what i don't like them is that they generally DO NOT dvelope tech of thier own , but only to assemble others' components (paying IR $$$ to companies of japan, taiwan,us, etc) while taking advantage of made-in-china value chain and make money.
(for the same reason personally i look down on companies like alibaba, facebook etc, or ma yun, zuckerberg... they are no more than economic parasites; on the other hand i like pure tech pure value creation firms such as huawei, mitsubishi, intel, amd, ge, etc)
firms like huawei is different.
I hope one day, huawei, or TCL, or Lenovo , will take over xiaomi ,meizu and oppo alike.
china needs fewer smart phones brands, but bigger.
only by merging most of them into several, china could have companies big enough and brands strong enough on the world stage (e.g. with much more independent r&d) to seriously take on samsung and apple not only on volumn, but much more importantly on both indepedently-owned technologies and profitability.
Here, I have to speak something for Xiaomi, Xiaomi is bashed wrongly often.
Many Chinese like Huawei, but don't like Xiaomi when comparing with the two companies, I can understand it, but we also know, the two companies is different, Huawei's advantage is hardware and designing, Xiaomi is software, Xiaomi is just a about 5 years old company, how could you let it shoulder Chinese mobile phone industry?
Huawei is a more than 20 years old company, because it keep puting huge money in R&D, it have huge accumulated patent, but its real advantage is still in communiation equipement, the terminal which found several years ago used some fruit, if talking about smartphone seperately, hard to say Huawei is better than Xiaomi.
Huawei also buy huge components from other company, maybe most of high-end component are bought from foreign companies, because they have done these earlier and better, Huawei alse assemble the comonents to a phone, not much different with Xiaomi. Xiaomi's advantage is softeware, its MIUI is highly acclaimed, that's its advantage, but Huawei's EMUI is not that good, atleast now, Hardware is other chinese companies' thing, Xiaomi just take its advantage.
You take Samsung and Apple for example, but although they both sell smartphone, but also different companies, Samsung's advantage is hardware, Apple is software, you know Samsung is a empire, behind it is SK government, Samsung almost make anything, In China, there are not companies like Samsung empire, but we have huge independ company: Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, Baidu, Tencent, Xiaomi and other relatively small companies, but master several technologies, Samsung is good, but its many component and manufacturing equpiment depend on Japan, Maybe in the world, Japanese smartphone don't occupy small share, but I can say, most of smartphones in the world, there are Japanese components in it, especailly high-end smartphone.
as to Apple, no need to talk much, beside its own advantage, behind it, is the American strong industry, hardware and software, Apple can find good software companies in USA, then merge it to consolidate its advantage.
China need Huawei, also need Xiaomi, talking about Chinese prosperous Smartphone market, Xiaomi should be admired, even more credit should given to Xiaomi than Huawei.
Last, I think Samsung smartphone don't worth that price, its price is too high, low configuration, but high price, talking about system based on android, it is worse than Xiaomi, Chinese band or Apple, not SK smartphone, My opinion.