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Xiaomi Pledges 'War of Life and Death' Against Apple to Become World's Biggest Smartphone Brand

It really depends on what he meant by biggest. Is it by market share? Or is it by profit margin? Or is it by the number of units sold?

This guy made a big claim but he's actually smart enough to leave himself some wiggle room.

Outside of the wealthy West, Apple's market penetration is limited. To be the biggest smartphone brand, Xiaomi only needs to double its market share. With Huawei being pushed out of the European market, it leaves a void that Xiaomi can fill. It can just focus on China, India, Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe. It's not impossible.

Datastream-The-Biggest-Smartphone-Brands-Worldwide.jpg
 
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FindingAvalon said:
No, it isn’t
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Sure it is. What a consumer wants in a product varies. To say iPhone is the modern smartphone, most would agree with. But many of the top selling models of smartphones today differ vastly from the iPhone which, for better or worse, has been the basically the same since the first iteration.
 
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BF1M said:
I was replying to exactly what he said. That cellphones were niche and only for people in ”high tech”….whatever that means. I had been carrying a cell phone for YEARS before iPhone was ever a wet dream for Steve Jobs. I have the enormous bills somewhere to prove it.


You are completely wrong. Smartphones did exist.
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It was certainly a niche luxury market. People in high tech tended to have Windows CE/Mobile phones. Business people tended to have Blackberries. Just about everyone, including those with cell phones, relied on land lines. Now, hardly anyone has land lines. We're talking enormous life-changing differences. You're arguing the difference in what defines a niche market. Compared to the 7.5 billion smart phones today, what was around before 2007 was peanuts in comparison. Apple revolutionized the smart phone market and made the average person actually want to buy one. Now every kid has one. Now compare that to cell usage before 2007.

I watch a lot of YouTube videos where people tell stories. In so many stories from pre-2007, there would be comments like, "We had to drive to the nearest payphone because few people had cell phones back then." Niche market.

People in high tech = Silicon Valley, tech companies, etc. I worked for Qualcomm at the time and got one of their first CDMA cell phones and even worked on software for cellular base stations for a while back in the early 90's. I also had several Windows CE/Windows Mobile phones. All of them were crap.

EDIT: I re-read what you said. You're confusing smart phones with cell phones. Most mobile phones pre-2007 were not smart phones. They were cheap cell phones that had at most an address book and calling functionality and nothing else. There were a lot more cell phones than smart phones. Even if you counted all cell phones total, not just smart phones, Apple sells as many iPhones in a year than existed in the entire country prior to 2007.
 
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Tricky when you're a chinese company - I think a lot of people will see them as "stooges" for their government and in a straight privacy fight Apple will win by a landslide.....
 
Do Xiaomi devices “phone home” to China? I would be uneasy about using a phone by a Chinese manufacturer, even if purchased here in the USA.
 
tobybrut said:
It was certainly a niche luxury market. People in high tech tended to have Windows CE/Mobile phones. Business people tended to have Blackberries. Just about everyone, including those with cell phones, relied on land lines. Now, hardly anyone has land lines. We're talking enormous life-changing differences. You're arguing the difference in what defines a niche market. Compared to the 7.5 billion smart phones today, what was around before 2007 was peanuts in comparison. Apple revolutionized the smart phone market and made the average person actually want to buy one. Now every kid has one. Now compare that to cell usage before 2007.

I watch a lot of YouTube videos where people tell stories. In so many stories from pre-2007, there would be comments like, "We had to drive to the nearest payphone because few people had cell phones back then." Niche market.

People in high tech = Silicon Valley, tech companies, etc. I worked for Qualcomm at the time and got one of their first CDMA cell phones and even worked on software for cellular base stations for a while back in the early 90's. I also had several Windows CE/Windows Mobile phones. All of them were crap.
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Cell phones were not niche in 2007; even smartphones weren’t. Sure, your 11 year old didn’t have one like today but they were not Bigfoot. Not being a smart ass: were you alive in 2007?
 
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A "smartphone" is simply a device that combines computer and network/internet capabilities with telephony. There were several devices in that category before the iPhone came along. Therefore, NO, Apple did not invent the smartphone.

Did they reinvent the smartphone? Perhaps but "reinventing" is not the same as "inventing".
 
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BF1M said:
Cell phones were not niche in 2007; even smartphones weren’t. Sure, your 11 year old didn’t have one like today but they were not Bigfoot. Not being a smart ass: were you alive in 2007?
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Note I said I was working on cell base station software in the early 1990's. I've had cell phones since the early 80's when they were giant bricks with foot long antennas. How old are you to not know that very few had smart phones back then. Smart phones are not to be confused with all cell phones. They were a tiny subset. I mentioned smart phones while you were commenting on cell phones. Smart phones were a tiny niche portion of total cell phone sales. But even then, just cell phones were not common.
 
I’ll be genuinely impressed if Xiaomi can break into Apple’s market. Chinese phones typically serve the low and mid markets well with razer thin margins. How they expect to compete with the entire Apple ecosystem is going to be something else.
Even if they made a better phone - which I doubt. They still wouldn’t convince me to change as I value the integration with my MacBook, AirPods, Apple TV, HomePod, family stuff.
 
FindingAvalon said:
It’s called reading comprehension. Apple invented the modern incarnation of the smartphone. The thing nearly everyone uses today. Using an Android phone or iPhone is not the same thing using a Nokia N 95, or a Handspring/Palm Treo or a Windows phone or a Blackberry. Smartphones were niche products until Apple got into the phone business and transformed it. Now everyone uses them, whether it’s an iPhone or Android.
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Popularising is not inventing. Funny coming from someone talking so condescendingly about reading comprehension.
 
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tobybrut said:
Note I said I was working on cell base station software in the early 1990's. I've had cell phones since the early 80's when they were giant bricks with foot long antennas. How old are you to not know that very few had smart phones back then. Smart phones are not the same thing as cell phones, too. They were a tiny subset. I mentioned smart phones while you were commenting on cell phones. Smart phones were a tiny niche portion of total cell phone sales. But even then, just cell phones were not common.
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Sorry, for some reason I legit didn’t see your last paragraph. Stupid iPhone screen is too small. When Apple was inventing the smartphone, they should have invented it with a bigger screen.


All jokes aside: in 2007 you are just plain wrong. Cell phones were not rare at all. Take a random sample of tv\movies of that time and you will see them. I had one for years before that, including smartphones, and I was not in high tech as you put it. Yes, they weren’t a dime a dozen nor was the US governemnt just handing them out but they were not rare. That’s just not true my friend.
 
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I admire their tenacity but they’re not even playing the same game as Samsung or Apple. I would love to see more than two brands that are relevant in the market though. The whole duopoly when it comes to smartphone OS’s isn’t good and neither is a duopoly for hardware.
 
BF1M said:
Sorry, for some reason I legit didn’t see your last paragraph. Stupid iPhone screen is too small. When Apple was inventing the smartphone, they should have invented it with a bigger screen.


All jokes aside: in 2007 you are just plain wrong. Cell phones were not rare at all. Take a random sample of tv\movies of that time and you will see them. I had one for years before that, including smartphones, and I was not in high tech as you put it. Yes, they weren’t a dime a dozen nor was the US governemnt just handing them out but they were not rare. That’s just not true my friend.
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Smart phones, not cell phones. I think you have difficulty separating the two. You keep saying cell phones. Very few people outside of business or high tech had smart phones. Anyone outside of that tended to either not have a mobile phone or had a dumb cell phone. Smart phones were a tiny portion of cell phones. Now smart phones make up almost 100% of cell phone sales. They are not the same thing.
 
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russell_314 said:
I admire their tenacity but they’re not even playing the same game as Samsung or Apple. I would love to see more than two brands that are relevant in the market though. The whole duopoly when it comes to smartphone OS’s isn’t good and neither is a duopoly for hardware.
Click to expand...

If there was a time for a “new player” so to speak it would be now though. Apple hasn’t innovated in years with iPhone. Even by the time we get a folding iPhone they will be years behind.
 
Having used several Xiaomi before, both flagship & economic models, they stand no chance. Their play is short-term eye candy, decent price relation hardware / aesthetics, but subpar software support at best, both MIUI & stock android versions.

Don't get me wrong, they still sell tons, but they're light years away from the brand loyalty levels of Apple.
 
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BF1M said:
Sorry, for some reason I legit didn’t see your last paragraph. Stupid iPhone screen is too small. When Apple was inventing the smartphone, they should have invented it with a bigger screen.


All jokes aside: in 2007 you are just plain wrong. Cell phones were not rare at all. Take a random sample of tv\movies of that time and you will see them. I had one for years before that, including smartphones, and I was not in high tech as you put it. Yes, they weren’t a dime a dozen nor was the US governemnt just handing them out but they were not rare. That’s just not true my friend.
Click to expand...
Check out this rather humorous video. It's a comedy video where the TV show 24 took place in 1994 instead. It's hilarious.

youtube . com/watch?v=JMLH_QyPTYM&t=79s
 
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