In the global high-end smartphone industry, no company can reverse the rapid decline in sales. But this was broken by the Xiaomi, and it also created a bigger miracle. At the start of second quarter of 2018, the Xiaomi was the world’s fourth-largest smartphone manufacturer, leading in both the largest market, China, and the second-largest market, India. The Xiaomi later developed a wider range of consumer electronics, including a smart home product ecosystem. The latter has connected more than 100 million smart devices and appliances. Monthly active users of the Xiaomi increased to 291.6 million in September 2019. In 2020, Xiaomi successively released two flagship smartphones, the Xiaomi Mi 10 and the Xiaomi Mi 11. This is a very rare behavior in the industry, and it also exposes Xiaomi’s huge “ambition.”
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The World’s Leading Technology Company
After the success of Xiaomi’s high-end road, the most direct impact is the performance and stock price. In the third quarter of 2020, the Xiaomi achieved 46.6 million shipments in the global smartphone market and a 45% increase year-on-year. This is the first time after 6 years that the Xiaomi has once again ranked among the top three in the global market. As a result, Xiaomi’s stock price has soared. Moreover, it also has tripled in just six months. And its market value has exceeded 800 billion yuan. The only result that can be achieved depends entirely on the strength of Xiaomi’s products. When many people think that Xiaomi is an assembly plant, the Xiaomi has already done several major things in silence.
Taking fast charging technology as an example, Xiaomi took the lead in the industry for 120W wired fast charging + 80W wireless fast charging. And it took only less than two years to bring the ultimate charging experience to users. Xiaomi boldly adopts gallium nitride material to make the charger smaller and more efficient. Not having its own factory is the biggest shortcoming of Xiaomi. For this reason, Xiaomi continues to develop its manufacturing industry. Xiaomi’ “Black Light Factory” was completed in Yizhuang, Beijing, in August 2020. In Xiaomi’s future plans, this smart factory is not only a production base, but also a laboratory for pre-researching new processes, new materials, and new products.
The Success of Xiaomi
In the fourth year of its establishment, it became the third in the world, and in the eighth year, it entered the world’s top 500. The company used its strength to go into the annals of history. However, the consequence of the expansionary development is that the Xiaomi has planted a big somersault. Starting in 2015, Xiaomi began to fall behind because technology could not keep up with the growth rate. At that time, Xiaomi was still slightly immature compared to Samsung, which had a history of more than 80 years.
Since then, Xiaomi has learned a lesson – to focus on building product capabilities and to rapidly expand its research and development capabilities. The number of engineers in the camera department alone has increased by six times, from 122 to nearly 1,000. It also set up nine R&D centers in Beijing, Paris, Tokyo, Santiago and other cities. Today, Xiaomi’s R&D team has exceeded 10,000. And it also will expand to 5,000 people in 2021. In addition, in the next ten years, Xiaomi’s aspiration is to continue to replenish fresh blood. And this led the company to the world’s leading technology company. We can see that Xiaomi’s R&D team continues to grow. And R&D investment is also increasing. It is only a matter of time before it becomes a large company like Samsung.
From 2.1 billion yuan (approximately $323 million) in 2016 it reached to more than 10 billion yuan (about $1,5 billion) in 2020. Furthermore, Xiaomi has increased not only its R&D investment in the past four years, but also its determination to smash technology and climb the peak. In order to become the world’s leading technology company, it used the money to recruit talents and also built many laboratories around the world. These laboratories are all over the world, and there are 123 in the Xiaomi Science Park alone. In addition, it includes more than 90 smartphone laboratories.
Xiaomi’s Industrial Fund
Not only that, the company has also established an industrial fund to lay out cutting-edge technology. It also has established upstream and downstream industrial chains. Up to now, it has invested in more than 100 semiconductor and smart manufacturing companies. The R&D investment reached 10 billion yuan mark, although there is still a big gap with Apple and Samsung. However, for a young company that has just been established for ten years, this is already a big number.
Because of these investments, Xiaomi’s technical strength has rapidly improved in recent years. This improvement in technical strength will eventually lead to a leap in product strength. And of course an amazing flagship smartphone such as the Xiaomi Mi 10 has also been able to come out and gain a foothold in the high-end market. The newly released the Mi 11 is the master of Xiaomi’s technology in recent years. It will lead the the technology company and continue to conquer the high-end market at the beginning of the new decade of 2021.