Xiaomi, a privately owned Chinese Electronics company has recorded intense growth in recent years with their beautiful high end smartphones released to buyers at low cost. Xiaomi has also succeeded in raising a whopping $1.1 billion from investors, which pegged its valuation at $45 billion, slightly higher than Uber’s $40 billion-plus value. Xiaomi is also the 3rd largest smartphone maker. Its strategy is targeting populated nations like its own home country China, Indonesia ad India with plans to reach ten more countries soonest.
This strategy has driven down sales of smartphone giants like Samsung and Apple due to similar characteristics with the latter. The startup is also worth nearly three times Lenovo, which is the world’s top PC maker and which earlier this year acquired Motorola to give it additional smartphone heft.
Despite the huge success, Xiaomi still faces challenges related to expansion in developed markets because of concerns over intellectual property. Ericsson has sued Xiaomi for infringing on patents earlier this month, prompting a ban oof sales in India. The ban has been lifted temporarily but the legal dispute continues.
While Apple makes a large profit from the sale of high-profile devices such as the Iphone6, Xiaomi sells more than 1,000 products at or near cost in a quest to generate a small amount of profit on each item. Its primary goal is to get more devices in people’s hands in order to sell them software and services riding on top of those devices.
