Skip to Content

Xiaomi

Steve Jobs jolted the mobile-phone business by introducing a device that everyone had to copy. Now his unabashed admirer Jun Lei is shaking up the enormous Chinese market with smartphones that cost much less than comparable devices.

XIAOMI DATA FROM CANALYS, XIAOMI

Lei is founder and CEO of Xiaomi, which is just four years old but already one of the top six smartphone vendors in China. It entered the business in 2010 by releasing a custom Android operating system, known as MIUI (pronounced “me UI”), whose interface looked a lot like the iPhone’s. It was hugely popular among enthusiasts who love to modify a phone’s functions. A year later, Xiaomi began selling a series of phones that had high-end specs but sold for roughly half of what rival devices were going for in China.

One reason the prices are so low is that Xiaomi (pronounced “zho-me”) sells at or near cost and makes its money when customers pay for its cloud-based services, such as messaging and data backup. The company is also skillful at timing its sales. It presells a very limited number of devices, which invariably sell out, attracting more interest. By the time the later buyers get their devices, manufacturing costs have declined significantly for Xiaomi.

Lei has cultivated a Jobs-like image, all the way down to his personal wardrobe and product announcements. His fans call him “Leibs” (a combination of Lei and Jobs), though his detractors also use the term in mockery. Regardless, his company is getting itself in position to sell a big chunk of the billion Android phones expected to flood the developing world in the next few years as prices keep falling.

“Even a pig can fly if it sits in the right spot during a whirlwind.”

—Jun Lei

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.