Sold over a million units in just ten days on the market! I’ve found the reason why Xiaomi 14 is selling like hotcakes.

Xiaomi 14 The Secret to its Record-breaking Sales of Over a Million Units in Just 10 Days

【Mobile China】In 2020, Xiaomi began a new wave of attacks on the high-end smartphone market, launching the first model, Xiaomi 10. In fact, the performance of Xiaomi 10 is quite good, not only the three models have excellent reputations, but also consumers are very interested. However, due to a series of problems, Xiaomi stumbled with the subsequent 11 series. Issues such as overheating and burning Wi-Fi severely troubled users. Under intense pressure from a large number of users, Xiaomi had to introduce special after-sales policies for the 11 series, including extended warranty and so on. As for the subsequent Xiaomi 12 series, although there were no major problems, the sales were mediocre. It can be said that Xiaomi went through a rather tortuous path in the past two to three years.

Fortunately, nowadays Xiaomi seems to have turned the corner. The Xiaomi 13 series, which was released at the end of 2022, has become a dark horse in the Chinese high-end smartphone market. According to statistics from research institutions, in the second quarter of 2023, the Xiaomi 13 is still the second best-selling high-end model in the Chinese market. Not long ago, the Xiaomi 14 was released. According to official data, the first sales of the Xiaomi 14 were about six times that of the Xiaomi 13. In just about 10 days of its release, the sales of Xiaomi 14 directly exceeded one million units, which is quite astonishing.

Of course, judging from user feedback, many consumers who have placed orders have not yet received their devices, and Xiaomi is under great pressure to stock up. It may take some time for the sales of one million units to materialize completely. However, it can be basically determined that the Xiaomi 14 is another popular high-end model under the Xiaomi brand. Unlike Huawei and Apple, it has not been easy for Xiaomi to come up with a popular high-end model in the past. The consecutive success of two generations of models may mean that Xiaomi has finally found its own path. Focusing on the Xiaomi 14, the success of this model may provide us with many inspirations.

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In the 5G era, the size of smartphones has gradually “grown” as the mainstream phone screen size has reached about 6.7 inches. Thinking back to when Apple’s Steve Jobs believed that 4 inches was the most suitable size for human palms, he may have been right, but the industry trend has gone against the ideas of this master. In the past few years, although there have been many voices on the Internet calling for manufacturers to release small-screen phones, the corresponding terminal products have had average sales, and even Apple has discontinued its own iPhone mini. It can be seen that true small-screen phones are no longer suitable for this era.

Therefore, Xiaomi’s launch of the Xiaomi 13 and Xiaomi 14 may cater to some small screen enthusiasts, but Xiaomi has found a balance between small screens and sales. Currently, both the Xiaomi 13 and Xiaomi 14 have a screen size of 6.36 inches. Strictly speaking, this cannot be considered a small screen, after all, the mainstream iPhone models next door have a screen size of 6.1 inches, and a large portion of people do not consider them as small screen models. The “small screen” of the Xiaomi 13 and Xiaomi 14 is more relative to other models in the market.

According to industry insiders, although the sales of the Xiaomi 13 and Xiaomi 14 have been successful, no mainstream mobile phone manufacturer is willing to launch a flagship model with a 6.36-inch screen similar to them. It can be seen that at least in the first half of 2024, the Xiaomi 14 still does not have a product that poses a threat to it, and there is not much competition with other flagships. It can be said that Xiaomi has found a temporarily unique position in a highly competitive market.

Xiaomi is considered to have a high popularity among domestic smartphone manufacturers. But with fame comes criticism, and there has always been criticism of Xiaomi. Among them, the criticism that Xiaomi bulk purchasing overseas smartphone components and disregarding local suppliers has received considerable support. In fact, Xiaomi is not the only one, most other domestic smartphone manufacturers also use Qualcomm chips, Samsung screens, Micron memory, and SK Hynix storage, but it seems that only Xiaomi attracts the most attention.

Perhaps to get rid of such accusations, the proportion of domestically produced components in Xiaomi’s phones is increasing. In 2023, Lei Jun and Lu Weibing emphasized “Xiaomi self-developed” and “domestic components” in multiple press conferences. And with the Xiaomi 14 series, Xiaomi has further abandoned Samsung OLED screens and Sony sensors, and instead deepened cooperation with BOE and HUAXING Optoelectronics. The appearance of the C8 material screen and the Light Hunter sensor is enough to show that Xiaomi’s cooperation with these domestic manufacturers has become quite deep.

Xiaomi is beginning to pay more attention to domestic suppliers, mainly because their technology and products have steadily improved to a level where they can replace overseas suppliers. From the Xiaomi 13 Ultra to the Redmi K60 Ultra and now the Xiaomi 14 series, many users have seen Xiaomi’s support for domestic manufacturers. Therefore, in their cooperation, Xiaomi not only obtains more excellent mobile phone components but also gains a wave of consumer goodwill among a large consumer group.

Before the release of the Xiaomi 10 series, Xiaomi has always regarded imaging capabilities as a top priority in securing a position in the high-end market. And the reason Xiaomi has this strategy is probably influenced by Huawei. In 2019, Huawei P30 became popular because of its imaging capabilities, and it’s not surprising that Xiaomi wants to replicate its success. From the 100 million pixels of the Xiaomi 10, to the 1/1.14-inch sensor of the Xiaomi 11 Ultra, and now the one-inch sensor of the Xiaomi 12S Ultra. It can be said that after several generations of effort, Xiaomi has now reaped rich rewards.

However, in the past, Xiaomi’s imaging capabilities mainly focused on the “hardware” aspect. Although the collaboration with Leica has changed this impression to a certain extent, it is clearly not enough. In the Xiaomi 14, we can see that Xiaomi seems to have abandoned the “simple and crude” approach of pursuing hardware stacking, no longer purely emphasizing the importance of a “large sensor”, but placing more value on the overall quality of the sensor, even if it means making compromises in sensor size.

According to official information, the main camera sensor of the Xiaomi 13 Pro is a one-inch Sony IMX989, but the sensor size of the Xiaomi 14 Pro is “downgraded” to 1/1.34 inches. This does not mean that Xiaomi has sacrificed the user experience. After carefully understanding the Light and Shadow Hunter sensor of the Xiaomi 14 Pro, we can find that although the size is smaller, this sensor still has various powerful capabilities, especially the 13.5EV dynamic range which is surprising. This means that the tolerance of this sensor is comparable to that of professional cameras. If it were the previous Xiaomi, it might have chosen a one-inch sensor for more favorable publicity reasons.

As the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform phone of the year, the Xiaomi 14 sets a good beginning for the smartphone market ahead. Due to lack of innovation and consumer downgrade, the smartphone market did not see the expected recovery in 2023, but the appearance of two domestic high-end models with million-level sales in the second half of the year is enough to give us more expectations for the upcoming 2024.

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