He states, “I checked — and found out that to achieve this milestone, Apple took 20 years, Facebook took 12 years, Google took nine years, Alibaba took 17 years, Tencent took 17 years, Huawei took 21 years.” The letter also mentions that Xiaomi might be listed as a Fortune Global 500 company soon, “Xiaomi has taken only slightly over seven years. We are very likely to enter the Fortune Global 500 list of companies this year.”
The letter highlights Xiaomi’s growth through various reports “As per IDC, we have become the world’s number 4 smartphone brand in Q4 2017 in terms of shipments. Even with the overall smartphone market declining 6.3%, we managed to maintain a year-on-year growth of 96.9%.” He cites the company’s strategy as a major reason for this, “This is because we use a telescope to look at innovation, and a microscope to examine product quality. Innovation determines how high we can fly, while product quality determines how far we can go.”
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Other milestones that the letter mentions are: “Early last year, Xiaomi launched our first chipset Surge S1 and successfully put it into mass production. We became the fourth company in the world with the ability to design and manufacture both chipsets and smartphones.” It further states “we’ve built the world’s biggest IoT platform with many advanced smart devices in our ecosystem and continuous investment in cloud services. We are also among the first to launch AI products in China.” As per the letter, the company is also in pursuit of new technology, “So far, we have applied for more than 24,000 patents globally with 5920 of them granted, among which half are global patents.”
Lei Jun mentions the example of India to show Xiaomi’s growth globally, “starting Q3 last year, our smartphone market share in India has become number one.”
The design of Xiaomi’s smartphones have received appreciation worldwide, “we received a host of design awards, including four major awards (IDEA Gold, iF Gold, Red Dot Best of the Best, Good Design Best 100). Led by Mi MIX and Mi MIX 2, five Xiaomi smartphones bagged international design awards.”
For the year 2018, Lei Jun stays optimistic seeing huge potential growth in various global markets of Xiaomi “In 2017, I went to India three times, Indonesia twice and Vietnam once, and I saw huge and exciting opportunities wherever I went.” He further adds “Overseas markets represent huge opportunities for us and we need to give more support in terms of strategy, resources, and localized product development, as well as send more of our employees out to the rest of the world.”
Mentioning the importance of the brand’s position in the home market, Lei Jun set an ambitious goal in his letter “Only by winning in China, can we win in the rest of the world. So this year I am setting a new goal: We will regain the #1 position in China within 10 quarters.”
He ends the letter thanking his employees for their hard work “To everyone at Xiaomi, thank you all for your continued hard work! I hope you grasp all the opportunities in this great era and bravely shoulder your responsibilities.”
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