Xiaomi may be the rising star in China right now, but Huawei still believes that its real competitor in the Chinese smartphone market is Samsung. All three companies made it to the top five list of most smartphone shipments, but Apple and Samsung were the undisputed leaders, while Huawei, Lenovo, and Xiaomi fought for distant third. Even so, Huawei still believes Samsung is its biggest competitor, not the other two Chinese companies.
In 2014, Huawei sold 75 million smartphones, being one of the three Chinese companies included in top 5 smartphone makers. Since Samsung and Apple are the two undisputed market leaders, Huawei is directly competing with Lenovo, Xiaomi and others for the no. 3 position. However, from the point of view of Huawei chief Richard Yu, the company’s real competitor is Samsung, not Xiaomi. We’re not exactly sure why the Huawei exec specifically took on Xiaomi, but, according to Chinese website Zol, Richard Yu said that the Redmi maker has “no chance” in the high-end segment of the market. He continued by saying that Xiaomi’s Mi Note doesn’t offer advantages over the Huawei Ascend Mate7, and neither does the Xiaomi Mi4 over the Huawei Honor 6 Plus.
