The World’s Hottest Smartphone Brand Is Chinese—and It Isn’t Huawei

Date: 24‑08‑2021

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Xiaomi has benefited from a sanctions‑hit Huawei, moving up fast in Europe, Southeast Asia

Xiaomi grabbed the top spot in Europe, with its market share almost doubling to 24% from a year earlier.

HONG KONG—U.S. sanctions have pummeled Huawei Technologies Co.’s smartphone business. A different Chinese tech company is reaping the benefits.

Xiaomi Corp. has filled the gap left by Huawei in markets from Europe to Southeast Asia to China. It is doing so with a playbook familiar to many Chinese consumer brands: offering functional gadgets comparable to upscale rivals at prices that often undercut them.

No company globally sold more phones in the month of June, as Beijing‑based Xiaomi surged past Samsung Electronics Co. , according to market researcher Counterpoint Research. For the second quarter, Xiaomi leapfrogged Apple Inc. to become world’s No. 2 for the first time.

The new Jobs: Tim Cook’s decade at Apple

Date: 24‑08‑2021

Source: The Economist

Tim Cook celebrates his 10th anniversary as Apple’s chief executive today. In 2011 even the computer‑maker’s biggest fans worried that he was destined to fail. How could somebody who made his career organising global supply chains and scrutinising spreadsheets fill the shoes of an entrepreneurial giant like Steve Jobs, Apple’s co‑founder?

Those doubts have been more than assuaged. In financial terms Mr Cook has been more successful than the late Jobs, who died shortly after stepping down. Under Mr Cook’s aegis the firm’s net profits more than doubled to an estimated $57bn last year. Its market capitalisation grew sevenfold to $2.5trn. And the “Apple economy”—the firm’s annual revenue (which last year was $274bn) plus everything other companies make on its platforms—has also grown sevenfold to more than $1trn. That is an amount equal to nearly one in every 13 dollars generated by all the companies in the S&P500 stockmarket index over the past 12 months.