Xiaomi muscles past Apple to take sixth place in China’s smartphone market as Samsung stays on top

August 7, 2013 Leave a comment

Xiaomi muscles past Apple to take sixth place in China’s smartphone market as Samsung stays on top

By Kaylene Hong, 17 hours ago, 11:22am

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Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has been on a roll despite launching its first device only as recently as 2011 — it has officially overtaken Apple in the Chinese market. The latest figures were conveyed to TNW by Canalys, an independent analyst firm, which noted that Xiaomi shipped a total of 4.4 million smartphones in China during the second quarter of 2013, inching above Apple which shipped 4.3 million units and knocking it to the seventh position. Last quarter, Apple managed to occupy the fifth spot in China’s smartphone market. Samsung still took the lead in China in Q2 2013 with 15.5 million smartphones shipped to make up for a market share of 17.6 percent.Despite only selling its phones in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, Xiaomi has been garnering success by inspiring the loyalty of many consumers. Its competitively priced phones are sold in batches that, when released in phases, regularly sell out fast, often within half an hour.

The latest figures come as Xiaomi recently unveiled its $130 Hongmi phone, the lowest-priced in its range, which has received an overwhelming response so far. According to a Donews report, pre-orders for the phone on social networking site Qzone exceeded a jaw-dropping 5 million units within three days. The phone will go on sale from August 12 onward.

The up-and-coming company has been compared to Apple on a regular basis, with some even criticizing it for being an Apple clone. However, it seems that consumers are happy to flock to the lower-priced Xiaomi smartphones instead of high-end iPhones, proven by its success so far. This could make it even harder for Apple to recapture some of its lost market share in China — despiterumors of a lower-priced iPhone, it could be too little, too late.

Filed under TMT Trends

About bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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