小米：中国的“苹果”？

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小米：中国的“苹果”？
Xiaomi: never mind the profits (373 words)

by Lex,December 16, 2014 5:26 pm

How loyal are the tech group’s customers?

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In software, if a company is growing fast enough, all else is forgiven. Xiaomi has extended this principle to hardware. The company raised its last round of capital at a reported $40bn valuation, on the back of becoming the biggest smartphone vendor in China.

On Monday, Gartner released its quarterly smartphone market report. It did nothing to dilute the Xiaomi growth frisson. The company has over 5 per cent of the global market, putting it in fourth place between Huawei and Lenovo. Its 16m units shipped in the quarter was 12m more than last year; only Apple came close, with 8m units added.

It is reassuring to find that Xiaomi makes money too. Last month the Wall Street Journal reported figures the company presented to its lenders. They include $4.4bn in sales and $566m in net profit last year, and a target of close to a billion in profit this year. A margin of nearly 13 per cent is better than Samsung, the number one vendor by volume, manages (Samsung had an 18 per cent margin in mobile last year, when sales were higher).

The profits are nice; they do not matter much. When Xiaomi comes to the public markets – the numbers show that it could float at will – it will not need to prove that it can make money. If you sell lots of handsets, you can make a profit. Plenty of companies have done it. Motorola, BlackBerry and Nokia all spring to mind. A strong gross margin is enough to prove the point; at this early stage, Xiaomi should be focused on investment rather than net profit. Justifying a monster valuation will instead require evidence that customers will stay loyal to Xiaomi. Only one company has managed this for long: Apple, using a strong brand and a suite of services that increase switching costs.

Xiaomi’s brand is hot in China. It has a popular messaging app, and it is investing in services and content. It will take a few product cycles to know whether all this has made Xiaomi’s customers as sticky as Apple’s – despite the proliferation of alternatives at the low end of the market. A $40bn valuation makes sense for China’s Apple. China’s Nokia will be worth much less.

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