Stop calling Xiaomi “the Apple of China” and here is why

Stop calling Xiaomi “the Apple of China” and here is why

As a Chinese person living and working in the western world, it is unlikely avoidable to hear people talking about, in a negative or positive way, how Chinese people can pretty much copy everything. Honestly, myself joke about how much lack of creativity we are while being unintentionally proud of the powerful capability of C2C (Copy-to-China) that Chinese people uniquely own: it is already amazing to copy something so well; and it’s even better that this thing can be tailored so well that it works perfectly in the local market. Xiaomi is such a brand well-known for starting its business by copying Apple but technologists really need to recognise that the brand has a bigger ambition, which leads its business into a different arena.

Try go on Xiaomi’s website. If you were not in China, you would probably be automatically directed to its global website where you can see six product categories: phone, tablet, TV, smart band, batteries and headphones, like every other normal hardware brand. Each of these products clearly embeds a simple aesthetic design just like Apple or any other trendy international brands.



If you googled Xiaomi, you probably would find bazillions of angry Apple fans shouting for copyright protection or simply complaining about Chinese people. But hey, hold on, check out Xiaomi’s Chinese website here.

What do you see!? It’s a much more complicated website with a much more diversified product portfolio and services! If you still consider Xiaomi as a tech plagiarist, you might be fooled by its past — Xiaomi has a bigger ambition and it has been working on this since the brand started making routers in 2013.

This year in January, Xiaomi launched its new product for home — Xiaomi Smart home family set which includes Xiaomi multi-functional gateway, body sensor, door/window sensor, and wireless switch. Users can supervise and monitor their home environment through Xiaomi’s smart phone application. When Wired or Business insider kept reporting on Xiaomi’s strategy which is to sell cheap smartphone to everyone. Despite the fact that this remains true, it is important to acknowledge that Xiaomi has already quietly built up its own business model with a future emphasis on Smart home technologies.

Xiaomi’s first so-called smart home product was a socket. The brand noticed an annoying fact that people’s tables nowadays are always messy because of cables and plugs. The brand was inspired from this and thus designed a socket to solve the problem. Nobody within Xiaomi’s design team has expected that this ameliorated version of a normal traditional hardware turned out to be extremely successful in China. Since then, Xiaomi developed and launched products like smart remote controller, water filter, air cleaner etc. Only till the end of last year, when the brand released a smart control centre, its appetite for competing in Smart home technologies was clearly revealed. Xiaomi was very careful in every step it made in this area. By now, besides the products mentioned above, Xiaomi’s home products also include body scales, bulbs, blood pressure monitor, stereos, lamps.

On top of continuously inventing and releasing new products that lie perfectly in line with Xiaomi’s eco-chain technologies, Xiaomi recognises its limit as a mobile phone device maker. Therefore, the brand entered into a partnership with a leading Chinese home electronic appliance brand Meidi to install its technologies through an intelligent module into traditional home electronic products. As a Chinese consumer, I can see myself or my families buy the idea.

I am a loyal iPhone owner. When Xiaomi started getting popular in China while me being abroad swallowing criticism on various Chinese copying behaviours, I was emotionally against this brand and thought this was another repetitive story where I had to defend my country for what it had to do in order to advance. However, Xiaomi’s story reminded me that the world, as well as myself, need to give a bit more patience or even forgiveness to a business with a less original start; and to a developing country with its own struggles and confusions.

The next time when I visit home, it’s time to get myself some Xiaomi smart home products.

(This article only represents my personal opinions. The pictures used here all belong to Xiaomi.)

Written by

Chen (Matty) CHANCE