
Xiaomi’s One More Thing - k-mcgrady
http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/30/xiaomis-one-more-thing/
======
sida
I might be at odds with the crowd here. But why wouldn't you copy (especially
if you are in an environment where you can get away with it)

Isn't "copying" / "cloning" the greatest hack of all? Billions of dollars have
gone into the design of smartphones. Why would you go and invest more and play
the catchup game? in something that established players are very good at?

The innovation of xiaomi is not in smartphone itself. But how it is
manufactured to achieve such value and the process which it is sold.

So if I put it in terms that startup people that find acceptable: cloning
apple is just an great bootstrap mechanism. They are hugely profitable on the
back of apple's marketing budget.

If they achieve greater prominence globally, they inevitably will have to
innovate on the phone itself, but then they will also have the budget to do
so.

~~~
chaostheory
> But why wouldn't you copy

Because of pride, especially if you love your work

~~~
ksk
In what other context does pride preclude using others' works? Certainly not
in Science, Mathematics or Engineering. It's the right thing to do in most
other contexts - you stand on shoulders of giants.

~~~
chaostheory
I don't know I just feel that attempting to photocopy something because you
lack passion and you're too cheap to spend time and money on r&d is different
from using someone else's work (that they've shared) to make something better.
It's the difference between doing something to get rich and doing something
because you love doing it, and making something big; something worth being
proud of.

This said, I know the culture in Asia so I don't blame the individual.
(Personally when I first got here to the States, a lot of things were a
culture shock.) Things are very different in Asia for both better and worse.
Blatant copying is just one of the worse aspects which is a symptom of a
bigger problem. What do you expect in terms of creativity from a country of
drones who work to produce more homogenous drones? What do you expect from
drones who don't value anything other than money (and family)? There's no
pride in being great and making something great, which is different than just
being rich. Unless things change culturally, this is why China has a very low
chance of making anything awesome, unless they copy Singapore where they
import the West's talent and creativity, then the odds improve a little.

------
GuiA
There's definitely a cultural thing at play- based on how companies behave, I
feel like it's more socially acceptable in China to copy. In the west, there's
a huge stigma around it: for example copying in school is one of the worst
offense you can commit- whereas I remember in grad school, all the chinese
students would group up together before class and cross-check their answers
with one another. This is anecdotal, but I feel like it lines up with what we
see on the corporate side of things, and it makes sense that in a Confucian
culture copying would be more acceptable than in the individualistic western
cultures.

That being said, I think it's a losing strategy in the long run for consumer
devices manufacturers. In the short term it's definitely a gain- your phones
are way better than they would be otherwise, because you're mimicking the
best. However, Apple puts a lot of thought in its designs, and you can bet
some of it is long term thinking (e.g. designing components/molds/etc. a
certain way even if it's a bit more expensive because you can reuse them for
other devices). When you're simply copying, you don't have access to all of
these hidden variables, and it makes it very hard for you to build a viable
long term strategy.

It's definitely possible to copy competition in order to get the process etc.
right, and then to spin off and start being original yourself - see a lot of
Japanese electronics companies from the 70s/80s/90s, for instance. That being
said, it's not easy to pull off, and it means you need internal designers who
can come up with something better than what you've been copying all along.
We'll see if that's the case for Xiaomi.

Side question: are there famous, internationally recognized Chinese industrial
designers? (along the lines of Dieter Rams, Jony Ive, etc.) I feel like I've
never heard of any, but I can't tell if it's because the talent isn't there,
or because the western media never reports on them, or because it's more of a
collective culture where there wouldn't be the potential for a single
individual to rise, or something else altogether. In a general manner, I'd
love to read more about what being a designer is like in the more group-minded
Asian cultures.

~~~
crdoconnor
>There's definitely a cultural thing at play

This is not a cultural thing. It's just a stage in the country's industrial
development. Once upon a time (when most people on HN were not alive) Japan
was the country that rolled out cheap knock offs.

Then, once they became good enough at it, they graduated to the stage of out-
innovating the industries they were previously rolling out cheap knock offs
for.

Many western countries _including America_ followed the same cycle during the
industrial revolution(s).

>That being said, I think it's a losing strategy in the long run for consumer
devices manufacturers

It's not a long run strategy for China any more than it was for Japan. It's
not even a strategy, really - it's more of a "market configuration", actually.

Chinese companies have a currency advantage but less capital and brand equity
available to take riskier (innovative) gambles. So it makes sense to go the
cheap knockoff route. Once they have brand equity, capital reserves and have
lost their currency advantage they will out-innovate or they will die.

They're already a long way along this road. A "Xiaomi" would never have
happened 5 years ago. The idea that a Chinese company could rival the
industrial design of an Apple phone was seen as something close to laughable.
10 years ago they could barely even consider designing a smartphone at all.

------
ilamont
I am using a Xiaomi “Redmi” (紅米) in Taiwan. I was blown away by the interface
they cooked up — it’s the slickest Android UI I have seen so far. It
definitely takes cues from Apple, but I also feel that Xiaomi has done some
solid design work of their own — for instance, the icons for basic functions
and system apps are original and quite effective.

But in other areas it doesn’t come close to Apple. The hardware looks and
feels more like some of the midrange LG phones I’ve used in the past, and
compares poorly not only to the iPhone but also recent Samsung and HTC phones.
I’ve also discovered a lot of buggy behavior that I’ve never seen in any
Android device, including an inability to delete photos (the dialog reports I
don’t have permission) or apply system updates.

------
mdda
But isn't being seen as an Apple 'clone' a huge win for the company? In China,
Xiaomi is distinguishing themselves from their competitors by being
consistently associated in the same sentence as Apple, whereas the others are
'just Android'. It would be a PR coup for Xiaomi to be actually sued by Apple
: They'd be constantly in the news as being seen as comparable to the most
prestigious brand available. Xiaomi doesn't mind the controversy : It all
reinforces the idea that their brand is in Apple's style-bracket.

------
JVIDEL
I been following xiaomi ever since the first MI phone but the company seems to
be losing its mojo. Its not the appleism thing because that was always there,
ever since they made that android fork that emulates a lot of iOS UX.

No, the company seems to be at a crossroads: other firms like Oppo have
overtaken it in breaking into the international market, which is ironic since
xiaomi was the first chinese electronic firm anyone outside China cared about.
At the same time they keep delaying a proper international rollout while
trying to compete in the cutthroat bargain phone market in Asia were you have
literally hundreds of brands making all kinds of stuff at incredible prices
and very thin profits.

In short, its trying to be premium and affordable at the same time, and
differentiate from regular android while still being android because it lacks
the capacity to develop and support its own OS.

I don't care about how they copy apple because lets be honest everybody does,
even apple copies other companies, because you have to be a stubborn idiot to
miss a business opportunity for the sake of originality. If you that you go
broke, and businesses are constantly doing and imitating whatever is
successful. Does a dubstep BGM in an ad help sales? then we are using dubstep,
end of story.

------
rikacomet
There is a ground rule: If people are buying it, cash is coming in.

As long as that is happening, in the cellphone industry, no one gives a damn,
if someone "mashes up" some designs. That has been the case way before Xiomi
came around, as this habit was started by others. The interesting thing would
be, how Xiomi would compete in US market, with Apple/Samsung/Nokia.

Can Xiomi pick out a rabbit or two from under the hat?

------
lafar6502
This is quite a challenge to Apple - compete with a chinese firm without
resorting to an army of lawyers. Apple has already made a nice pile of money
selling iphones, time to invent or face powerful competition that doesn't fear
US patent system.

------
chvid
We would not be talking about Xiaomi had it just been a copycat company.

The article has a set of fairly manipulative images (that I bet you could do
similarly with every other mobile phone brand) and even takes Lei Jun quoting
Steve Jobs' "One more thing ..." as a sign of copycatting where it is clearly
a homage/tribute.

The article also does not mention Xiaomi fairly innovative software service
business model. Described ie. here:

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2156320/why-are-xiaomi-
phones...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2156320/why-are-xiaomi-phones-so-
cheap.html)

~~~
tptacek
Promotional photos of a Xiaomi phone used a _ripped off Apple application
icon_ as the _lens of the phone 's camera_.

I suppose you could argue: that's a truly innovative way to rip off Apple:
have your products literally be composed of ripped-off Apple images.

