04.Xiaomi Mi Note Review: Changing the Smartphone Game From China The low-priced phablet may not be in the U.S. yet, but Apple and Samsung had better pay attention

A new low-priced Chinese smartphone is giving top dollar flagship smartphones a run for their money. Personal Tech Columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler reviews Xiaomi's Mi Note.

There’s a new phone from China that quashes the myth that a smartphone must cost a fortune to be any good.
And also the notion that Americans get all the best stuff first.
The new 5.7-inch Mi Note from the world’s most valuable startup Xiaomi (pronounced “shiao-me,” like “shower”) goes toe to toe with goliaths Apple and Samsung . In some ways, Xiaomi even one-ups its rivals—the Mi Note is slightly thinner and lighter than both the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus and 5.7-inch Galaxy Note 4. And, no joke, the Xiaomi camera makes you look younger in selfies.
The Mi Note is the best phone you can’t get in America—it’s only sold in China. Xiaomi says it doesn’t yet have plans to sell phones in the U.S. But it’s blazing a path that will likely bring everyone better, cheaper phones.

Geoffrey A. Fowler tested a pair of Chinese smartphones—Xiaomi’s Mi Note, bottom, and the OnePlus One, top—against the iPhone 6 Plus, right, and the Galaxy Note 4, left. Photo: Peter Earl McCollough for The Wall Street Journal

Here’s the really impressive part: This Android phablet costs just $370, half as much as the $750 you really pay for an iPhone 6 Plus in the U.S. out of contract, or over the course of two years. (In China, the iPhone 6 Plus costs $970.)
Xiaomi’s prices are low, in part, because it sells its phones online and spends little on traditional marketing. The company has been accused of lifting designs from rivals: Ericsson has sued Xiaomi in India, a case which Xiaomi is contesting. The company says intellectual property battles aren’t holding it back from the U.S. Xiaomi also has an unusual way of developing software, tapping tens of millions of customers for ideas and updating its software once a week, as opposed to the several times a year that Android and iOS get new features.
Another Chinese startup has also figured out how to sell a lustworthy phone for a lot less money—and it’s available in the U.S. OnePlus sells the 5.5-inch One for a mind-boggling $300 without a contract. You can buy it through the OnePlus website (though, oddly, only on Tuesdays). Still, buying any unlocked phone in the U.S. at this point requires an adventurous spirit.


More@
http://www.wsj.com/articles/xiaomi-mi-note-review-changing-the-smartphone-game-from-china-1424810010

Samsung decides 56 smartphones a year is too many, will cut lineup by 30%

Samsung has been in a pretty tough spot lately. After several quarters of record profits in 2012 and 2013, the company has crashed back down to Earth. The low point for Samsung came last quarter, when it reported a 49 percent drop in profits. At the high end of the market, the company currently has to fight off Apple, which just released a phablet of its own. At the low end, it's going up against a flood of cheaper Chinese OEMs, led by Xiaomi and Huawei.

To try to get out of this slump, Samsung is taking a "less is more" approach. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company said it would cut its 2015 smartphone lineup by 25-30 percent. The company will work on the internals, too, saying during its last earnings call that it will "increase the number of components shared across mid- to low-end models, so that we can further leverage economies of scale."

Full article:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/11/samsung-decides-56-smartphones-a-year-is-too-many-will-cut-lineup-by-30/

Apple Inc's once slower Q2 now getting a boost from China's Lunar New Year holiday

With a rapidly emerging, vast middle class that is hungry for prestigious and fashionable products, China has already caught up with the United States in terms of Apple's shipment volumes, and promises to exceed American demand as it continues to grow.

Apple, unlike Microsoft, Google and most other western tech companies, has uniquely figured out how to create and maintain a strong demand for its products in China, in large part because Apple's design appeal and branding are harder to duplicate than the basic functionality of Microsoft's Office or Google's web services, which have already been replicated by Chinese firms.






Despite lots of focus on Xiaomi, Apple is selling increasing numbers of iPhones in China. Conversely, Microsoft and Google are finding it difficult to do any business inside the country, an their potential opportunities are rapidly being crowded out. In Google's case, it's losing in China largely because of Android's openness, rather than being assisted by its broad adoption as planned.


Source:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/27/apple-incs-once-slower-q2-now-getting-a-boost-from-chinas-lunar-new-year-holiday

Xiaomi Mi Box Mini Gets Unboxed Internally and Reviewed

Xiaomi decided to do its own unboxing and review of the Mi Box Mini device, that was launched recently. This one is an Android TV box, priced at $32 and offering some interesting features. Let’s find out the first ideas about it, since we can’t exactly call them impressions, being published internally by the device’s maker.

The product comes inside a discrete red box, with a rectangular form factor and the features written on it. The Mi Box Mini packs a quad core Cortex A7 1.3 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM and 4 GB of ROM. It also offers dual band 2.4/5 GHz connectivity via WiFi, DTS and packs a Bluetooth remote in the mix for easier control. There’s Full HD output support and H.265 is available as well.


The product comes inside a discrete red box, with a rectangular form factor and the features written on it. The Mi Box Mini packs a quad core Cortex A7 1.3 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM and 4 GB of ROM. It also offers dual band 2.4/5 GHz connectivity via WiFi, DTS and packs a Bluetooth remote in the mix for easier control. There’s Full HD output support and H.265 is available as well.

Source:
http://www.gsmdome.com/xiaomi-mi-box-mini-gets-unboxed-internally-reviewed

How Xiaomi plans to take over India’s smartphone market in 2015

On Jul. 22, 2014, Xiaomi decided to sell its Mi 3 model on Flipkart, the Indian e-commerce website.
Some 100,000 people signed up to buy the phone and Flipkart just couldn’t handle the rush.
Soon, this became the norm for the fast-growing Chinese smartphone company. The entire stock of Xiaomi’s smartphones was getting sold out in seconds.
Even Xiaomi was caught off guard. “When we came here, we were planning to sell a few thousand phones, and we were concerned if that target might be met. In the first two weeks alone, we sold 20,000 phones,” Hugo Barra, Xiaomi’s vice president of international operations, told Quartz in an interview last year.
That’s exactly the sort of momentum that Xiaomi hopes to capitalise on in 2015—and that now it will also cease to be just a phone company in India.

From the beginning

Source:

http://qz.com/328952/how-xiaomi-plans-to-take-over-indias-smartphone-market-in-2015/