http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/business/global/in-china-a... .

That's NOT what the linked article says at all. It says the the founder, Lei Jun, is is positioning himself and his company as figurative heirs of Mr. Jobs by carefully cultivating a Jobsian image here, right down to his jeans and dark shirts.

It does say He is also selling millions of mobile phones that look a lot like iPhones, but they only look like iPhones in the sense they have rounded corners. If you look at a pic of a phone (eg http://p.www.xiaomi.com/zt/130718/images/m2s_26.jpg?130809) you'll see they are a lot less similar than many phones sold today - specifically the two-color shell makes it immediately obvious they aren't a complete iPhone clone.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/budget-iphone-5c-release-...

Yet not even about Android or the mobile market in general, a comment about the feeling of OSS community gets voted to top...

So, as this balance of power shifts to Asia, it's going to be Android that reaps the benefits, not other platforms. Of course, it remains to be seen to what extent Google also benefits from this but at least they will have accomplished their goal of preventing a single company from locking down mobile and boxing their services out of that platform.

isn't that what they're supposed to be doing?

we should at least see how this plays out, maybe he'll quit in a fit of rage because they won't listen to him. who knows.

During the course of the meeting, it was my client that was kissing butt for a shot at getting some business in the Chinese market, and would pay this Chinese company for the privilege.

At the end of the meeting, my client quipped "don't spend too much [money here]" to which the Chinese visitor responded, "I'm Chinese, of course I spend too much."

The whole meeting was definitely a wake-up call for me, especially after hearing what came from a Chinese national in their early 20's.

EDIT: I will also note that things weren't all roses for the Chinese company trying to operate in a capitalistic fashion. There is a lot of (probably justified) paranoia that the Chinese government would come knocking and severely interrupt their business.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+HugoBarra/posts/BzZMqRht1xQ

So expansion outside of China seems to be the reason.

Here is the original Xiaomi phone

http://imgur.com/a/nWsOW

It's iPhone copycat because obviously it has Round CornersⒸ.

There are tons of MIUI roms out there available for download, try it yourself and see if you can find iOS there.

As already mentioned, their only redeeming quality is their phones are easy to mod, but they ignore licensing obligations and have as long as I can remember.

I could care less what phone looks like what and not even sure why it's getting so much focus. The more important issue is Xiaomi and their scoffing at the GPL when it comes to the Linux Kernel.

However, every Xiaomi phone can be rooted freely and you can switch to CM or whatever you want. That's one of its advertised selling point in the M1Plus phone.

I forgot how awesome it actually is. So very well done.

GPL license simply does NOT work in China for two reasons. 1)IP protection is sadly ineffective due to the impaired legal system. In practice, GPL=Appache in China. 2) Consumers hate to pay for pure services without goods delivered due to misconceptions from long lasting low cost of human labor. In practice, free full version software plus charging for premium human support does not work.

These two things are changing slowly but any one interested in China market should never ignore them, especially the 2nd one. Xiaomi will be sued outside China if they violate the GPL license. That's a risk they can't ignore.

About Link #2: For a lot of overseas Chinese like me, NYTimes is notorious for holding biased views towards China. This actually undermines its credibility compared with less biased media like BBC.

I bought a Xiaomi phone for my father recently and I've been Samsung and Apple client for a long time.

IMO, Xiaomi has done a very impressive job to improve Android OS for non-geek people. One of those nice built-in features is seamless fine grain privacy/access control of each app. Another is built-in 3G traffic optimization and metering which is important because 3G data plans provide smaller quotas in China.

Xiaomi brings a lot of merits from IOS to Android not by simply copying designs. They did a good job to solve the pain points for their audiences, who are mostly first time smartphone users. They mainly compete with feature phone vendors other than Samsung or Apple before Xiaomi gains huge traction.

My father was very glad to switch to Xiaomi after my several failed attempts of replacing his beloved feature phone :)

Even I myself plan to buy a Xiaomi to replace my buggy Samsung S3 (never-rooted, less than 1 year) if it's going to release a high-end model.

As for traditional media, BBC has a good reputation in my circles.

I prefer the nytimes, any newspaper that gets blocked by the great firewall of china must be doing something right. The article about Xi Jinping's family using their family relationships to get rich was spot on, but then that story could be applied to any official's family. They have actual standards and refuse to be intimidated by the CCP. The BBC is too harmonious in comparison, useless to me when I need real news about the country I'm living in.

So you did want to get all anti-chinese here. Your statement would have been just as valid without the 'chinese' qualification.

If you look at my comment history, you'll see that I'm highly critical of US companies' attitude toward privacy, but it's naive to think that the same thing isn't happening in China.