The US made China the factory for the entire world. Even your Apple toys have Chinese parts. It can’t understate how naive you are with this statement.
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Xiaomi Pledges 'War of Life and Death' Against Apple to Become World's Biggest Smartphone Brand
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I have purchased several Xiaomi devices including my Aqara smart home stuff. Good quality, fair prices, very responsive customer service.
If they focus more on user experience and create an ecosystem around their products, they can definitely become a serious contestant in many markets.
If they focus more on user experience and create an ecosystem around their products, they can definitely become a serious contestant in many markets.
Not going to happen. People buy Xiaomi phones because they are not expensive phones like Apple. So good luck.
It is almost like Kia trying to compete with Rolls Royce all of a sudden.
I think it is best for Xiaomi to start a new brand for their luxury line of smartphones.
It is almost like Kia trying to compete with Rolls Royce all of a sudden.
I think it is best for Xiaomi to start a new brand for their luxury line of smartphones.
Don't be so hard on the boy. He's just not that eloquent.
This is an excerpt from an article on the LG Prada, touchscreen phone from 2006
There’s no question that the iPhone radically changed the smartphone industry. Decades from now, there will be two eras of mobile technology: pre-iPhone and post-iPhone. However, it’s important to remember that the iPhone wasn’t the first of its kind. Instead, that honor goes to the little-known LG Prada.
The LG KE850 — marketed as the LG Prada as part of a tie-in with the designer fashion brand — wasn’t too dissimilar from the iPhone or future Android phones. It featured hardware buttons on the front underneath a capacitive touchscreen. It had an app drawer, Bluetooth, a camera, a web browser, and obviously sent and received phone calls and text messages.
It also launched a month before the iPhone and even hit store shelves before the iPhone did, which officially makes it the very first mobile phone with a capacitive touchscreen. Apple, though, seems to have stolen all of the Prada’s thunder over the years.
There’s no question that the iPhone radically changed the smartphone industry. Decades from now, there will be two eras of mobile technology: pre-iPhone and post-iPhone. However, it’s important to remember that the iPhone wasn’t the first of its kind. Instead, that honor goes to the little-known LG Prada.
The LG KE850 — marketed as the LG Prada as part of a tie-in with the designer fashion brand — wasn’t too dissimilar from the iPhone or future Android phones. It featured hardware buttons on the front underneath a capacitive touchscreen. It had an app drawer, Bluetooth, a camera, a web browser, and obviously sent and received phone calls and text messages.
It also launched a month before the iPhone and even hit store shelves before the iPhone did, which officially makes it the very first mobile phone with a capacitive touchscreen. Apple, though, seems to have stolen all of the Prada’s thunder over the years.
There must be someone here that can review the native language comments and check the tone... Perhaps this is the direct translation, but that seems a bit overly dramatic for an executive. I'm guessing the intended tone is something closer to "we must compete to survive", which I'd imagine any CEO saying.
it's not naive, I already said it, we can't control where parts are made but we can control whether we want to buy a full Chinese product from a Chinese company
I’m not sure about that. Plenty of people are not only tempted to buy, but actually DO buy non Mac computers.
I think it depends on how we are defining the "smartphone" I'd say, Apple invented the era of touch screen only smartphones, where all user input is through the touch screen.
Edit: I guess the home button, power button (side button), ringer switch, and volume buttons are input to, but y'all know what I mean ?
No, they didn’t invent the touchscreen smartphone either. They invented the iPhone. That’s all. Period.
Actually, InfoGear "invented" the iPhone and I think the name was even being tossed around before them. Apple reached an agreement with Cisco (which had acquired InfoGear) to let them use the iPhone name.
InfoGear - Wikipedia
Having research and development ready for an AR/VR system. Having the LiDAR of iPhones to get people use to and start developing with the technology. Only ones slightly ahead is Facebook and maybe Sony.
I think it’s less about how we’re defining “smartphone” and more how we’re defining “invent”.
Apple popularized touchscreen phones in general, but I think calling that inventing anything is generous considering that they weren’t even the first fully touchscreen phone to market.
Actually, InfoGear "invented" the iPhone and I think the name was even being tossed around before them. Apple reached an agreement with Cisco (which had acquired InfoGear) to let them use the iPhone name.
InfoGear - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
InfoGear came up with the name. For a desktop phone. Lol funny though.
I was just trying to humorously add more to the "who invented the smartphone" debate that looks to still be pretty much going nowhere. This article is about Xiaomi and their desire to become China's biggest high-end smartphone brand yet it seems half of the comments are about who did or didn't invent the smartphone, the modern smartphone, the latest iteration of the smartphone, the 2007 and newer smartphone, etc. etc.
If what he’s holding is an example of one of their models, I suspect that reality might not live up to his expectations!
Yes, this argument is used at Macrumors. Apple invented the iPhone not the cellphone or the smart phone. And I agree as a popular item it changed the product category.
30 seconds of actually using one vs. an iPhone 2G will tell you why. The Prada has no gestures, no multi-touch, no Wi-Fi, and an extremely limited web browser. Here's what their equivalent to Safari looked like:
Before you say: "just zoom out a little": there is no zoom. Nor landscape mode. Nor can you use touch to scroll through the page; you have to tap the arrows in the scroll bar.
Yes, the Prada had a large capacitive touch display, like the iPhone. Other than that, everything about it was very archaic in comparison.
I mean, it's a silly semantics argument.
When the iPhone launched, some argued things like "OK, but this isn't good for enterprise™", "OK, but there's no physical keyboard", etc. These arguments went away for good within two years, as the entire industry realized: oh, this is absolutely what a phone should be like from now on.
That isn't really what I said, though. The Wright Brothers pushed airplanes from "vaguely conceivable" to "actually feasible". Steve Jobs's smartphone (leaving aside how much impact he personally even had on the team) turned smartphones from a curiosity that was mostly used in business contexts, and a bit begrudgingly to a mass phenomenon.
Whether you call those "inventions" is moot. At some point, nothing ever gets invented; everything is an iteration. Ideas also don't matter that much; execution does. Electric cars existed in the late 19th century; the idea that you could in fact make an electric car a superior automobile didn't happen until the early 21st century — in part because battery technology had evolved, but also in part because some people were willing to take bold steps.
Apple didn't invent multitouch, Tesla didn't invent Lithium-Ion batteries and the Wright batteries didn't invent the yaw axis, but all three did innovate enough that entire industries were moved a significant step forward.
Everything I've seen from Xiaomi screams "yeah, we can do that, too", not "that's an interesting new approach".
A smartphone is a device that combines computer and network/internet capabilities with telephony. The definition is not about feature differences (e.g., physical versus onscreen keyboard), popularity, etc. There were several devices that met the definition of a "smartphone" before the Apple iPhone came along. The argument that Apple "invented" the smartphone is therefore, yes, silly.
At best, Apple reinvented or helped popularize the smartphone. Smartphone sales increased significantly after the iPhone came out in 2007 but that included all smartphones. Expanding competition, including launch of Android OS, helped bring prices down and made smartphones more affordable/accessible and popular.
Look at how much Apple cut the price of the iPhone in the months and years after original launch. The original 8GB iPhone launched at $599 but a year later, the price of the 8GB iPhone 3G was just $199. Had Apple (and AT&T) not drastically cut prices, it may have been a different ballgame in the smartphone world.
It seems like that is what you’re saying though… Literally everything you’re saying after the sentence “That really isn’t what I said” is saying that.
Inventions happen in the small things. The things that nobody “unskilled in the art” would ever notice. I think you’re right that “at some point, nothing ever gets invented“ or, equivalently I might say, “at some point everything is an invention”. The word invention is something we use to romanticize individuals and their incremental steps along the path of continuous improvement. Sometimes those small improvements are tipping points that make the larger system more practical and effective— but that’s not an invention of the larger system and they wouldn’t have happened without the long line of incremental steps before them.
I can’t think of a product category that was ever invented, certainly not a successful one. I think that’s because if you just decide to create a whole new product nobody ever heard of you’re likely to wildly miss the mark. Success in business comes from taking what people like and fixing what they don’t.
Apple popularized the smartphone. We might even say they revolutionized the smartphone. They didn’t invent it.
It’s notable that the truly new things, the things in the bowels of science before it ever becomes engineering, are called “discoveries”. Einstein didn’t invent Relativity, he discovered Relativity… We seem to believe that the truly big discontinuities in thinking aren’t created, they’re found.
We all start by imitating others until we develop the skills and courage to try something new. And we have no idea, or at least I don’t, how much innovation is out of sight in their devices and processes. “Made in Japan” went from joke to threat in a few short decades.
It seems a bit rash to say Xiaomi will never invent anything….
Right, but at the point, it's really a meaningless debate over semantics. Did Apple invent the smartphone with the iPhone? Debatable. Did Nokia invent it a decade earlier with the Communicator? Debatable. Did Apple (Newton), Psion and Palm (Pilot), another half-decade before that? Debatable.
The iPhone is as close as it gets to defining what virtually any major cellular phone since looks like, and how they work. You might as well simplify that assertion to "Apple, with the iPhone, invented this product category".
Sure, but that's a different thing. Relativity is just part of how physics work. No human was involved in creating the concept; it existed for billions of years before us, and will continue to after us.
Technology, OTOH, doesn't get "discovered". Optics, and the way they work, existed, and were discovered over time. But the microscope wasn't. Radio transmission existed without us, but a mobile phone required our innovation.
It is, but unless their incentives change drastically, I see no reason to believe otherwise.