What is the secret behind the "XiaoMi"-hottest Chinese smartphone?

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So, Who is the winner of Chinese mobile market share Q1 2015?

Xiaomi is the buzziest smartphone maker at the moment. It only sells phones in China and a few other emerging markets, but it's right up there with apple and samsung in terms of popularity. In fact, it has taken over the No.1 smartphone seller place within Mainland China, it sold more phones than Apple and Samsung in China. This quarter, the company said it sold 15 million smartphones. It hopes to sell 100 million phones in 2015.

Definitely, it is a big surprise, it is a huge success, it has became a unmatchable competitor in the Chinese mobile industry, it reinvented the Chinese mobile structure, this brand is XiaoMi.

Guinness World Record?

Look at this amazing record, they even applied for an guinness world record. This record was made in a day called "Festival of XiaoMi fans" in 6 April, 2015.

What are the special points in the success of XiaoMi? 

1. Its fast generation updating speed.

Iphone now is in its No.6 version, while XiaoMi is also on its No.4 version, plus another model is called "RedMi". So far, RedMi also in its 2 version, we called it RedMi 2S. when company is publishing its newest product, it will give the customer better understanding that the new product will be much stronger than the previous model, like Iphone 3GS to 4, 5S to 6, XiaoMi used the shortest time to update its production line and create the image for the customer that " before the next generation, the value of this phone will keep to its end", exactly like Apple's strategy.

2. Hungry Marketing.

The fact surprised us enough is that XiaoMi didn't spend a big budget to do its marketing, instead of putting money to go public, XiaoMi dedicated lots of people and time into its social media marketing, every time before the new generation was about to launch,  XiaoMi will play the trick of "Hungry Marketing" to build the brand image and also to keep the sales growth.

3. Understand better customer.

From its first MIUI- its own Android based OS, XiaoMi started with 100 fans to build this OS 5 years old. Each Friday, XiaoMi will upgrade to its OS, until now, MIUI has been upgraded for more than 300 times. Therefore, XiaoMi built the image that they are very willing to listen to the voice of customer and they are also very willing to make improvement to its best use. XiaoMi treat customer well.

4. Localized social media strategy.

Instead of putting huge money to gain public awareness, XiaoMi built a team of 100+ people in Beijing to take care of its Chines localized social media strategy, they rarely spent money on basic CPC/CPM campaigns, they spent time and energy on creating topic, on quickly responding customer feedback and building a large customer engagement by using some mainstream Chinese social media platform like Wechat, BBS forum, Weibo etc.

Its success was also heavily rooted in the character of its co-founder LeiJun, Mr Lei was part of the founding team of Kingsoft in 1992 and became CEO in 1998. A year later, he founded the IT information service and download website Joyo.com. After Kingsoft successfully completed its IPO, Mr. Lei stepped down from his position and became Vice Chairman at Kingsoft. In the early 2000’s, he invested in many successful start-up companies like YY, UC and Vancl( B2B) as an angel investor, and on April 6, 2010, he founded Xiaomi. In July 2011, he returned to Kingsoft as Chairman of the Board. Mr. Lei is currently the Chairman and CEO of Xiaomi.

He pointed out the XiaoMi is a company that has three part of its main business, Software/ Hardware/ Internet service. XiaoMi didn't just create App store, they invented so many different internet service for customer to have a better user experience.

Since I am in the mobile advertising industry, I suggest companies specialized in App distribution and Traffic monetization should pay attention to XiaoMi's new operating system to allow your client has a better access to get into those potential customer who has an XiaoMi mobile device. Big market, big challenge.