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How China's Xiaomi Does In A Week What Apple Does In A Year: Update Devices

forbes.com

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Re: How China's Xiaomi Does In A Week What Apple Does In A Year: Update Devices

#21

Post by jonmrodriguez »

zwieback wrote: post #2

These engineers must be from a different species - my experience with HW is that it's very hard to change anything in a week, especially when you're building 100000. Then again, they have everything under one roof so they can probably just walk over to the PCB designer and then walk some more to the guy setting up the manufacturing equipment, who has reels of every known component in stock. I'm curious what they chan…

Like you said, it's all about having everything under one roof.

If you fab the PCBs yourself and pick and place the components yourself, you could make an electronics change in one day as long as you get the design right the first time and you had ordered the components in advance.

Changing the case shape would be harder to do fast, but could still happen in just 2-3 weeks if you have your tool-making and injection molding both in-house.

The reason anything takes longer for most companies is due to outsourcing, with all of its communications delays and shipping delays.

Re: How China's Xiaomi Does In A Week What Apple Does In A Year: Update Devices

#22

Post by igravious »

JonFish85 wrote: post #5

100,000 phones a week? Big deal. Just over 5 million a year. If we're comparing to Apple, Apple sold 125M last year [1]. And 52 different version numbers. Support must be a nightmare, if it even exists outside of just "we'll give you next week's version". These must be pretty minor changes if they're happening every week. How many of them are being passed through rigorous QA? I'm curious how many of the batches are j…

A number of people here all seem to be making the same mistaken assumption.

Just because they refresh their line of phones in batches of 100,000 on a weekly basis does _not_ imply that each change takes only a week to implement. Changes probably land when they're done, like the Linux kernel, no?

More competition is a good thing. Different ways of doing things is good - let's wish them well.

Re: How China's Xiaomi Does In A Week What Apple Does In A Year: Update Devices

#23

Post by scott_karana »

I used their Android derivative, MIUI, and found it to be very pretty, and featureful, but very unpolished. Seemingly unchanged functionality from the regular Android OS would not function correctly, in addition to some of their added features, and I eventually stopped using MIUI because of the constant minor bugs nipping at my heels.

I hope their hardware iteration doesn't end up the same way.

Re: How China's Xiaomi Does In A Week What Apple Does In A Year: Update Devices

#24

Post by AJ007 »

bluedino wrote: post #6
zwieback wrote: post #2

These engineers must be from a different species - my experience with HW is that it's very hard to change anything in a week, especially when you're building 100000. Then again, they have everything under one roof so they can probably just walk over to the PCB designer and then walk some more to the guy setting up the manufacturing equipment, who has reels of every known component in stock. I'm curious what they chan…

Forbes has been hit and miss lately. For every good article they do about tech, they do some short, sensationalist 'China is taking over' piece like this.

Comments from actual users of these phones would be far more informative. Karma to scott_karana for mentioning his experience with their version of Android.

Re: How China's Xiaomi Does In A Week What Apple Does In A Year: Update Devices

#25

Post by gbog »

zwieback wrote: post #2

These engineers must be from a different species - my experience with HW is that it's very hard to change anything in a week, especially when you're building 100000. Then again, they have everything under one roof so they can probably just walk over to the PCB designer and then walk some more to the guy setting up the manufacturing equipment, who has reels of every known component in stock. I'm curious what they chan…

One part of the answer is that they work in evenings and weekends, have I heard from former colleagues who now work at xiaomi.

Re: How China's Xiaomi Does In A Week What Apple Does In A Year: Update Devices

#26

Post by gbog »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #20
heifetz wrote: post #10

Here's an experiment. Take all the forum members on macrumors and crowd source a new phone by taking all of their ideas. See what kind of mutant non-functioning phone results from a democratic process. One of the reason why Apple and Google's phones and OSs are successful is because there are visionaries (Ives, Jobs, Rubin) at the top coming up with new ideas, instead of taking a poll and purely going with consumer f…

Benevolent Dictator > Design By Committe

This is a false truth a see too often. Many products, human creations, are the result of the accretion of many contributors over time. Think cities, the bible, food recipes, most long form narratives from middle ages, etc.

So, no, your equation is not true, neither is the reverse.

Re: How China's Xiaomi Does In A Week What Apple Does In A Year: Update Devices

#27

Post by caycep »

This seems to me to reflect the difference between two cultures. China's tech ecosystem is still fairly young - I daresay it's like the old days of Apple in a garage, the old HP, etc. I think this post on Bunnie Huang's blog explains it (or at least explores it) a lot better than I can:

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?cat=20

Re: How China's Xiaomi Does In A Week What Apple Does In A Year: Update Devices

#28

Post by bluefinity »

JonFish85 wrote: post #5

100,000 phones a week? Big deal. Just over 5 million a year. If we're comparing to Apple, Apple sold 125M last year [1]. And 52 different version numbers. Support must be a nightmare, if it even exists outside of just "we'll give you next week's version". These must be pretty minor changes if they're happening every week. How many of them are being passed through rigorous QA? I'm curious how many of the batches are j…

Xiaomi are China-only at the moment, whereas Apple are global. In the article, they say Xiaomi have a higher market share within China than Apple, so I would say they're doing very well indeed, especially considering that the company was only founded in 2010. That's the same year that the iPhone 4 was released.

Re: How China's Xiaomi Does In A Week What Apple Does In A Year: Update Devices

#29

Post by 37prime »

Company like Apple COULD make different phones every week but there is no reasons why they wold want to do it. It is highly impractical for many reasons.

Imagine IF Apple just made one iPhone in different color each week. Then imagine if Apple tweaked the internals each and every week. They’d be supporting at least 52 different versions of iPhone every year.

The weekly “design, build, redesign and build” process should not replace a thoughtful R&D process.

Re: How China's Xiaomi Does In A Week What Apple Does In A Year: Update Devices

#30

Post by kkowalczyk »

JonFish85 wrote: post #12
rednukleus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of warped reality do you live in that only selling 5 million units a year while updating the hardware every week is "no big deal"? Regarding rapid obsolescence, this seems to work very well in Asian markets. They typically release a far greater number of devices, because there is a strong market for second hand phones, and many people like to keep switching to the latest thing.

The 5 million by itself is fine. It's the comparison to Apple that seems out of whack to me. The article doesn't compare them to a startup, it compares them to one of the biggest companies in the world. If you do that, you invite criticism on the comparison, which is what I gave.

Xiaomi is 3.5 years old, currently only sells in China and in Chinese market it has already overtaken Apple in market share.

I think comparing them to Apple on the basis of sold phones in China is justified.

Looking into my crystal ball, I further think that their strategy is so brilliant and their execution is so good that we're witnessing the rise of a new giant.

Give it 5 years and they'll be in the same league as Apple and Samsung on a world-wide basis, not just in China.

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