When Xiaomi entered the fiercely competitive smartphone market in 2010, it did so without even offering a real phone. The company only offered a free Android-based operating system (OS). Yet, within seven years, Xiaomi became one of the world’s largest smartphone makers, reaching $15 billion in revenue. Accelerating its growth rate, Xiaomi transformed into the world’s largest consumer IoT (Internet of Things) firm by 2020, with its revenue surpassing $37 billion and more than 210 million IoT devices (excluding smartphones and laptops) sold across more than 90 countries.
How was Xiaomi able to grow so explosively and what lessons can other companies learn from Xiaomi’s rise?
We sought answers via an in-depth, multi-year study of the firm, including extensive interviews with 12 top executives (including cofounders, chairman, CEO, president, senior VPs, and executives leading R&D, distribution, and marketing), as well as the founder and CEO of Smartmi, Xiaomi’s largest ecosystem partner. Our research also involved analyzing more than 100 hours of conversations and reviewing more than 5,000 Xiaomi documents (from 2010–2020) as well as 470 external reports and data sets.
Source : HBR
