Forbes:
Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone maker, announced on Wednesday that it is planning to enter ten countries this year. By New Year’s Eve, you should be able to buy the Mi3 in India, Brazil, and Russia as well as Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam. Xiaomi is already selling phones in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.
Cupertino should be worried. Xiaomi’s Mi3 in China is cheaper than the iPhone 5c—1,999 yuan versus 4,488—and better—the Xiaomi phone has a larger and sharper screen and a camera with higher-density pixels. Unless you insist on having a depiction of a piece of fruit on your device, you will go with the Xiaomi offering every time. No wonder Xiaomi outsells Apple in China according to research firm Canalys, shipping 7.3 million phones in the fourth quarter of last year. The American company came in at about 7 million in the period, enough for sixth place behind Xiaomi’s No. 5 ranking.
This is disappointing. The poorest level of journalism, if you can even use that term here. There might be something to this. I don’t have any experience with Xiaomi’s Mi3. But when I read the sentence, “Unless you insist on having a depiction of a piece of fruit on your device, you will go with the Xiaomi offering every time”, all credibility is gone.
If you must read the original, here’s a link.
Forbes, you should be ashamed to have your name associated with this tripe.
I think Forbes hasn’t had any credibility in the past 5 years…
The site is essentially a guest blogging site for those who pay to have their stories in Forbes.
Makes me wonder why Google hasn’t penalised it, since they’re gone after other guest blogging sites in the past… Oh wait.. most of their stories are bad for Apple right?
Agreed this sounds like tripe. BTW was this intended to be a link post? It doesn’t seem to link through to the original.
Don’t link to it. That’s what these morons want.
Daniel, I added a link way down in the article. Hesitated to do that (a terrible article, IMO), but fair is fair. I added the link in the main body of the post.
It’s not journalism – it’s one of their “contributors” – ie. non-staff bloggers. Forbes is a hair’s breadth away from being an open-access blogging site. They’re pretty much surrendered reputation for traffic.
What ignorant journalists don’t realize is that iPhone has 1 million PC class native C/C++ apps which are iPhone’s primary feature. Nobody else has anything like that. Nobody else has real native C/C++ apps, or apps in every category. And the secondary feature of iPhone is no viruses, which is also unique.
Not to mention the cachet and reputation of Apple devices and support. Also unique.
Android vendors are eating each others lunch and not Apple’s. Samsung and HTC should be more worried – these phones offer the same operating system at half/one third the price with near equal specifications.
What gets me is they say you’ll pick Xiaomi “every time” then go on to say in their home country they sold 7.3M vs 7M. That doesn’t sound like every time to me, unless they mean to make us believe 7M people simply wanted fruit on their phone.
-_-
Samsung needs to be worried about vendors like Xiaomi,
Dave, reminds me of that classic “Far Side” strip with dogs. The one with “what you say” versus “what they hear.” I read the piece, and got: “blah, blah, blah, blah, need page views, blah blah blah, write Apple is in trouble, blah blah blah, collect pay check, blah blah blah.”
and they’re plain wrong —
1) bigger screen != better
2) denser number of pixels is not better on a camera sensor. the opposite it true — bigger, better pixels. not more pixels.
what morons.
We Apple folk seem to get our backs up whenever we see an article that appears to be “anti-Apple”. Sometimes we are trapped by the words (or phrases) a writer uses and ignore the message. Is the message important? Could be, but at least it is a valid perspective. I don’t have any experience with Xiaomi either but there are far worse examples journalism than this. Forbes should be ashamed?
I like your blog Jim, but perspective – it’s only a phone! 🙂
Why should Apple be worried when Xiaomi phones don’t run iOS? If anyone should be worried it’s Samsung, HTC, LG and Microsoft.
Actually Forbes has been anti-Apple for a while now.
If anything it’s the lower end Android phone makers who should be afraid of Xiaomi.
Totally agree. Samsung should be shaking in their boots, man.
Yeah probably they are. So is most of the Windoze world. It seems appropriate however to hear the message and not the rhetoric.
Hmm, I wonder what Gordon G. Chang would think of Gruber’s analysis of North Korea’s nuclear program? I’m betting not much since Daring Fireball isn’t a blog about nuclear proliferation. Of course that makes me wonder why Mr. Chang thinks we should put much stock in his analysis of the smartphone industry.
“It’s got a bigger screen, and is cheaper. Ergo, it’s better.”
Does it come with iOS?
“No.”
Then how can you say it’s “better.” It’s different certainly, but “better”?
“It’s got a bigger screen, and is cheaper. Ergo, it’s better.”
Unless the sentence “Cupertino should be worried.” was followed by the sentence “Xiaomi is even more determined to steal ideas than Samsung,” there’s no point in reading any further.
Forbes is a joke, pandering to the masses. Any anti-Apple post will get a lot of clicks. EdisonCarter is right – they’ve had no cred for a while now. Nothing to see here.
And yet China is one of the biggest grey markets for iPhones. Often at double the official cost.
Explain that Forbes
And that’s why it’s bad journalism. They just had to wrap the message in a completely unfounded spin against Apple, when they could and should have picked a number of other companies first and foremost. It’s either twisting of facts or plain bad analysis, either way it’s bad journalism.
yes it’s only a phone, and this is a phone blog. it’s what we discuss here, not world peace. duh.
Exactly (but that doesn’t generate click-throughs for forbes).
Apple would be wise to keep Xiaomi on their radar, but Google and Samsung might have something to be concerned about, IMHO.
Why would Google be concerned? You do realize Xiaomi produces Android phones, right?
http://www.mi.com/en/mi3
Android revenue in China is a widely known problem for Google for a number of reasons ranging from its relationship with the government to the number of Google services apps deployed on Andriod there. Anything that further complicates that situation is a problem.
Xiaomi appears to do just that. MIUI is the preloaded experience on all Xiaomi’s devices (AFAIK). That includes the MIUI App Store, which is something that likely bristles Google as it potentially dilutes Google services installs.
Today’s(?) news that Xiaomi has successfully wooed Google’s Hugo Bara could signal a bright spot for Google. Now Android has a man inside Xiaomi, and Bara might champion Google services inside Xiaomi.
On the other hand, Lei Jun, founder and CEO of Xiaomi might have bigger than to assist Google with its Android revenue problem.
Jun has announced that he will launch an IPO built around his wildly successful Clean Master app. That combined with the fact that MIUI is in its fifth iteration suggest to me that Xiaomi has big plans. Plans that might not have anything to do with Google services.
Go here and look at the last icon in the second section: http://www.mi.com/en/mi3#miui.
MIUI is just like Sense or TouchWiz, just seriously well done.
Hugo left Google last here.
China is a completely different beast to Google for sure but this post is about them entering 10 other countries.
I didn’t say Google should freak out. I said they “might have something to be concerned about”.
Yeah, I hear you. I was just curious why they’d be concerned at all. Amazon doesn’t concern them either.
Android was released this way to be Google’s OS and an OS for anyone else to build products with a great foundation/start. Sure their services may get bypassed but it isn’t of concern since they released it this way.
“Android was released this way”
Recall Ron Amadeo’s “Google’s Iron Grip On Android.” and and Rodney Barnes’s “This Is How Google Is Locking Down Android”, etc.
Since Google pushed Android out the door they’ve arguably changed the game plan. The reason? Control=money.
I do recall those but don’t agree. Yes, Google is providing amazing value by creating their own services and not including them in AOSP but if they did it would be harder for someone to release a custom Android [aka Amazon] without Google’s services.
I definitely agree Google is propping up their Android fork for a stronger position precisely for control purposes. This benefits consumers though since HTC, Samsung, etc can’t get their upgrade stories straight. Google just bypassed it all by having direct access to upgrade services, etc.
“Google is propping up their Android fork for a stronger position precisely for control purposes. This benefits consumers “
It always fascinates me how Google taking control is viewed as a benefit to consumers. The Silver program will of course be viewed this way.
When Apple does this (or starts out that way from the get-go) they’re criticized for cutting off consumer choice.
Any thoughts on this dynamic?
I honestly can’t comment on Silver. I tend to ignore rumor details [keeps me from getting my hopes up]. 🙂
Well, there’s a big difference. Google pushing their services on their fork and reversing the fail that is Android updates is a far stretch from how locked down iOS is. Ask a developer [if you’re not one].
OS limitations like no interapp communication, no keyboard options, locked down Siri, etc and legal policies like forced payments through their system have painted them in a bad corner. Some of the things they were first to do but are now common [ie – 30% fee for app purchases]. It’s just the other stuff they need to fix.
In short, Apple builds iOS as “our way only” and Google builds Android as “our way but do what you wish”.
“Google builds Android as “our way but do what you wish”.”
I’m surprised no one commented on this. That’s simply not true.
By the way, you saw the recent Xiaomi news, right? Xiaomi received 122 million pre-orders for the Redmi Note, but they only had 300,000 available:
http://www.telecompaper.com/news/xiaomi-receives-122-mln-pre-orders-for-new-smartphone–1010326
Feel free to explain how it isn’t true. Android is fully customizable, even the heavily customized one’s like Sense and TouchWiz. Do tell how I’m wrong.
No, I didn’t hear. Wow…122M. That’s gotta be the or one of the biggest preorders I’ve seen.
Does not have IOS so it is worse! Stupid comment just look at IOS 8 touted as a major release and the majority of the new features are copied from Android and other suppliers. If it was the best OS then it would be bring new original functionality not catching up.