The Rise & Rise of Xiaomi – now the 5th Largest Phone Manufacturer Globally!

Oh Technology, thou art a heartless mistress! Since time immemorial, you have been fickle enough to favor one company or another – whether it be Apple in the 80s, Microsoft in the 90s or Google in the last decade. However, these past few years have made it’s nature even less predictable – destabilizing and even uprooting certain behemoths with great alacrity and frequency, whilst promoting newer stalwarts. The best case of the same is the recent downfall of BlackBerry and Samsung’s fortune and the simultaneously incredulous rise of Xiaomi.

Xiaomi has certainly proved itself as one of the deadliest, albeit newest, forces on the block. It has left a stream of companies reeling in its wake due to its surging popularity, superb hardware, software and amazing Value-For-Money (VFM) products. Despite being a relatively new kid on the market scenario, Xiaomi has managed to do that which everyone thought impossible – take on and dominate the biggest bully in the playground : namely Samsung.

Going by recent figures, Xiaomi has been having a stupendous past few months. Having already become the smartphone of choice in China in the past year, Xiaomi has managed to outsell Samsung in terms of the smartphone segment – a highly commendable feat, if you ask me, as the past few years had almost made the name Samsung synonymous with the term ‘Android’.

Going by certain reports generated by Strategy Analytics, the Chinese phone maker has managed to establish its position as the THIRD largest smartphone maker in the world! This means that the 4 year old company is now only behind Apple and Samsung in this segment. The numerous sellouts that they have had on Flipkart in India have obviously been extremely helpful to their standing as well as their bank statement.

It has been claimed that their shipments have tripled within the span of a single year and are said to be around 18 million in Q3 2014. As testament to the chart above, its market share in the smartphone segment has also more than doubled from 2.1 to 5.6 percent.  All the aforementioned figures have catapulted Xiaomi to the position of the 5th Largest Phone Manufacturer globally (including the lower end/cheaper feature phones).

Although Samsung still reigns supreme with 24.7 percent of all the phones manufactured globally. Apple too is not far behind with its 12.3 percent. Having said this, LG also appears to have made some good gains (strongly backed by the sales of the Nexus 5) in the past year by selling a vast number of phones; thus, occupying the 4th position in the table.

While its competitors may be selling more phones than Xiaomi currently, they would do well by not taking the company lightly given its aggressive expansion plans and pricing. Here’s wishing Xiaomi the best of luck to further succeed in their endeavors – who knows, we may just see a day when Xiaomi becomes the global leader!