1. Historic baton: the five-year change from Huawei's sanctions to Xiaomi's breakthrough
On March 2, when Lei Jun shouted the phrase "make good products for global users" in Barcelona, this conference will be destined to go down in the history of Chinese science and technology.
After Huawei was sanctioned in 2019, the European high-end mobile phone market was monopolized by Apple and Samsung for a long time, and the share of Chinese brands plummeted from 12% to 3%. Today, Xiaomi, which has been working silently for many years, has finally broken the situation with the strategy of "people, cars and home ecology":
- Market share counterattack: In 2024, Xiaomi's market share of high-end mobile phones in Europe will finally rebound to 7.2%, narrowing the gap to 4 percentage points from Huawei's peak in 2018 (11.3%).
- Leapfrogging technology generations: Xiaomi's self-developed surging OS system, Tiantong satellite communication, silicon carbon anode battery and other 12 technical indicators have surpassed Huawei's level in the same period.
- Ecology has been comprehensively upgraded: Xiaomi's product matrix has expanded from the original mobile phone to the automotive and smart home fields, and the ecological ability is more radical than Huawei's previous "1+8+N" strategy.
The Economist commented: "This is the first time that a Chinese company has completed intergenerational inheritance in the high-end market, and Xiaomi has not only taken over the market share, but also the strategic torch of China's technology going overseas." "
Second, the mobile phone battlefield: the 1499 euro flagship pierced Huawei's unfinished ceiling
Pricing and technology transcendence
- Price anchor: The Xiaomi Mi 15 Ultra (1,499 euros) is 7% premium to the Huawei Mate 60 Pro+ Europe (1,399 euros), but the configuration is more than the Mate 60 Pro+:
- 200 million pixel Leica telephoto vs Huawei 50 million pixel XMAGE
- Tiantong Satellite Two-way Communication vs Huawei Beidou One-way SMS
- 5600mAh silicon carbon battery vs Huawei 5000mAh silicon oxygen battery
- Channel Breakthrough: Reached a direct supply agreement with the three major European operators (Vodafone, Orange, and Telefónica) to replicate Huawei's peak channel strategy.
Market Feedback:
- 西班牙El Corte Inglés百货数据显示,小米15 Ultra首销日销量达iPhone 16 Pro Max的1.3倍。
- German technology media CHIP bluntly said: "The high-end market vacancy left by Huawei is being filled by the more ferocious Xiaomi."
3. Ecological Revolution: Multi-front operations replicate the successful path of Huawei's "Spare Tire Plan".
1. Tablets: Competing for the right voice in productivity tools
- Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro is equipped with self-developed surging OS 2.0, and its cross-system collaboration capabilities are more radical than those of Huawei Hongmeng:
- 与Windows/MacOS双向文件拖拽延迟<15ms，超过华为多屏协同的35ms
- AI meeting minutes can be translated into 32 languages in real time, while Huawei only supports 12 languages
2. Smart Cars: A perfect replica of the European version of the "Question Mode".
- SU7 Ultra takes "vehicle-machine ecological integration" as its killer feature:
- Mobile phone navigation can automatically flow to the car machine, and the path planning speed is 3 times faster than Tesla
- 200+ smart devices are controlled by the car-home interconnection, and the number of scene linkages exceeds that of Huawei's Hongmeng cockpit by 40%
- According to data from the Madrid experience store, 37% of pre-order users have considered Huawei Wenjie, but there is no European version
3. Communication equipment: Secretly crossing Chen Cang to fill Huawei
- Leveraged the press conference to launch an enterprise-class router AX10000, using self-developed DPU chips, which improved performance by 22% compared with similar Huawei products.
- Reached a 5G small cell pilot agreement with Deutsche Telekom, quietly entering Huawei's traditional advantageous fields
Fourth, the giants tremble: China's technological offensive and defensive war has entered a new stage
Apple's Samsung's "two-line defense"
- Apple launches the "Battle for Europe":
- The channel price of the iPhone 16 series dropped by up to 15%, setting a record for price reductions in the first quarter
- said that it will accelerate the research and development of Apple Car to deal with the ecological threat of Xiaomi's cars
- Samsung offers a "technical blockade":
- It was made clear that the supply of AMOLED screens would be restricted, forcing the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro to switch to BOE
- It has previously lobbied the European Union to impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to 25%
Tesla's ecological crisis
- The Berlin plant had previously cut weekly production of the Model Y by 30% to cope with the SU7 Ultra booking shock
- Urgently upgrade the vehicle system to support Android interconnection, breaking the ten-year closed ecology
Huawei's inheritance and coopetition
- At present, Ren Zhengfei's internal speech is leaking: "Xiaomi's charge is beneficial to the overall situation of China's science and technology"
- The two sides have a secret communication in the semiconductor field: YMTC exclusively supplies UFS 4.0 flash memory for the Xiaomi 15 Ultra
5. Strategic Significance: Decoding the Model of China's Science and Technology Overseas Transfer
1. From "Single Product Breakthrough" to "Ecological Colonization"
- The interconnection rate of Xiaomi's ecological devices in Europe reached 58%, an increase of 23 percentage points compared with Huawei's era
- The average annual consumption of "Family Bucket" users reached 1,599 euros, which was 4.7 times that of single product users
2. From "Technology Following" to "Standard Setting"
- Leading the EU's new smart travel regulations: promoting the mmWave radar of scooters into a mandatory standard
- Led the development of X-Link, a vehicle-machine interconnection protocol, which has been joined by 12 European car companies
3. From "market development" to "cultural export"
- The Barcelona press conference incorporated Gaudí's architectural elements, and the social media spread was three times higher than that of the Huawei Mate 40 press conference
- The Xiaomi Design Center settled in Milan, poaching the former creative director of Gucci to dominate the product aesthetics
6. Hidden worries and challenges: the speed of life and death of the baton
Three major risk warnings
- Patent reef: Nokia needs to pay 4.5 euros per mobile phone for 5G royalties, eroding the profits of high-end phones
- Geopolitical game: The EU intends to list Xiaomi as a "high-risk supplier", fearing a repeat of Huawei's ban
- Ecological backlash: The automotive business dragged down the group's gross profit margin, and the net profit margin fell to a record low of 2.1% in Q1
Double opportunity
- Huawei's European Enterprise Market: Xiaomi's Enterprise Services Business Grows 240% YoY
- Dividends of Sino-US technology decoupling: the proportion of Chinese equipment purchased by European operators soared from 19% to 43%
7. Future Battlefield: A Community with a Shared Future for China's Science and Technology
As the SU7 Ultra drove past the Columbus Monument in Barcelona, the launch event had long since transcended commercial competition. It reveals the new rules of survival for China's tech industry:
- In the technical defense line torn apart by Huawei, Xiaomi is expanding its results with ecological iron horses
- For every 1% of the European market share, 270 million yuan of R&D expenses + 15% of the proportion of localized talents need to be invested
- From the "spare tire plan" to the "ecological expedition", the globalization of Chinese enterprises has entered a new era of "hard-core breakthrough".
As the Spanish newspaper El País concluded: "When Xiaomi built a three-dimensional attack matrix with a mobile phone of 1499 euros + a scooter of 599 euros + an electric car of 80,000 euros, the global technology industry finally realized that Huawei's exit was never the end of the story, but the clarion call of the general offensive of the Chinese army." "