Apple faces competition from many different brands all offering Android alternatives, but Xiaomi looks to be the most determined to beat it in the high-end phone market.
As the South China Morning Post reports, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun posted on the microblogging platform Weibo on Tuesday, stating, “[We aim to] fully benchmark against Apple in [terms of] product and experience, and become China’s biggest high-end brand in the next three years.”
Lei Jun isn’t classing this as just a competition, though, it’s “a war of life and death” apparently. That claim is backed up by some serious investment promises being made by the company. As MacRumors reports, Xiaomi already operates 10,000 retail stores in China, but intends to increase that to 30,000 by 2025.
Competing with and beating Apple means producing smartphones that outperform the iPhone in all areas, so Xiaomi is investing $16 billion in research and development over the next five years. Even so, it’s an uphill battle the company is facing. Xiaomi sales did surpass Apple’s briefly last year, but Apple is currently the world’s largest smartphone vendor followed by Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo.
Xiaomi’s desire to be the top brand is helped by the fact it isn’t on the US blacklist anymore. Being able to ship highly-desirable features, such as the ability to recharge a phone in eight minutes, will also help if the company can use those R&D billions effectively to keep producing them.
