Xiaomi, China’s New Phone Giant, Takes Aim at World

When Xiamoi launched a new smartphone in New Delhi in April, the Chinese smartphone seller’s online offering of 40,000 phones sold out in 15 seconds. Hundreds lined up outside the launch venue, including 17-year-old Raghav Goyal, who drove seven hours to attend and said the Xiaomi phone was a much better value than its big-name rivals. “Apple is gone!” he shouted after the unveiling. “Apple and Samsung are gone!” That is the kind of zealotry Xiamoi CEO Lei Jun, 45, is counting on to replicate overseas his success in China, where he has used an unusual mix of social-network marketing, fan-appreciation festivals and his own tech-star status to become No. 2 in smartphone-market share after Apple Inc.

Little known in the West and just 5 years old, closely held Xiaomi (pronounced sh-YEOW-mee) is in ways still a disorganized startup. But it is also among the world’s fastest-growing smartphone companies and most valuable startups, with a valuation of $46 billion by some estimates. Selling full-featured phones at near cost, it has come to battle Apple and Samsung Electronics Co. for the No. 1 spot in China. It dented Samsung ’s China market share badly in 2014, one factor forcing the South Korean company to post a sharp profit drop and to rethink its strategy. But Lei has bigger, global ambitions, of which his push into India is part: to create the first Chinese consumer brand that is cool abroad.