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back to article Xiaomi's birthday present to itself: Flogging 2m phones in 12 hours

Cult phone maker Xiaomi has demonstrated just how dedicated its fans are, with an Asian flash sale seeing it shift over two million devices ... and 39,000 tellies. The Chinese upstart has built upon its Indian deal with online retailer Flipkart by adding Amazon India and online retailer Snapdeal to its digital strategy to …

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  1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Windows

    I recognize this!

    It’s a difficult place to understand, where outsiders are often misinformed about the importance of language localisation and the significance of the caste system. The market has special requirements to cope with poor electricity supplies, putting a premium on battery life, heat, dust, and particularly noise. Locally produced phones often have very large speakers.

    Basically, it's a cyberpunk market?

    9 0 Reply
  2. It'sa Mea... Mario

    12 hours or 24?

    At least you didn't repeat the spin/mis-reporting of your colleague:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/09/xiaomi_bags_world_record/

    3 0 Reply
  3. Frank N. Stein

    Yea. I don't think Apple is scared of Xiaomi gaining a lead in the Indian, Indonesian, or Malaysian markets. Apple doesn't really care about those markets. Apple's got enough trouble trying to gain traction in China. That's the market they care about. How is Xiaomi doing in their own country?

    2 3 Reply
    1. Eddy Ito
      Reply Icon

      How is Xiaomi doing in their own country?

      Reports indicate they are first in China and third globally. It seems they only recently got into the Indian market so it's possible that they could move up the scale this year and if the product is good enough they might just expand their margins a tad on getting into the western markets.

      2 0 Reply
  4. Gordon 10
    FAIL

    What has Xiaomi got in common with Apple?

    Sweet FA as far as I can see.

    Surely MS, Sammy, HTC, LG et al have far more reason to be cacking themselves?

    6 3 Reply
    1. ThomH
      Reply Icon

      Re: What has Xiaomi got in common with Apple?

      Yeah, Apple's phone strategy is more like their iMac-onwards computer strategy: even just 3% of the market would do for profitability.

      3 0 Reply
  5. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Profit not volumes

    It doesn't matter how many widgets you sell if you're making zero (or near zero) profit on each one. If you're not making profit, then you're not going to be around for long.

    1 2 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Profit not volumes

      Oddly enough, market share seems to be really valued by a lot of big businesses. Never really understood it, myself.

      1 0 Reply
      1. Chris Evans
        Reply Icon

        Re: Profit not volumes

        Amazon is good example. How it has a multi-billion pound stock market worth but has not yet come close to making a profit is beyond me. At start up I can understand, but they started 1994!

        2 0 Reply
        1. Nick Ryan Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: Profit not volumes

          Profit = the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, operating, or producing something.

          Amazon make an enormous amount of money. However rather than sitting on it and admiring it or spaffing it at shareholders in great chunks they chose to continually re-invest the money.

          It's basic business finance where if you record a profit the government will help themselves to a huge chunk of it (at least in the UK) therefore a good business accountant will always manage to offset the amount earned against investments, costs and other reasonable expenses to ensure that what's remaining is as low as possible. This is why international companies shift their profits to the most corporation tax friendly country as it's the difference between losing 40% of your profit to tax or considerably less, e.g. 1-2%.

          As for stock market "worth" this is a total nonsense market as the perceived value of shares is usually down to pure speculation and greed rather than any particular indication of a company's value or business prospects.

          4 0 Reply
      2. TeeCee Gold badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Profit not volumes

        Chasing market share can be a Good Thing if:

        1) You have spare capacity / production sitting idle.

        2) The knockdown rates you charge to grab it still contribute to margin (i.e. at least cover direct costs).

        Forget those and you go titsup.com rather quickly.

        0 0 Reply
      3. P. Lee
        Reply Icon

        Re: Profit not volumes

        >Oddly enough, market share seems to be really valued by a lot of big businesses. Never really understood it, myself.

        Margin may be important, but absolute wealth is also important. It's a balancing act between margin and volume and when marginal costs are low, you can ramp up the volume until marginal cost = marginal revenue.

        Brands (amongst other things) distort the theory by attaching value to ideas and image. Xiaomi appears to be putting its marketing budget into lowering price rather than direct advertising and allowing its customers to do the marketing for them. You can do that when you don't need to keep telling people how magical you are for them to believe you.

        0 0 Reply
  6. Bernard

    This might be a concern for Apple several steps down the road but it really isn't now.

    There's an enormous market in the developing world for smart looking but low cost smartphones among people who can't afford to spend one or sometimes several months' salary on the best. Status is even more important in these markets than the west and so people who can afford the best without much trouble tend to buy it even if they don't really need it.. That suits Apple nicely and, here in India, they remain firmly unthreatened by the wave of low cost smart phones.

    For Samsung, HTC etc. this is a much bigger threat. Ironically it's their range of choices and price ranges that actually disadvantage them here because where Apple marks you out as exclusive Samsung may not and so doesn't have the same cache.

    It's absurd, but luxury branding always is.

    1 0 Reply
  7. crayon

    "It's absurd, but luxury branding always is."

    Luxury branding maybe, but Apple is over-priced branding.

    1 1 Reply

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