INFORMission Weekly
Editor: Sumer Sharma
12th October- 18th October  2013,  Issue 20
Our mission is to INFORM
China's Answer to the iPhone
A Look Into Xiaomi​
If you have any suggestions or would like more information on any topic, do write in to informission.weekly@gmail.com

www.cochinshipyard.com
Wikimedia Commons
www.google.com
www.google.com
So we’ve all heard of them – all over the news – Xiaomi and Apple, China, Xiaomi – Xiaomi this, Xiaomi that – so who are these guys, and what do they have to do with Apple. The answer is simple – in the last 4 months in China – a baby, 3yr old company sold more phones than Apple – and took over the Chinese smartphone market. A market which Apple and its iPhone ruled, one of their big markets, and this new company beat them by a 100,000 phones. An ex-Google
executive who joined Xiaomi recently this year describes how the Chinese move “at breakneck speed” – she’s never seen such “fierce competition” and “impassioned desire”. Yes, they want to go global too. With superfast processers and iPhone-level phones at much lower prices – they’ve taken the Chinese market by storm – and they’re leading a revolution in the Chinese smartphone sector. Growth is phenomenal, and so are unconventional strategies: putting Xiaomi services in non Xiaomi devices. As they go global – Chinese smartphones will soon filter into our lives – and maybe replace the iPhone; not as china-makes (knockoffs), but genuinely better phones ‘Made in China’.

Entity search means that instead of just looking for the keywords in your search string “how old is Obama”, it tries to understand the meaning of the search and give relevant results. Or search “best rock band of all time”, and Google gives a list of bands. This feature is directly linked to the next one – conversational search – which completely changes Google’s voice search. Instead of speaking keywords into the mic, you ask a conversational question, like I asked “what’s an iPhone” – it understood the meaning – and told me what an iPhone is. It’s something completely new, and game changing. There are other technical changes that have made it faster, and also some that made more accurate – but instead of trying to explain those programming updates – Google gave examples. When you search “acid reflux prescription”, you get sites giving advice on treatment, instead of just a list of medicines. Search “pizza hut calories per slice”, and now it gives you an actual Pizza Hut statistic. The changes have been in place for a month, even though we didn’t realize it – but that may be a good thing - degradations spawn a storm of complaints, improvements usually go unnoticed.

India's Smartest Smartphones
​A Look Into Micromax​