Do you know how Xiaomi, a brand that has started to appear frequently when purchasing products in new phones, television, headset, and many other categories recently, was established?
We can say that the biggest role in the increase in interest in products originating from China is the launch of Xiaomi. So how did Xiaomi come about? Who is the founder Lei Jun?
Who is Lei Jun?
Lei Jun was born in 1969 in Xiantao, China. Like many successful people who have made their mark in history, Lei Jun had a difficult time in his early life.
He studied at the Department of Computer Science at Wuhan University. A successful student, Lei Jun completed his undergraduate studies in just two years. Lei Jun, who started his career at university with small steps, started to work as an engineer at Kingsoft company in 1992 after graduating. Having a successful business life, Jun became the CEO of Kingsoft in 1998. In 2000, he founded Joyo.com, a book sales site that he would later sell to Amazon for $75 million. One of Lei Jun's successful ventures is Joyo.com. Because many big companies got to know Lei Jun through Joyo.com.
Jun, who resigned from his job at Kingsoft in 2007 due to health problems, continued his ventures after his resignation. Continuing to make a name for himself in business life with many investments such as Vancl.com, UCWeb and YY, Jun became a manager at UCWeb in 2008.
In 2010, he laid the foundations of Xiaomi, one of the biggest technology companies of today. The goal of Lei Jun, who founded the company with many partners, was to "produce quality technologies that can be accessed by everyone", as clearly stated on the company's website. Lei Jun, who managed to make his name known to the whole world in a short time, was named "Business Person of the Year" by Forbes in 2014.
Xiaomi
Let's get to know Xiaomi a little more closely, which produces many devices we use in our daily lives, from phones to sports bands.
In 2011, the company's first phone, the Mi1, went on sale. The company, which followed a regional sales policy in its first years, managed to make its name known with its first phones in a short time. Xiaomi used Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 and Adreno 220 in its first device. The design of the device, which went on sale with 1 GB of RAM and a 1930 mAh battery, was one of the "classic Android phone" designs of those years.
In 2012, the company managed to make a name for itself in the markets, this time with the Mi2. With this phone, Xiaomi started to enter the markets of other countries gradually. Producing a more powerful phone than Mi1 using Snapdragon S4, Adreno 320, 2 GB RAM in the hardware part, Xiaomi preferred to use the same model in terms of design.
Xiaomi, which released the Mi3 in 2013, has become one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in China with this phone. Established in 2010, the company preferred to sell online instead of in-store in order to both reduce expenses and increase sales in its first years. This choice they made will have been successful, as Xiaomi overthrew the technology giant Samsung in the Chinese market in just 3 years.
Xiaomi Begins to Globalize!
The company, which started to expand to other countries gradually in 2012, accelerated this policy in 2014. Having opened an international headquarters in Singapore that year, Xiaomi's popularity in China began to develop gradually in other countries. The company, which thinks that they should change the name of their site due to the responsibility brought by its international reputation, decided to use the name Mi, which means many things, as a domain name. The company, which chose the name Mi because it can be said easily and has many meanings, broke the record by paying the highest fee for a domain name in China for this domain name. In 2014, Xiaomi management, which thinks that they should turn to other devices besides the phone, announced that they will produce televisions.
Continuing to grow and make new investments in 2015, Xiaomi produced a phone for the first time in a country other than China. Xiaomi broke a Guinness World Record as the manufacturer with the most online sales in 1 day, 5 years after its establishment. The company, which managed to sell 2.11 million phones in 24 hours, rose quickly in a short time.
Having managed to make a name for itself regionally, Xiaomi entered the European market in 2016. In 2017, the first Xiaomi store in Europe was opened in Greece. The company, which started to sell officially in European countries in 2016 and 2017 in order to become global, went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2018. Xiaomi opened its first store in Istanbul in the same year. Thus, Xiaomi officially entered the Turkish market in 2018.
Continuing to grow without slowing down in recent years, Xiaomi has entered the sector as a phone manufacturer and today produces many technological devices such as headphones, scooters and smartwatches.
Xiaomi is called the Apple of China because Lei Jun takes Steve Jobs as an example.