Emergence and Success of Xiaomi in the Transitional Situation of Chinese Smartphone Industry

Purpose - 2013 to 2014 was a transitional situation in which China's Smartphone industry was fluctuating. So in this paper, we will look at the strategies and achievements of Xiaomi, a company that has emerged in this situation and topped the market share. In particular, the purpose of this paper is to analyze why Xiaomi, which is considered a copycat, was able to succeed in the smartphone market four years after entering the market and analyze its strategy. Research design and methodology - Various secondary data are to be used for this study. Using various newspaper articles as well as corporate reports, the company analyzes the transitional situation from 2013 to 2014 and the competitors together. Through these analyses, Xiaomi's strengths are selected objectively and analyzed to identify the factors that made Xiaomi successful. Results - After China's transitional shift in 2014, Xiaomi brought about a 152.3 percent share change over the previous year. In addition, it surpassed Samsung Electronics, which has been the industry's No. 1 player, in 2014, and achieved the No. 1 ranking with a 16 percent share. Xiaomi Mi4's phone had a strong point of maintaining low price while being loaded with high performance. Conclusions - Xiaomi's success is because its price and performance was excellent. Xiaomi's Mi4's specifications were not far behind its competitors', but it was very cheap compared to its competitors' prices. They also valued software and used talent-oriented human resource strategies. Plus, it created the 'Mifan' culture successfully and benchmarked the strengths of its competitors smartly.