
How China's Xiaomi Does In A Week What Apple Does In A Year: Update Devices - daniel_solano
http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2013/10/22/how-chinas-xiaomi-does-in-a-week-what-apple-does-in-a-year-update-devices/
======
JonFish85
100,000 phones a week? Big deal. Just over 5 million a year. If we're
comparing to Apple, Apple sold 125M last year [1].

And 52 different version numbers. Support must be a nightmare, if it even
exists outside of just "we'll give you next week's version".

These must be pretty minor changes if they're happening every week. How many
of them are being passed through rigorous QA? I'm curious how many of the
batches are just tossed due to a small error?

And man, would it suck to order a phone and then have it be obsolete within a
couple of days of having it be delivered.

[1] [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57540705-37/apples-
fiscal-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57540705-37/apples-
fiscal-2012-in-numbers-125m-iphones-58.31m-ipads/)

~~~
rednukleus
What kind of warped reality do you live in that only selling 5 million units a
year while updating the hardware every week is "no big deal"?

Regarding rapid obsolescence, this seems to work very well in Asian markets.
They typically release a far greater number of devices, because there is a
strong market for second hand phones, and many people like to keep switching
to the latest thing.

~~~
JonFish85
The 5 million by itself is fine. It's the comparison to Apple that seems out
of whack to me. The article doesn't compare them to a startup, it compares
them to one of the biggest companies in the world. If you do that, you invite
criticism on the comparison, which is what I gave.

~~~
kkowalczyk
Xiaomi is 3.5 years old, currently only sells in China and in Chinese market
it has already overtaken Apple in market share.

I think comparing them to Apple on the basis of sold phones in China is
justified.

Looking into my crystal ball, I further think that their strategy is so
brilliant and their execution is so good that we're witnessing the rise of a
new giant.

Give it 5 years and they'll be in the same league as Apple and Samsung on a
world-wide basis, not just in China.

------
scott_karana
I used their Android derivative, MIUI, and found it to be very pretty, and
featureful, but _very_ unpolished. Seemingly unchanged functionality from the
regular Android OS would not function correctly, in addition to some of their
added features, and I eventually stopped using MIUI because of the constant
minor bugs nipping at my heels.

I hope their hardware iteration doesn't end up the same way.

------
zwieback
These engineers must be from a different species - my experience with HW is
that it's very hard to change anything in a week, especially when you're
building 100000. Then again, they have everything under one roof so they can
probably just walk over to the PCB designer and then walk some more to the guy
setting up the manufacturing equipment, who has reels of every known component
in stock.

I'm curious what they change but web searches just return the same three sound
bites.

~~~
bluedino
Forbes has been hit and miss lately. For every good article they do about
tech, they do some short, sensationalist 'China is taking over' piece like
this.

~~~
AJ007
Comments from actual users of these phones would be far more informative.
Karma to scott_karana for mentioning his experience with their version of
Android.

~~~
smith7018
MIUI is actually a fairly well-known (and used) Android variant. Fun fact: it
was supposedly based on iOS' looks but branched off into their own direction
after ICS. Since then, iOS 7 was (comically, IMO) compared to MIUI and people
believed Apple was inspired by it. It was even sold on a phone that was very
iPhone-esque:
[http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/08/xiaomi...](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/08/xiaomi-m1-launch2011-08-16-5.jpg)

------
sologoub
Maybe consumption patterns are extremely different in that market, but it
seems that continuously changing hardware of a phone is not really that
consumer friendly.

My current Android phone (Galaxy Nexus) is almost two years old and my current
iPhone is a 4S (running iOS 7). I will soon be upgrading both, but I can't
really see myself changing devices more of then than that. It's a convenience
and cost issue. Even if you make the data transition seamless and remove the
cost barrier, you are still left with limit of how often people will want to
change their routine.

Needless to say, the comparisons like this are meaningless, because Apple is
much more than a fancy set of hardware. iOS 7 update made my iPhone 4S camera
feel like a brand new piece of hardware, when all I did was update the
software...

------
kefka
Im not surprised.

I've found that Chinese phones are very good quality and exceptionally great
price. Not only phones, but I've also found that Android tablets are priced
literally at 'throw away' prices.

For example, I just priced a 1.2GHz quad core android tablet running Android
4.2, 512MB ram, 4GB storage, with SIM slot, for $64. _1

I also bought a phone from China. It's a quad 1.4 GHz, 1G ram, 16G storage, 2
sim slots.. It's crazy fast, the size of a Galaxy Mega, and was $200. So yes,
if you do choose to buy from China, you cut out the likes of the Wal-Marts and
Best Buys. Instead, you can buy directly from the manufacturer and pay 1/2
what you would normally pay. And with some of these prices, they are
approaching technology that I don't hurt much if I lose.

Now, please be aware, if you buy a Clone phone from China, you'll likely get
ripped off. They are made intentionally to defraud and deceive. They do that
to the poor saps whom buy them, as well as the people whom they pawn them to.
And their components are usually pretty bad. If you stick with the obvious
Chinese phones, you'll be much safer in the long run. Those are bought by the
Chinese, whom see cheap as a bad thing. (Of course, the Chinese swoon after
Samsungs and iPhones anyways...)

_1 : [http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Cheap-RK76-7-TFT-Touch-
Screen...](http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Cheap-RK76-7-TFT-Touch-Screen-
Android-4-2-2-Rockship3026-Quad-Core-Cortex-A9-1/1392140095.html) Unsure if
reputable dealer, low sales numbers. Beware. Find at least 1000 sales.

------
heifetz
Here's an experiment. Take all the forum members on macrumors and crowd source
a new phone by taking all of their ideas. See what kind of mutant non-
functioning phone results from a democratic process. One of the reason why
Apple and Google's phones and OSs are successful is because there are
visionaries (Ives, Jobs, Rubin) at the top coming up with new ideas, instead
of taking a poll and purely going with consumer feedback.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Benevolent Dictator > Design By Committe

~~~
gbog
This is a false truth a see too often. Many products, human creations, are the
result of the accretion of many contributors over time. Think cities, the
bible, food recipes, most long form narratives from middle ages, etc.

So, no, your equation is not true, neither is the reverse.

------
vzhang
If their products are crap, who cares how often they release them? But take a
look at what they are offering for $300:

Specs:
[http://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_mi_3-5678.php](http://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_mi_3-5678.php)

Design:
[http://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_mi_3-pictures-5678.php](http://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_mi_3-pictures-5678.php)

~~~
casperc
I wonder why they put a barometer in there. Is that actually useful? I would
love to have a thermometer in my phone, but I can't think of a use for a
barometer that isn't bettered by an online weather service.

~~~
mtber
Not sure how they are using it but from what i understand it can be used with
gps to help locate you faster.

------
nichtich
It's mostly a marketing hype. Xiaomi is known for it's style for "releasing" a
phone that's really cheap for the specs, but limiting the supply until when
the price for the hardware drops. Hardcore fans who closely follow the company
may get the phone early and brags to their friends about how good the phone is
compared to the price thus driving up the hype, but when average consumer can
actually get the device it'll not be so impressive anymore. Now with this
reputation more widely known then before, they may be trying to lessen the
doubt by promising "weekly" update of the hardware. Thus when they finally
have a big enough margin to supply at scale, people won't think the phone is
"old".

------
cantankerous
I find it really impressive that a company can roll out incremental changes to
100,000 devices in a week. I wonder if the author somehow got it mixed up and
the updates to each weekly device aren't necessarily a week old. It's just
rolling updates hitting every batch every week. That would make a little more
sense. I think some other people have said in the comments that some changes
just wouldn't fit into a week's time span. I suppose it would also make sense
if all the changes were somehow tiny in nature.

------
37prime
Company like Apple COULD make different phones every week but there is no
reasons why they wold want to do it. It is highly impractical for many
reasons.

Imagine IF Apple just made one iPhone in different color each week. Then
imagine if Apple tweaked the internals each and every week. They’d be
supporting at least 52 different versions of iPhone every year.

The weekly “design, build, redesign and build” process should not replace a
thoughtful R&D process.

~~~
kkowalczyk
So if we apply your logic to software, a "thoughtful R&D process" of yearly
releases (also known as "waterfall software development") is better than agile
process of shipping frequently and tweaking your future features based on
customer feedback.

Etsy ([http://codeascraft.com/2011/02/04/how-does-etsy-manage-
devel...](http://codeascraft.com/2011/02/04/how-does-etsy-manage-development-
and-operations/)) and just about any web dev shop disagrees with you.

There's nothing different about hardware.

In fact there's a story about a guy who build human-powered airplane not by
planning harder but by increasing the frequency of iterations
([http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663488/wanna-solve-
impossible-p...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663488/wanna-solve-impossible-
problems-find-ways-to-fail-quicker)).

This is exactly the idea behind Xiaomi's hardware and software efforts:
improve faster by learning faster from more frequent iterations. Apple can
only learn if their stuff works every year. Xiaomi can learn something every
week.

~~~
glassheart
If a website makes an update, all users will get the new version as soon as
caches expire. Something like an iOS update can also reach a large majority of
users within weeks. Hardware that you've already shipped will remain in
customer hands, obviously unchanged, yet still need to be supported through
the warranty period and beyond. I don't understand why you would say that's
nothing different. Your QA department would need to test software against many
more versions of hardware, your software engineers would have to fix those
bugs, and your after-sales support staff would have a harder time as well.

Also, it's not as if other companies ship exactly the same hardware throughout
the lifecycle of a product. New suppliers are added, parts that have been
identified as a return driver are reworked, and even major mid-life changes
(consider the slim versions of each PlayStation as an example) happen as a
matter of course.

------
caycep
This seems to me to reflect the difference between two cultures. China's tech
ecosystem is still fairly young - I daresay it's like the old days of Apple in
a garage, the old HP, etc. I think this post on Bunnie Huang's blog explains
it (or at least explores it) a lot better than I can:

[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?cat=20](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?cat=20)

------
brianbreslin
How are these changes implemented? Are they things that require moving
buttons? Recasting dies? Or are they things like "this model april4-11-2013
has a malfunction charging on USB?" And it's fixing circuitry? This seems
unrealistic, even if it was just releasing a new color.

------
enscr
Reading the article makes me feel that Xiaomi was a fun experiment started by
the billionaire founder that turned out to be a successful venture.

It sounds very interesting to innovate hardware at that pace... and why not.
Taking input from the users with such a fast turnaround is awesome too.

------
devx
If only Google did the same with all Android devices, or at least a big
"Google-approved" subset of them. They need to bring over the ChromeOS update
system to Android, especially now that Chrome and Android have the same guy
running them.

~~~
gohrt
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.gms)

------
adamb_
What are they changing? Are we talking "this week's model has softer bezels"
or "this week's model has a new FM radio"?(which they do btw.)

------
moca
It is a common misunderstanding. Xiaomi updates its beta channel once a week,
and stable channel once a month. It is still an amazing pace though.

------
snowwrestler
The whole point of the iPhone is that it is a pocket-sized general purpose
computer, so that updates can happen via software instead of hardware.

That was like the 5th slide in the original launch presentation.

If you have change hardware to offer users an incremental feature, you're not
really competing with the iPhone.

