Once dismissed as a cloner, now a growing number of phone brands are rushing to copy China’s Xiaomi. What they want to replicate is the secret sauce that has propelled the young Beijing company from zero to 60 million phones sold per year in just four years.
The recipe to that secret sauce, however, is a lot more complex than it appears. To those who haven’t yet come to understand Xiaomi, it seems that it’s just copying Apple at bargain basement prices – but that kind of assessment is way off the mark. “[T]he key to understanding Xiaomi [is] they’re not so much selling smartphones as they are selling a lifestyle,” explains Ben Thompson, a writer who blogs as Stratechery, in a recent article.
That lifestyle is aimed primarily at young people. It’s made up of a mix of elements that no other gadget maker has blended together before, all of which help engender a sense of ownership for fans of the brand – a strong sense of community, social marketing, listening to and incorporating user feedback, an emphasis on adaptable and personalizable software, and surprisingly powerful phones at low prices. Xiaomi has also pioneered online-first sales.
Now that some rival phone makers have seen how Xiaomi puts this together and makes it work, they’re trying to emulate the entire package.
A blank slate
In India, homegrown phone maker Micromax recently created a sub-brand, called Yu, using what it’s learnt from Xiaomi.
Micromax, unlike Xiaomi, is no newcomer. It’s already India’s second biggest phone brand, some distance behind Samsung in terms of sales. But the Indian firm opted for a fresh start with Yu, using some Xiaomi-esque strategies like online flash sales to go after younger consumers.
The first Yu phone, the Yu Yureka (pictured below), which came out in mid-January, has a totally different Android skin from other Micromax phones, opting for the cool and customizable CyanogenMod to give it an edge in the battle against Xiaomi and its slick Android-based OS.
Other established brands are launching spin-offs too, realizing that they need a different strategy – in addition to separate models and marketing – in order to appeal to younger (and pickier) smartphone buyers. Lenovo is set to launch the Shenqi sub-brand in April, using web-only sales, in an attempt to pry Chinese shoppers away from Xiaomi. “We want to build a pure internet-oriented model,” said Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing in a recent Bloomberg interview. “If we do this kind of model within the current Lenovo, there is a lot of conflict with existing channels and carrier partners. With a different team mechanism, we can do whatever we want.”
It’s a blank slate. A way for Lenovo to act like a startup, to get away from the fusty image conjured up by many kids of their dad’s breadcrumb-encrusted Lenovo laptop.
It seems rather lazy to dismiss Xiaomi and its followers as rip-off artists. What they’re doing in hardware & software is more interesting.
— Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) January 12, 2015
China’s Coolpad has already done the same thing, shedding its smartphone-for-farmers image with an edgier and more spritely brand called Ivvi.
It’s too early to tell if these sizable companies have got all the ingredients to make a new brand that clones Xiaomi in the hope of battling Xiaomi. Making a powerful phone that costs slightly less than you’d imagine is a good start, but it’s only the most tangible aspect of what has made Xiaomi a break-out success in the past few years.
See: OnePlus One is China’s coolest smartphone… for now (REVIEW)
Fans
OnePlus, which is born out of China’s Oppo, is keen to emulate Xiaomi too. OnePlus launched in May 2014, going immediately for international roll-outs, in contrast to Xiaomi’s more cautious selection of Asian markets.
OnePlus, coming several years after Xiaomi first appeared, is carefully building up a brand that owners will care about, fostering a community that encompasses a kind of lifestyle. Just as Xiaomi did from the start, OnePlus has a lively forums section on its homepage with posts, created by its customers, with titles like “Pinoy fan club” (the company hasn’t yet started sales in the Philippines). The forum feels more like Reddit in places. “A girl said she loves me, what do I do?” reads another post topic that has so far prompted 17 pages of replies.
While it’s debatable whether Apple had any hand in cultivating the “Apple fanboys” who idolize the brand, it’s evident that Xiaomi did so very deliberately, starting back in 2010 before even its first phone came out. That’s when it started a community, first based around a series of forums, of what it now calls “Mi fans.” These supporters are a vital part of the recipe.
When OnePlus founder Pete Lau first launched the brand, he said that “a lot of the phones on the market today […] are just unsatisfactory – they’re either ugly or bulky or poorly built.” That used to be true of phones costing just over US$300, but models like the Xiaomi Mi4 and OnePlus One have made a speciality of giving a lot of bang for your bucks, thereby exposing how over-priced are the mid-range models from brands like HTC, Samsung, and Apple.
OnePlus sold 500,000 phones in its first six months. While that number isn’t yet enough to give the likes of Samsung or Xiaomi sleepless nights, the favorable reviews for the OnePlus One phone (pictured above) – even in The New York Times – have validated Lau’s vision for better phones and shown that Xiaomi’s path is the right one for hip phone makers to follow.
Indonesia’s Himax is trying the same ploy. Some would say that it’s cloning Xiaomi too literally, right down to copying the Chinese firm’s minimalistic cardboard packaging.
Samsung is the giant at the top of the beanstalk
Whatever the extent of these young brands emulating Xiaomi’s strategies, things like online sales, fan clubs, and more powerful budget phones appear to be the preferred plan of attack for many in the battle against Samsung. While Samsung still leads in India and Indonesia by a wide margin, and in China by a thinner thread, it’s clear that these tactics – fighting fire with fire – are also needed to take on Xiaomi as it ventures into emerging markets like India, Indonesia, and eventually Brazil.
Xiaomi’s phones are not about to win awards for original design, but the way it sells them is shaking up the smartphone industry.
Summary: 5 new phone makers hoping to replicate Xiaomi’s success
- Yu Yureka (by Micromax)
- Shenqi (by Lenovo)
- Ivvi (by Coolpad)
- OnePlus (born out of Oppo)
- Himax
See: 15 new Asian smartphone makers hoping to crush Samsung and Apple
This post Phone brands around the world are now rushing to emulate Xiaomi appeared first on Tech in Asia.
Phone brands around the world are now rushing to emulate Xiaomi
No comments:
Post a Comment