China's Xiaomi becomes most valuable tech start-up

[Devil Soul]

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has become the world's most valuable technology start-up just four years after it was founded.

The firm raised $1.1bn (£708m) in its latest round of funding, giving it a valuation of $45bn, which surpassed the $40bn value of taxi booking app Uber.

It has quickly risen to the ranks of the world's biggest smartphone makers, behind Samsung and Apple in sales.

The company is also set to unveil a new flagship device in January.

Xiaomi's investors include private equity funds All-Stars Investment, DST Global, Hopu Investment Management, Yunfeng Capital, and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, said co-founder and president Bin Lin in aFacebook post.

"This is an affirmation of Xiaomi's stellar results in four years, and heralds a new phase for the company," Mr Bin said.

On the fast track
Xiaomi's strategy of producing cheap smartphones has catapulted its growth to overtake giant Samsung this year in sales in the world's second largest economy China.

The company's worth is now more than quadruple the $10bn valuation it received during its last financing round last year.

Its skyrocketing valuation comes despite the intellectual property challenges it faced earlier this month in India, where sales were temporarily halted after Swedish firm Ericsson filed a patent complaint.

The Beijing-based company has set a target of selling 60 million smartphones this year, up from less than 20 million in 2013.
BBC News - China's Xiaomi becomes most valuable tech start-up

 

[rcrmj]

A firm grip on Chinese market is a key into the future

xiaomi does it so well, even until today, to my own knowledge, it does not R&D a single high profile hardware under its brand name```but Xiaomi excelled at understanding customer's crucial needs, building a 'eco-system' before launching its very first mobile, its business model innovation is up for others to learn now

 

[Beast]

The Chinese are expert in business innovation. Hardware innovation without these talented Chinese talented business strategy will never succeed.

 

[mike2000]

A firm grip on Chinese market is a key into the future

xiaomi does it so well, even until today, to my own knowledge, it does not R&D a single high profile hardware under its brand name```but Xiaomi excelled at understanding customer's crucial needs, building a 'eco-system' before launching its very first mobile, its business model innovation is up forhis to learn now

Its indeed a mistake I think for such a big company not to have its own R&D at all. Think its unsustainable if it keeps on like that in the long run. That's why I still think Huawei is far far at more valuable/influential/credible company than Xiaomi any day. Since Huawei(and even ZTE) has a huge R&D workforce/facilities, innovation and its pioneering many sectors in telecom industry and smartphone supply chain, where it holds as much patents as the best in this sector (Qualcomm). Xiaomi doesn't have any of this and it doesn't seem to even bother at all in acquiring all this with time(in which case its not much different from other smaller companies like micromax, lava, meizu, oppo etc), apart from its distribution model i dont see anything groundbreaking it provides. So I still think it won't sustain such a system/model for long if it doesn't invests in this sectors I mentioned when it can/has the cash to do so now.

Overall, still a good achievement though for such a new company.

 

[rcrmj]

Its indeed a mistake I think for such a big company not to have its own R&D at all. Think its unsustainable if it keeps on like that in the long run. That's why I still think Huawei is far far at more valuable/influential/credible company than Xiaomi any day. Since Huawei(and even ZTE) has a huge R&D workforce/facilities, innovation and its pioneering many sectors in telecom industry and smartphone supply chain, where it holds as much patents as the best in this sector (Qualcomm). Xiaomi doesn't have any of this and it doesn't seem to even bother at all in acquiring all this with time(in which case its not much different from other smaller companies like micromax, lava, meizu, oppo etc), apart from its distribution model i dont see anything groundbreaking it provides. So I still think it won't sustain such a system/model for long if it doesn't invests in this sectors I mentioned when it can/has the cash to do so now.

Overall, still a good achievement though for such a new company.

its a 4-years-old company, give it sometime it will move to that direction, I have already seen their content editing teams at Frankfurt Fairs, they are very aggressive, at least in intellectual fields they are even better than most publishing houses now````Xiaomi does quite well in software atm though