
OS: Android 4.4 MIUI
Screen: 4.3" IPS 1280×720 (341 ppi)
CPU: 4-Core QS 1.5 GHz
RAM: 2 GB
Flash memory: 16 GB
Battery: 2000/3000 mAh.
Camera: 8 MP

More powerful processor Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 (4-Core 1.5 GHz), graphics core Adreno 320 And 2 GB All smartphones running the Android OS, announced in the first half of 2012, were able to handle RAM.

The stunning success was not long in coming. Xiaomi Mi Two receives the status of “great Chinese smartphone” (Forbes), and in two years the company sells over 25 million devices.

Continuing the tradition of creating affordable smartphones with impressive characteristics, the administrative top of Xiaomi Tech is deciding to conquer the specific Indian market. The land of “gold ants” is home to many brands that we are unlikely to ever hear about. Most smartphones are truly affordable for the average buyer, but such accessibility usually comes at the expense of performance. Xiaomi took the decisive role in saturating the Indian market with “sane” smartphones by introducing the next smartphone model – Xiaomi Mi 3.

Xiaomi Mi 3

Release date: August 16, 2013
Price:$300 (16 GB model)
OS: Android 4.3 MIUI 5.0
Screen: 5” IPS 1920×1080 (441 ppi)
CPU: 4-Core QS 2.3 GHz
RAM: 2 GB
Flash memory: 16, 32, 64GB
Battery: 3050 mAh.
Camera: 13 MP

With the release of this smartphone model, the myth associated with the fact that “everything Chinese is low quality” was dispelled. Total in 40 minutes from the shelves of an Indian online store Flipkart The Xiaomi Mi 3 line has sold out.

But record sales of new items are only one side of the coin. The Xiaomi Mi-3 smartphone has become the key model and calling card of the young Chinese manufacturer, making it a serious player in the global market and causing a lot of headaches for the marketing strategy of such giants as Apple and Samsung. Worthy 5-inch Full HD screen, good 13 megapixel camera, productive quad-core processor with a frequency of 2.3 GHz and attractive design for humane $300 - all these characteristics really made the buyer reconsider his attitude towards “established brands” and look at the product of a young Chinese company without glasses of contempt.

Having tasted the fruit of success, Xiaomi Tech, led by Lei Jun, has been working on the next generation of the smartphone for a year. Meanwhile, the exponentially growing number of Mi owners are waiting for a new class of devices from the company – tablets. Heating up the market in August 2014, along with a logical link in the evolution of smartphones Xiaomi Mi 4 Lei Jiong presents the company's first tablet.

Did you want a Retina display running Android OS? Do you need a powerful, productive tablet that can handle both office documents and games, but at the same time fits in your doctor's coat pocket? After all, are you looking for an alternative to the iPad mini? The answer to all these requests was the tablet. Xiaomi MiPad.

The new product opens a new page in the history of the Chinese brand, and a few months later an updated smartphone bursts into the market Xiaomi Mi 4, which set a new record in the life of the company.

Xiaomi Mi 4

Release date: July 22, 2014
Price:$320 (16 GB model)
OS: Android 4.4 MIUI 5.0
Screen: 5” IPS 1920×1080 (441 ppi)
CPU: 4-Core QS 2.5 GHz
RAM: 3 GB
Flash memory: 16, 32, 64GB
Battery: 3080 mAh.
Camera: 13 MP

While critics and snobs reproached the young Chinese manufacturer for plagiarism and encroachment on Apple’s design, in 37 seconds After the official start of sales of Xiaomi Mi 4, smartphones simply ran out. Increased performance, a design diet (the new product is thinner than its predecessor) and an impressive screen were offered at an almost unchanged price tag in $320 .

To understand how a young and little-known company, which began its rapid development path in an ocean infested with venerable business sharks, managed to surpass the South Korean giant Samsung in smartphone sales in just 4 years ( 15 million Xiaomi devices sold in Q2 2014 vs. 13.4 million Samsung in China) is not easy. But like everything ingenious, the success of the “Grain of Rice” secret is very simple.

Xiaomi's strategy differs from a number of its “colleagues” in the mobile technology market. During the first two years after the release of the first Xiaomi Mi One smartphone, the Chinese brand sold smartphones at a price that differed from the cost of devices by only 20-30 dollars. The administration chose not the hardware product itself, but the accompanying digital component as the main source of profit.

• The price is almost equal to the cost. Our own store of applications and games, as well as additional optional functions for smartphones, bring significantly more profit than direct sales of the terminals themselves. In the first quarter of this year, another source of profit was opened in the United States - the Xiaomi online accessories store.
• Availability. Xiaomi is always open to communication with the average user, and for those who have become devoted fans of the brand, they have the opportunity to purchase new products in the forefront.
• User = PR manager. Theoretically, today Xiaomi has no need for forced self-promotion of a new product being prepared for release. This work is done for her by dedicated users of social networks and microblogging services. This is confirmed by 50 thousand Xiaomi Mi 2 smartphones sold online Sina Weibo in just five minutes.
• Regular support. If we take into account the fact that at the beginning of the development of Xiaomi it was the operating system, then even after four years of existence, Lei Jiong remained faithful to this guideline. Each user receives an update to the latest firmware, regardless of whether he is a developer or the owner of an archaic device model.
• Hard work. The generally accepted 40-hour work week is rather nonsense for company founder Lei Jiong. The 45-year-old billionaire still works no less than 100 hours per week. We can see the result of such work in the rapid growth of Xiaomi shares.

The Chinese brand Xiaomi is often compared to the American company Apple, and its Lei Jiong is called the Chinese Steve Jobs. It is hardly worth denying such similarities, but such similarities can be perceived not only from the point of view of direct borrowing, but rather from the Chinese response to American arguments.

Everything you wanted to know about the word Xiaomi: what it means, how to pronounce it...

We recently found out that our brand is called in more than twenty different ways in RuNet. Xiaomi, Shiomi, Xiaomi - and these are just some of the options used! Let's figure out how to pronounce Xiaomi correctly?

Let's start with the fact that the most obvious reading - Xiaomi - is incorrect. In the generally accepted Roman Chinese transcription system, the letter X is used for sounds that have nothing to do with "x". In fact, in various regions of China the name Xiaomi pronounced either as Xiaomi, or how Shaomi(with a very soft “sh”). But the generally accepted correct brand name at the international level is Xiaomi, with an emphasis on the last “i”. However, such words with an emphasis on the last syllable are difficult for a Russian person, and the variant with an emphasis on the “o” in the middle has already taken root in colloquial speech. Indeed, it is more convenient to pronounce the brand name in Russian speech this way - so we will assume that this option can also be used.

So, we found out how to read Xiaomi correctly. What does this word mean? Translated from Chinese, it means “Little grain of rice” or “Grain of rice”. I wonder why? There is no short answer to this question. First, you need to understand the importance of rice to the Chinese. Rice is the basis of their diet, a truly iconic cereal for the nation, the meaning of which can probably be compared with what bread means to us in Russia. We may not eat as much bread today, but its symbolic meaning for us is enormous. “Bread is the head of everything,” “Bread and salt,” and many other popular expressions reflect the importance and respect for bread. This is approximately the same role that rice plays in Chinese culture. A rice field requires a lot of careful care, painstaking work, and a huge number of people are employed in working on rice plantations. But this work is the foundation of the well-being of China and its people.

So, the first explanation for the “little grain of rice” is that you need to work hard to lay a solid foundation. In addition, there was obviously a hint that smartphones and other technology today are as popular and necessary for every person as rice, which is on the Chinese table every day.

In addition, explanations of the meaning of the “little grain of rice” often refer to the meaning rice acquired during the Sino-Japanese War in the mid-20th century, when China won a victory “with rice and arms.” And finally, the head of the company, Lei Jun himself, said that the name of the brand also echoes the Buddhist concept, in which XIAO means a single huge grain of rice, which is the size of a mountain!

And finally, we note that there is a special meaning hidden in the Mi logo: it also contains a multi-level meaning. On the one hand, this is an abbreviation of the phrase Mobile Internet(mobile Internet), but there is one more meaning - Mission impossible(mission Impossible). This is because Xiaomi faced constant challenges that only a true winner could overcome!

Who are Xiaomi? In the West, the Xiaomi brand is not as popular as in Asia, and many people in 2014 had no idea what product this Chinese company produces. This may be a consequence of the fact that there are no representative offices in Western countries yet. However, Xiaomi is forced to talk about itself, causing a stir around its devices. In three years, the company has grown into the fourth largest brand in China and became the creator of the most popular Android firmware in the world. So who are Xiaomi and what have they achieved?

History of Xiaomi

Xiaomi ( rus. Xiaomi was founded in April 2010 as a firm dedicated to creating custom firmware for Android devices by former Kingsoft CEO Lei Jun.

Lei Jun - founder of the company

Their goal was to provide additional functionality beyond what Android could offer and to simplify the user interface. The firmware, which was called MIUI, was a huge success and was ported to many devices. As of 2014, MIUI can be downloaded and installed on more than 200 device models in English and Chinese. Even if you are not a developer, a user can easily install MIUI on their smartphone using MIUI Express APK. At the end of 2013, there were over 30 million MIUI users worldwide. Very impressive for such a young company at the time.

MIUI has been compared to Apple's for being as easy to use as it is capable of providing sophisticated services such as cloud backup, an easy-to-use music player, and its own app store. The Xiaomi team has always wanted to make users feel like they are part of the company and happily communicate with them through feedback channels, while fixing bugs, solving optimization problems and adding new features every Friday. Too good to be true? You can try it all yourself, right on your Android device.

Xiaomi enters the device market

In 2011, Xiaomi announced the Mi One phone. Now the company develops not only software, but also its own device models. The Mi One was a unique phone at a great price, ahead of its time. The company has followed this philosophy from day one.

While observers are quick to call Xiaomi the “Apple of China,” Xiaomi prefers to compare itself to Amazone, which also creates powerful software and sells it at cost but relies on its services to make up the bulk of its revenue. Speaking of revenue, Xiaomi alone generated $5 billion in revenue in 2012. There are a couple of similarities between Xiaomi and Apple. Both companies develop software and mobile devices and have a huge fan base. This is where the similarities end. Comparing prices for Xiaomi and Apple smartphones is simply ridiculous. And Apple doesn’t particularly support communication with consumers, unlike Xiaomi.

Xiaomi extension

In 2012, Xiaomi sold a total of 7.2 million smartphones, and in 2013 it sold 18.7 million, overtaking Apple in one quarter. In the first quarter of 2014, Xiaomi sold more than 11 million devices, exceeding the full volume of 2012 and half of 2013. Demand continues to grow due to the high technical level of smartphones, as well as the prices at which they are sold.

International markets such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, where Xiaomi products have become officially available, have begun to receive similar demand as seen in China. Further expansion in markets prompted the involvement of Hugo Barra (former vice president of Google Inc.), whose task was to identify new countries for the sale of devices. Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and India. Today you can see a lot of people there with Xiaomi smartphones. Ultimately, Xiaomi products reached Europe and the USA. Moreover, those who want to buy Xiaomi devices are paying good money in 2014 to import these smartphones into their homeland.

Not just phones

Xiaomi has launched a number of other devices such as Smart-TV, Wi-Fi router and is developing its own tablets. Xiaomi itself estimates that the company could sell more than 60 million units worldwide by the end of 2014. This is three times more than the volume of products sold in 2013.

Even with a huge international fanbase, it remains to be seen whether Xiaomi can stay ahead of the competition by maintaining its marketing style in more mature markets. Until now, everything is going as usual and the company is thriving. And at the end of 2014 it became one of the top three brands of phone manufacturers with such giants as Apple and Samsung. Their first smartphones have some of the best performance in the world at the time of release. A stunning result.

Read the latest posts about Xiaomi smartphones in our section

Not long ago, the first video from the series “Brand History” was released on our channel. Then it was about Huawei. Today we will learn about an equally famous company, Xiaomi. Let's find out where she started and how she went to success.

The biggest difficulty and controversy regarding the company was the correct pronunciation of its name. Many people pronounce the name differently, but the most correct option is Xiaomi, with the emphasis on the last syllable. But, taking into account the peculiarities of the Russian language and our pronunciation, pronunciation with an emphasis on the letter “O” is allowed. You can see more detailed arguments in favor of one or another pronunciation in the video above.

Having figured out how to pronounce the name correctly, you can talk about the history of the company. Xiaomi was registered on April 6, 2010. Its headquarters are located in Beijing, and a key role in the creation of the company was played by Lei Jun, who previously worked at Kingstone from 1992 to 2000, where, in the best tradition of such stories, he went from a simple engineer to the CEO of the company . He has always shown an interest in startups and has made several successful attempts to create his own projects. Among them are the video service yy.com and the online store Vancl.com. Thanks to the success of these projects, Lei was already a billionaire by the time he founded Xiaomi.

At the time the company was founded, Google's operating system was not even two years old, which is why it had many flaws and was not stable. Therefore, to work on his own product, Lei Jun gathered the most promising or already established specialists in the field of electronics. These included representatives of local divisions of Google and Microsoft. All of them were fans of electronics and therefore could work with full dedication to the result, and their experience with Google and Android only increased the importance of these specialists.

At the initial stage, the company's investors included various Chinese and Singaporean venture capital funds, as well as a processor manufacturer.

On August 16, 2010, Xiaomi released the first version of its MIUI firmware based on Android. The name of the firmware consists of two parts “MI” and “UI”, where the first part, according to the creators, means Mobile Internet (mobile Internet) and Mission Impossible (mission impossible). The second stands for User Interface. You can also come across a version of the origin of the name that finds a connection with the words “Me, You, I” and explains this coincidence as an attempt by Xiaomi to emphasize the friendliness of the firmware to the end user.

Firmware versions are divided into two types. Stable versions, which are released approximately once a month, and developer versions, released once a week. It is worth noting that Xiaomi management never planned to link the firmware to its devices, but was ready to give third-party manufacturers the opportunity to use it in their devices. Thus, the number of phones on which different versions of MIUI can be installed is in the hundreds.

Due to disagreements between Google and the Chinese government, the company's services are blocked in mainland China, but they work perfectly outside of it. Users have access to Google Play, mail, maps and other company services. Global versions of MIUI are certified by Google.

Less than a year later, in 2011, the company released the first smartphone under the Xiaomi brand. It was the Xiaomi MI1 model. The model was also known as Xiaomi Phone. It was equipped with a 4-inch display from Sharp with a resolution of 854 by 480 pixels, a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 processor with a frequency of 1.5 GHz, Adreno 220 graphics, one gigabyte of RAM, four gigabytes of internal memory and a 1930 mAh battery. The 8-megapixel camera of the smartphone could shoot video in FullHD at a frequency of 30 frames per second. The interface of the new product was reminiscent of iOS, which was impossible not to notice, but thanks to the fresh MIUI, based on Android 4.2, its functionality was higher. By the way, many people liked this similarity, but many actively criticized it.

The cost of the first Xiaomi smartphone was about $300. This was a fairly low price for its time, and it was achieved due to the lack of offline sales and savings on some minor things. For example, packaging materials. Also, the chosen sales method was very suitable for the current situation. The company collected pre-orders for smartphones and ordered production at the largest factories, without having its own production. The lack of in-house production allowed us to fully concentrate on development, and working on pre-orders made it possible to reduce the risk of not selling out the batch to zero. And these risks also had to be included in the price. Since there were none, the price could be safely reduced, because production and delivery had already been paid for by customers who had pre-ordered.

Largely due to the low price, the demand for the phone was high, but it was also similar to the iPhone, which was very popular in China at that time, and was much cheaper. And the fact that it is our own, native, Chinese, only spurred demand.

A year later, in August 2012, Xiaomi Mi2 was released. The phone was powered by Qualcomm's 1.5 GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro, had 2 GB of RAM and an Adreno 320 GPU. On September 24, 2013, Xiaomi announced that 10 million Xiaomi Mi2 had been sold in the past 11 months. Mi2 smartphones gained great popularity and were therefore sold by resellers in Australia, Europe, New Zealand, the UK and the USA. Official deliveries outside of China began a little later.

In 2013, Hugo Barra joined the company as vice president, having previously worked at Google for five years as a press officer for the Android division. He was forced to leave Google by a conflict with Sergei Brin, which arose after Hugo brought his girlfriend to work at the company, to whom Sergei began to pay too much attention.

The arrival of Hugo Barr at Xiaomi is associated with the rapid growth of the company's popularity and the expansion of the geography of its presence. However, looking ahead, I will say that in 2017 he will leave the company.

On September 5, 2013, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun announced plans to launch an Android Smart TV with a 47-inch 3D interface to be manufactured by Taiwan's Wistron Corporation. The company explained the choice of the manufacturer by the fact that he worked with Sony.

On the same day, the release of the Xiaomi Mi3 smartphone was announced. The new product was equipped with Snapdragon 800 with a frequency of 2.3 GHz, Adreno 330, 2 GB of RAM, 16 or 64 GB of internal memory and a 3050 mAh battery. A special pride of the new product is the 5-inch FullHD display. Sales began in October of the same year. Naturally, Mi3 became the company's best-selling model in 2013. The smartphone is a flagship device, and in the first three minutes from the start of sales, 200,000 units were sold. In total, 18.7 million Xiaomi smartphones were sold in 2013 and another 26.1 million at the beginning of 2014.

In 2014, Xiaomi announces plans to expand beyond China, and the first country chosen is Singapore. A division was created specifically for this purpose to control the launch of products and the company’s activities in the region. The start of sales of smartphones took place in early March 2014. Singapore was followed by Malaysia, the Philippines and India, with plans to expand to Indonesia, Thailand, Russia, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico.

On March 17, 2014, the RedMi Note phablet was introduced, which was known as HongMi Note in some regional markets. It was produced in two versions, the main differences of which were 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of internal memory for the first and exactly twice as much for each indicator for the second.

Other events in 2014 include the purchase of the mi.com domain for a record $3.6 million. And also that in November the company announced plans to invest about one billion dollars in creating its own television content.

According to market research agency IDC, in 2014 Xiaomi took third place in the ranking of the largest smartphone manufacturers, displacing Huawei, which I talked about in the last issue.

In 2015, Xiaomi announced that it would introduce its devices on two of India's largest e-commerce sites as well as offline stores. For the first time in the company's history. On April 24, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun and Vice President Hugo Barra announced Xiaomi Mi4i, which became the company's first smartphone that was supposed to go on sale in India before China. The Mi Band tracker was also announced.

On June 30, 2015, the company announces the start of local production of the RedMi 2 smartphone in Brazil. This marks the first time in its history that smartphones are not assembled in China or sold in Asia. In turn, this indicates the company’s big plans to expand the geography of its presence.

In 2016, more and more new smartphones from the company continue to be released, including Mi5, Mi5S and two new smartphones for the company. 6.4-inch Mi Max and frameless Mi Mix, which caused a lot of noise with its appearance. The phone does not even have a speaker, but works on the principle of bone conduction. But 91.3% of the front panel area is occupied by the screen, all of which is packaged in a fully ceramic body with excellent characteristics, among which are the Snapdragon 821, a 16-megapixel camera, a 6.4-inch display with a resolution of 2040 by 1080 pixels, and 4400 mAh battery.

The more important thing is not whether the smartphone sells or not, but that it is the first product of its kind to reach the shelves. Let's see if other manufacturers pick up this idea.

It should be mentioned that the company produces not only smartphones. The list of devices in the Xiaomi range is much wider. Surely you know many of them, but there are also some that most of you have not even heard of.

Under the Xiaomi brand, action cameras, surveillance cameras, instruments, routers, headphones, lamps, blood pressure monitors, clothing, backpacks, wires, set-top boxes, hoverboards, laptops, tablets, external batteries, fitness trackers, air fresheners, and quadcopters come out of factories. And this is not a complete list of Xiaomi products. This is largely possible due to the company’s chosen approach to business. Not all of these products were developed by company specialists. Many are the result of co-production or collaboration, where Xiaomi puts its logo on another manufacturer's products and both benefit from it. Xiaomi receives a reward for helping with distribution and a bonus in the form of popularizing the brand through more frequent mentions, and its partners greatly increase sales, as buyers trust the promoted brand.

The company basically started from scratch, but now its revenue is $20 billion, and Lei Jun, according to Forbes magazine, ranks 23rd in the ranking of the richest people in the world. The company employs about 8,000 people. Mainly in mainland China, Malaysia, India and Singapore.

This is where the story about the history of Xiaomi has come to an end, but the story was not very long yet. There is still a lot of interesting things ahead of you, including the answer to the question of how, having constant problems, you can still find money to produce and sell phones that are very inexpensive for their characteristics.

Oppo, Vivo, not just a lot, but a lot. Manufacturers from the Middle Kingdom played out in earnest, setting up powerful competition in the world market. They outshine products from more famous brands in their low prices, but many are still wary of the Made in China label. It doesn’t matter to dispel (or confirm) the doubts of those who have not yet bought a phone from Chinese brands - Xiaomi or someone else - in this article. We will talk specifically about the above-mentioned company, although much of what has been said (for example, reviews) can be applied to other manufacturers from China.

Xiaomi - how to pronounce it correctly?

Many who come across the company's products for the first time, or read about them in the news, do not know how to pronounce Xiaomi correctly. Well, it’s unusual for a Russian person to see this x (which has no analogue in our alphabet at all), and even in the company of three vowels in a row - and nothing can be done. Therefore, a small educational program is needed on how to correctly pronounce Xiaomi and read this name.

The Chinese language differs from Russian, primarily in that each hieroglyph does not mean a separate sound, but a whole syllable or short word. For example, Xiaomi in the original is written as 小米. The first character means “small” and, in combination with a noun, indicates the size of the object, age, or origin (猫 - cat, 小猫 - kitten, as “small cat”, “cat cub”). The hieroglyph 米 is translated as “rice”, and the combination 小米 means “small rice”, “rice seed”, in artistic translation - “rice grain”.

To transmit characters using the Latin alphabet, China has adopted the Pinyin standard. According to it, 小 is written as xiao, and 米 as mi. To transliterate pinyin into the Cyrillic alphabet, in the 19th century the Russian priest Fr. Palladius, who preached Christianity in China, came up with a transliteration system that is named after him. Linguists still use this standard. According to him, Xiao in Cyrillic is written as Xiao, and Mi as Mi. That is, Correctly write Xiaomi in Russian - Xiaomi(all kinds of Xiomi, Xiaomi, Jiaomi, Xaomi, Tsaomi, Haomi, Hyaomi, etc. - an error).

As for how to correctly pronounce Xiaomi, it’s a little more complicated. The Chinese language is not Russian, differing only in the dialects of Kuban, the Volga region, the Moscow region, and Siberia, where individual vowels may be pronounced slightly differently. A Russian will understand a Bulgarian or a Pole faster than a Chinese from the southeast will understand a Chinese from the north of the Celestial Empire. Therefore, the pronunciation of the characters 小米 varies from almost pure [s'aomi] - to [sh'aomi] or even [shyaomi]. You can pronounce it according to the principle “how it is heard is how it is written,” but you can try to imitate the Chinese.

Xiaomi - brand history

Xiaomi is a brand of the company 小米科技 (Xiaomi Keji), founded in 2010. At its origins was the Chinese IT specialist and entrepreneur Lei Jun, who together with his partners opened a new business. Initially, the company began developing the MIUI operating system, a modification of Android aimed at creating an infrastructure similar to Apple. A year and a half later, in the fall of 2011, the company released its first smartphone, Xiaomi Mi1, which received warm reviews from the Chinese. A year later, its successor Mi2 was introduced, which was bought by more than 11 million people in a year (10 times more than the first iPhone, the same as the iPhone 3G in history). In addition to sales, the company is related to Apple by the fact that Xiaomi products are assembled by the same Foxconn.

In 2013, Xiaomi introduced the Mi3 model and also announced its entry into the market of televisions and other devices. At the same time, the company’s strategy was announced, designed to ensure its high competitiveness. It is based on savings on associated costs (for example, Xiaomi does not have a large retail network of stores, like Apple or Samsung), a minimum markup (selling handsets almost at cost) and earnings on ancillary services (like space in cloud storage). Thus, Xiaomi, whose brand has become famous outside of China, ensured rapid growth in sales.

In 2014, the budget Redmi series of smartphones was launched, significantly expanding the company’s audience. If the flagship Mi smartphones are “the same as others, but much cheaper,” the Redmi line is “for the same money, but much better.” If the conventional Xiaomi Mi5 has the same capabilities as the HTC 10 or iPhone 6s, then something like the Redmi Note 3 is a device at a budget price, but with solid middle-class characteristics. Thanks to the release of the second and third generations of Redmi in 2015-2016, sales of devices in the series exceeded 100 million units in the summer of 2016. This is more than LG and HTC combined over the same period.

In addition to smartphones, the company currently produces tablets, laptops, TVs, headphones, portable batteries, fitness trackers, routers, rice cookers, cameras, acoustics, bicycles and other equipment. Xiaomi has very serious ambitions; the head has repeatedly stated plans to become the No. 1 smartphone manufacturer in the world. Soon the question: “Xiaomi - what kind of brand?” may disappear on its own, just as people don’t ask this about Samsung or Apple now.

Reviews of smartphones about Xiaomi

Like any other phone from Chinese brands, Xiaomi receives rather mixed reviews. On the one hand, there is a temptingly low price, and on the other, there is distrust in Chinese brands, fueled by periodic reports about the incorrect operation of Xiaomi devices. To summarize, we can identify aspects for which the company’s products are praised, as well as nuances that are criticized.

Advantages of Xiaomi

Xiaomi receives positive reviews mainly for its combination of price and performance. But there are other points for which the manufacturer can be praised.

Price

The price of Xiaomi smartphones is why the Xiaomi brand receives only positive reviews. The cost of the devices is very competitive even against the backdrop of numerous Chinese competitors. You can highlight Meizu, Huawei, ZTE, Oppo, Vivo and others that make similar products for comparison. Then it becomes clear that at the same cost, Xiaomi strives to at least slightly surpass its rivals in terms of hardware. And sometimes even the products from the named companies turn out to be noticeably more expensive, with equal characteristics. Xiaomi's strategy in this regard gives the company an undeniable advantage.

Characteristics

Xioami tries not to compromise when creating their devices. If this is a flagship, then it should have a flagship processor, the fastest one available on the market (like the Snapdragon 821 in the new Mi5S). If this is a Redmi series device, it should have a flagship MediaTek chip or a balanced mid-level chip from Qualcomm (comparable in capabilities). No “cut-down” budget employees to ensure greater autonomy at the expense of performance. Much attention is also paid to build quality; in this regard, budget phones are not much inferior to flagships.

Native OS

Any system can be criticized for objective shortcomings, but only someone who has not used it for a long time (at least a couple of weeks or a month) can be a MIUI hater (as well as fiercely hate Apple technology). The MIUI OS is a little unusual, but its interface is more attractive than the “naked” Android, the settings menu has been expanded and improved, working with customizing the interface (themes, shortcuts, screensavers) will not cause difficulties even for a person far from the world of IT / Many functions, such as fingerprint scanner support, memory clearing in the multitasking menu, advanced security settings appear in MIUI earlier than in original Android.

Russian language, Google services “out of the box” - all this is already in MIUI, no “shamanism” is needed to localize the interface and install PlayMarket. In addition, the developers please with operational updates that come out from once a week to once a month. Not as fast as Apple (which, if a bug is identified, can release an update the very next day), but users do not have to enable “Hachiko mode”, like owners of Chinese smartphones from lesser-known brands. If earlier one could criticize Xiaomi for the slowness of updating the OS version, now they have accelerated. Most current devices have already received MIUI 8 based on the Android 6 kernel, and MIUI 9 with Android 7 inside is actively being developed.