With the company’s 5th anniversary around the corner, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun is making some special plans. Not only is Xiaomi going to launch a few more products later this month, but it’ll also ship a hundred million smartphones this year… at least according to Jun.
Before you decide that Xiaomi’s dreaming a bit too much, take some numbers: the company shipped 65 million phones in 2014, which in itself is a huge leap. Despite that, 100 million is a long way to go, but considering the way Xiaomi has been progressing through the past few months, that might certainly be possible.
Gizchina News of the week
In China, Xiaomi is working on stabilizing sales channels of its latest and greatest, i.e., the Mi Note. In the neighbouring Indian market, the company’s Redmi 2 alongside the Redmi Note and Mi 4 seem to be doing well, albeit not Redmi 1S-well.
The ‘Xiaomi Ferrari‘ phone that leaked very recently is another device that we’re looking out for later this year. So, clearly, there’s a lot Xiaomi have on their plate and, like I said earlier, despite the magical 100 million looking a little daunting at the moment, it is certainly possible that Xiaomi get to that mark without much fuss by the end of this year.
Although I have a weak for Xiaomi if they want to ship 100 million phones this year they might better hurry up the production because the first 3 months of 2015 have already passed. Look at their announcement in January for the Note Pro, months later it is still stay tuned on mi.com. Also no sign of the Redmi 2GB and Note 4G dual sim.
100 million handsets and still nothing of interest, maybe its because I’m not interested in mediocre phones?? I would love for Xiaomi to make a true flagship beast, I guess I will carry on dreaming.
What’s the phone on sale right now that is considered a beast in your opinion?
That’s the problem, nothing quite hits the spot and certainly NOT a Samsung. The closest for me would be the Vivo xplay 3s, great screen, excellent audio and build quality. Am patiently waiting for the long overdue xplay 5s, if they get it right it will be my next phone.
Oh OK, you made it sound like it was a problem of Xiaomi rather than there’s really nothing there that satisfy your appetite.
Xplay 3s, great phone, but not a beast comparing with the new coming-soon 64 bit phones.
I can’t find anything but rumors about the 5s and I usually don’t comment about thin air.
Xiaomi just don’t make phones to get excited about. An xplay with the mt6795 would do me for the next 12-18 months, I know there’s nothing but rumours hence why I said if they get it right as no idea what they have planned but sure it will be good ?
I don’t think they ever claimed to make the best phones out there.
They are one of the manufacturers with the best quality/price ratio.
From a quick look the MT6795 didn’t impress me at all, but it’s too early to say, I guess we have to wait to see how it performs, I might be wrong but I can’t picture a beast phone with that SoC for the simple fact that it has a mediocre GPU. I understand GPU is not everything but in my opinion the term Beast should mean no lack on anything. And if you consider a Note PRO a mediocre phone, well , I really don’t understand what else you could put on it to improve it.
It is funny to see people asking “flagship beast”, only to use it for Viber, Facebook and cat videos. It is what 90% of people do, even MTK6582 with 1 GB RAM is capable of that. 😛
While I agree with you when you say that MK6582 can satisfy a large amount of consumer which use the phone for watching cat videos and use social networks I find very funny the way you use random percentage meaning an hypothetical statistic value and even funnier when you assume other people use their phone the way you do.
Yes, it is random statistic value, but think a little bit. It is even more than 90%, that is the fact. Many people use smartphones for basic stuff. Performance is not needed, larger batteries (like my THL 4400) and more optimized software is what smartphones need.
I was messing with you, and I apologize for it.
What you are saying is true, we need better battery technology and until then SoC manufacturers have to put effort on efficiency.
Now look at the business aspect:
Last year Qualcomm decide to focus on efficiency over power coming out with the SD410 and SD615 but people not wants MT because they score better on Antutu.
Look at Apple, people prefer thin phones rather than one with big battery.
The point is that everybody would love their phone would last more than a day but nobody wants to sacrifice style or antutu points (which means absolutely nothing).
Last Exynos is the example of what SoC manufacturers should do.
Quick charge is another important aspect,heavy gaming over smartphone are coming so GPU is still important.
For me battery life isn’t a major concern as long as I can get at least a full days charge out of it. It is hilarious how Antutu has become the be all end all measuring stick though. It’s like 0-60 times in cars. It means next to nothing for real world usage.
Do you have some link to this worldwide study that was done that shows “90% of people” do those things? I don;t even know what Viber is so I guess I am not included in that 90%.
Dude, don’t be asshole. My point is that most of the people use phone for basic stuff and they don’t need more power, that is the fact and deal with it. Viber is most used app for free messages and free calls. Bye.
Not being an asshole at all, this time. I hate when people make out false statistics to try to prove their point. Kind of like “Viber is the most used app” Where are your facts to back this up? According to the most recent available numbers I could find Viber has 516 million unique users as of January 2015. Line App had 560 million as of October 2014. Facebook Messenger had 500 million. And none of them even come close to the real most popular call/messaging app, WhatsApp which as of January 2015 has over 700 million unique users. (All stats courtesy of Statista).
My point is there is no such thing as “most people”. Mobile gaming is at an all time high these days, the average person (according to NPD) spends 2 hours a day playing mobile games on their phones. Some people use their phones to watch movies, take pictures, record video, office productivity and a whole host of other activities that go far beyond Facebook and Viber.
I totally agree that the GPU is weak, I don’t think we are gonna see any really amazing SoC’s till next year. The A72 cores should give phones some serious power, hopefully MT teaming up with AMD to supply GPU is an exciting prospect. I think the Xiaomi note is overpriced in all honesty and too small for my requirements, I’m sure its a good phone but not for me. Lastly I think it’s ironic that Xiaomi have ditched MT in favour of Qualcomm now they are putting out some seriously good CPUs.
Agree, dropping MT was a big mistake, they would have passes 100M with a redmi with a MT6732 on board. But we don’t know the whole story. Agree with you about the growth of mediatek and I think they will get bigger and bigger and it’s all good news for us.I disagree with you when you think the note pro is overpriced. You need to add one more element to compare for the simple meaning of the word overpriced. We can say it’s expensive and yes, it is expensive.
BTW, if you think the note pro is too small then I heard they are coming out with a new device with the powerful Nvidia Tegra X1 on board.
40 inches, hopefully it’s big enough for you.
I’m just kidding, that was too inviting to miss it 🙂
Sounds good, will keep keep an eye out for it! Lol. BTW the note pro is more expensive than I was expecting but it does look like a quality piece of kit. Roll on 2016, think we are gonna see some really awesome phones.
MT was a source of endless problems for Xiaomi. In fact, nearly all serious Chinese manufacturers now work exclusively with Qualcomm or Nvidia including Oppo, OnePlus and Xiaomi. Comparing MT to Qualcomm is like comparing a TATA to a Mercedes.
To do that they have to drop the price of MI4 like they did last year with MI3, they have to join new counties (Russia, Brazil)
But still they won’t sell their redmis like they did last year due to a better profile of Mediatek SoCs.
I think he’s being a little optimistic, it’s doable but it’s going to be hard.