China’s smartphone champion has triumphed where Apple failed

EVER since he co-founded Xiaomi in 2010, Lei Jun, the chief executive of the Chinese tech giant, has pulled off feat after feat of salesmanship. A decade ago, he earned a Guinness World Record for selling 2.1 million smartphones online in 24 hours. These days, though, he is not just flogging cheap phones. Last month, Xiaomi sold more than 200,000 of its first electric SUV, the YU7, within three minutes of bringing it onto the market.

Xiaomi’s rise over the past few years has been vertiginous. Only Apple and Samsung sell more smartphones worldwide. The company also peddles a vast array of devices that connect to its handsets, from air-conditioners and robo-vacuums to scooters and televisions. After a slump in 2022, which it attributed to “cut-throat competition” in China for consumer electronics, Xiaomi has roared back to growth, with its revenue increasing by 35 per cent last year. Since the beginning of 2024, its market value has nearly quadrupled, to HK$1.5 trillion (S$244 billion).

With the successful release of the YU7 – its second electric vehicle (EV) after the SU7, a sporty sedan launched in March last year – Xiaomi has pulled off a feat that eluded Apple, which ditched plans to make its own EV after burning billions of dollars on the effort over a decade. Xiaomi, which announced its carmaking ambitions in 2021, has put more than 300,000 of its EVs on Chinese roads over the past 15 months, and has a backlog of orders that will take more than a year to fill. Although its EV division has lost money so far, Lei has said he thinks it will become profitable later this year, an impressive feat in China’s brutally competitive car market.