<story><title>Why do we care about Xiaomi?</title><url>http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/1/18/why-do-we-care-about-xiaomi</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jusben1369</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a really major difference between the Windows&amp;#x2F;PC argument and the Android&amp;#x2F;HW one. It&amp;#x27;s important to remember because without it you end up describing symptoms as causes and not the other way around. Phones are much more of a fashion&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;tribe statement for better or worse than your desktop or laptop was and you use them way more in social settings than you do a laptop or desktop. So while this is true &amp;quot;PC OEMs mostly failed to differentiate in design&amp;quot; it&amp;#x27;s because that&amp;#x27;s not what drove sales. Corporate PC buyers didn&amp;#x27;t care and personal buyers really didn&amp;#x27;t care enough to spend $200 for better design because no one saw it (or if you did care you went with a Mac).&lt;p&gt;Same goes with &amp;quot;Second, PC OEMs never managed to create any meaningful differentiation in software&amp;quot; - Even if you had it&amp;#x27;s unlikely to have made much of a difference unless it had productivity differences. Because that&amp;#x27;s why you cared - you were (are) on these things for 8 - 10 hours a day trying to make a living vs 1 - 3 hours on your phone for work&amp;#x2F;social blend. We&amp;#x27;re not arguing that Xiamoni&amp;#x27;s suite of software makes the user more productive. It&amp;#x27;s just a &amp;quot;feel good&amp;quot; thing tied up in &amp;quot;Well I can&amp;#x27;t afford Apple but this thing is actually pretty sweet too&amp;quot; and&amp;#x2F;or &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m not going with stock Android because that&amp;#x27;s too boring&amp;#x2F;crowdlike&amp;quot; Whatever the exact reasons they&amp;#x27;re emotional not productivity driven.&lt;p&gt;The reason this all matters is that the argument appears to be that Xiamoni may not be Dell - destined to rise and flame out in a commodity hell - but something that&amp;#x27;s neither Apple nor Dell but a third way. However, if the things it&amp;#x27;s differentiating on are different to what PC manufacturers differentiated but only because of unique aspects to this vertical then they&amp;#x27;re different barbarians but nevertheless still just barbarians.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why do we care about Xiaomi?</title><url>http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/1/18/why-do-we-care-about-xiaomi</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nemik</author><text>&amp;quot;There&amp;#x27;s a widespread belief that an Android device without Google services (really, this means Maps and the app store) is unsaleable outside China (I&amp;#x27;m not entirely sure about this, as I wrote here)&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Like you said in that link, Amazon has tried this and I&amp;#x27;m not seeing it really working out all that well for them. I think the only reason phones without Google Services work in China is because the entire country blocks them and gives their domestics an artificial advantage. Amazon might be there too but only because they&amp;#x27;re too small to even worry about. Not so with Google and its Android services.</text></comment>