You should read Thompson's article "Xiaomi's Ambition" (http://stratechery.com/2015/xiaomis-ambition/ and linked from this article).

Basically, he argues that Xiaomi is built around serving a market that neither Apple or Google are serving: young people that are technically savvy but don't have the funds to be early adopters. There's a whole generation of them in China that have grown up during China's boom. There aren't many of them in the US, but that's not the same thing as "outside of China." Xiaomi will probably find a lot of fans in South Asia (particularly India), South America (Brazil) and Africa (Nigeria, South Africa).

Wasn't Xiaomi temporarily banned in India because of concerns that it is uploading data to China? This lack of confidence is going to be a roadblock if the end goal is take over the home. My understanding is that Xiaomi sells very little in India (some flash sales in tens of thousands of units). I know it is a smash hit in China. We'll just have to see.

Xiaomi was banned over patent issues for like a week before they resolved it.

The issue you are referring to, the Indian Air Force "warned" the use of Xiaomi devices because they tracked them uploading data to China. Xiaomi responded with an update which had one-click Mi Cloud turn off switch to stop that from happening. They were uploading meta data for their cloud services just like any other company. Xiaomi also announced a new datacentre in India to mitigate this concern. But they never got banned over this.

Xiaomi sold less than 2 million devices in India in 4-ish months. But to put things in perspective, they sold 8-9 times more than Google's Android One phones, another program targeting the same market. They sold the flagship Mi3 only for a couple weeks and then continued selling lower end device. They are launching Mi4 here this month, so that number will now probably go higher.

I'd hazard to say that the nebulous "user experience" advantage for Apple boils down to consistently committing to integration of a handful of products.

Google seems to have an iterative sink or swim approach with many products (often overlapping) and to a lesser extent, so does Amazon.

> I'd hazard to say that the nebulous "user experience" advantage for Apple boils down to consistently committing to integration of a handful of products.

This is a good example of what I'm talking about. You have redefined user experience to mean something that most people will not think of. Even giving you that, look at the current iPhone setup. Leaving aside the carrier aspect, you can buy worldwide a new

iphone 4s,5c,5s,6,6plus in multiple colors and sizes.

basically 3.5", 4", 4.6" and 5.5" screen for a phone. With prices points from $250 to $1000 in minor increments. In contrast, Google has only one phone currently on sale the Nexus 5. The 'focus', 'handful of products' mantra is repeated but is not true. Frankly, the only thing missing is the stylus and adding it would cover the entire gamut.

The 4S, 5C/S, and 6/6Plus are all from separate years. It's not like Apple is refining the 4S and coming out with new versions of those devices. The only phones in their lineup is the 6 and 6 Plus. Using different storage sizes and device colors is barely going to make an impact in terms of spreading out priorities and losing focus.

Google only has one phone because that phone isn't even supposed to make money. It's a phone meant for Android developers both internally and third-party. Google may not lose focus from all the other handset manufacturers creating the thousands of different Android devices, but they certainly have a difficult time with integration.

What difference does it make if they are from the past. They are produced and shipped today, components have to be updated, they are sold today, their supply chains have to be managed today, iOS has to run on them today, they get the same warranty and customer support that 6 and 6 plus have. Right now, 75% of their phones are NOT 6 or 6 plus. It takes people and focus to do all of this.

EDIT: The way you are talking about 4s it would seem Apple only has a design team, once something is designed everything else happens automatically.

> It's not like Apple is refining the 4S and coming out with new versions of those devices.

Actually, they are. You think the BOM hasn't changed? You think it's the exact same components being shipped from the exact same suppliers?

The specifications are the same, but the components are newly manufactured. I'm sure the BOM has rev'd. It's a mistake not to consider phones as part of their lineup which you can buy new, just because they have lesser specs and were initially released a few years ago.

I think this is an important part of Apple's strategy, which comes specifically from the way they maintain iOS, which other vendors have largely missed out on.

User experience is difficult to measure, which means companies that focus on it from a numbers perspective often miss the point.

Turns out actually meeting a market need is important (Path), having a functional business model (Square), knowing your target customer (Dropbox), and we'll see with Medium.

User experience is a differentiator. It's not the only thing.

It's really hard to build a case against disruption theory, using a single product, especially when the competition has only been "good enough" just since the last year or so, with kitkat and apps using its design language, while there are other strong factors keeping iPhone strong, be it strong brand, stronger app ecosystem, and various lockup effects.

But I'll be happy to be proven wrong with other examples for Thompsons theory.