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Legume7 said:

Whether Xiaomi is 3rd or 5th, the point still stands. Xiaomi sold more that Huawei in 2023, but less than Huawei in 2024. If we're really nitpicking, the chart you linked does not include Hi Enjoy as part of Huawei, which would push Huawei up further. So no, Xiaomi is not "catching up" to Huawei in sales. And this year Huawei will widen this gap as the effects of sanctions continue to decrease. If we are talking about brand perception, I already explained why Xiaomi is far off Huawei, Apple, and Honor. If you want more evidence, here is a list of last year's sales for phones above ¥7,000-¥8,000 RMB.

Notice how Xiaomi's best entry is #15. Above ¥8,000, Xiaomi only sells foldables. And there it loses badly to Huawei and Honor (Huawei 48.6%, Honor 20.6%, Xiaomi 7.4%). It is very clear that Xiaomi simply does not have a noticeable presence in the high-end scene. Xiaomi can change that, and I hope it does. But right now it simply isn't there.

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well, this is talking about trend. Read my original post. Is Xiaomi brand catching Huawei.

And the best proxy for this is comparing flagship phone of Mate 70 to Xiaomi 15. Before this, Xiaomi's flagship phone was no where to be found.


anyhow, here is Huawei back in global market

tphuang said:

well, this is talking about trend. Read my original post. Is Xiaomi brand catching Huawei.

And the best proxy for this is comparing flagship phone of Mate 70 to Xiaomi 15. Before this, Xiaomi's flagship phone was no where to be found.


anyhow, here is Huawei back in global market

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1891810863926980747

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BTW. Do we know why the international versions of new Huawei phones like pura don't have 5g like the domestic version? E.g. I am thinking which Huawei phone to buy and searching Polish Huawei site and it only shows 4g

tphuang said:

well, this is talking about trend. Read my original post. Is Xiaomi brand catching Huawei.

And the best proxy for this is comparing flagship phone of Mate 70 to Xiaomi 15. Before this, Xiaomi's flagship phone was no where to be found.


anyhow, here is Huawei back in global market

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1891810863926980747

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With all due respect, you have not defined the method of comparison. Are comparing total sales? In that case, Huawei wins in 2024 (Huawei #2 vs Xiaomi #3 per your chart), and the overall trend favors Huawei (in 2023 it was Huawei #6 vs Xiaomi #3-#5, depending on source). If we're talking about brand perception, I already explained why the general public does not view Xiaomi as a high-end brand yet. The sales reflect this. They already had to exit the fold market, and their ultra flagships are not selling well. These are true high-end products, whereas the Xiaomi 15 series is best classified as mid-range. Futhermore, only the reemergence of Huawei was able to shake the sales of Apple, whereas Xiaomi did nothing noticeable to compete against Apple in the years where Huawei did not have 5G and Google Play Services. We can all agree that Apple is a high-end brand, and the fact of the matter is that Huawei can compete against Apple while Xiaomi can't.

You want to compare flagship line versus flagship line. This does not make sense given the massive price difference of ¥1,200 RMB for respective regular and pro models. For an even more illustrative example, hardly anyone would consider the Xiaomi 15 Pro a competitor to the iPhone 16 Pro even though both are the "pro" flagships of their respective brands. Let's agree to disagree on this point.

Since the Mate 60 came out, you can find lots of videos of people camping outside of stores wating for Huawei's latest flagship, be it Mate 60 series, Pura 70 series, Mate XT, or Mate 70 series. No other smartphone brand commands this level of enthusiasm in China, not Xiaomi, not even Apple anymore. This intangible component also represents a component of brand value. However, like I said before, I believe Xiaomi has the potential to bring out this enthusiasm in a way Oppo, Vivo, and Honor cannot. They have Lei Jun who commands immense popularity, a robust Mijia ecosystem, and a rapidly improving R&D team. Also I'm sure you being way more knowledgable on EVs than me can see the level of enthusiasm for the SU7 series, which can compete and beat brands like Tesla and Porsche. I'm optimistic they can leverage this to improve the enthusiasm for their smartphone brand. In fact, if we look outside of China, we can see this enthusiasm already present in India of all places, where Xiaomi has the endorsement of many Bollywood stars. On Youtube you can find many Xiaomi India advertisements with tens of millions of views. It seems unbelievable for a Chinese brand to command this level of admiration in India, but this once again shows the massive potential of Xiaomi.

Legume7 said:

With all due respect, you have not defined the method of comparison. Are comparing total sales? In that case, Huawei wins in 2024 (Huawei #2 vs Xiaomi #3 per your chart), and the overall trend favors Huawei (in 2023 it was Huawei #6 vs Xiaomi #3-#5, depending on source). If we're talking about brand perception, I already explained why the general public does not view Xiaomi as a high-end brand yet. The sales reflect this. They already had to exit the fold market, and their ultra flagships are not selling well. These are true high-end products, whereas the Xiaomi 15 series is best classified as mid-range. Futhermore, only the reemergence of Huawei was able to shake the sales of Apple, whereas Xiaomi did nothing noticeable to compete against Apple in the years where Huawei did not have 5G and Google Play Services. We can all agree that Apple is a high-end brand, and the fact of the matter is that Huawei can compete against Apple while Xiaomi can't.

You want to compare flagship line versus flagship line. This does not make sense given the massive price difference of ¥1,200 RMB for respective regular and pro models. For an even more illustrative example, hardly anyone would consider the Xiaomi 15 Pro a competitor to the iPhone 16 Pro even though both are the "pro" flagships of their respective brands. Let's agree to disagree on this point.

Since the Mate 60 came out, you can find lots of videos of people camping outside of stores wating for Huawei's latest flagship, be it Mate 60 series, Pura 70 series, Mate XT, or Mate 70 series. No other smartphone brand commands this level of enthusiasm in China, not Xiaomi, not even Apple anymore. This intangible component also represents a component of brand value. However, like I said before, I believe Xiaomi has the potential to bring out this enthusiasm in a way Oppo, Vivo, and Honor cannot. They have Lei Jun who commands immense popularity, a robust Mijia ecosystem, and a rapidly improving R&D team. Also I'm sure you being way more knowledgable on EVs than me can see the level of enthusiasm for the SU7 series, which can compete and beat brands like Tesla and Porsche. I'm optimistic they can leverage this to improve the enthusiasm for their smartphone brand. In fact, if we look outside of China, we can see this enthusiasm already present in India of all places, where Xiaomi has the endorsement of many Bollywood stars. On Youtube you can find many Xiaomi India advertisements with tens of millions of views. It seems unbelievable for a Chinese brand to command this level of admiration in India, but this once again shows the massive potential of Xiaomi.

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In China, premium segment is considered 4000 RMB+ and Xiaomi 15 is 4000+ for the full line.

Xiaomi's market share in 4000+ RMB segment is clearly increasing.

Chinese scientists have achieved high-temperature superconductivity in nickel oxide materials under ambient pressure conditions.

tphuang said:

In China, premium segment is considered 4000 RMB+ and Xiaomi 15 is 4000+ for the full line.

Xiaomi's market share in 4000+ RMB segment is clearly increasing.

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Your claim was that Xiaomi is catching up to Huawei, and your criteria is comparing the ¥4000+ segment. I explained why this is too one-dimensional of an analysis, but even using your stated criteria, your are overlooking many things. Comparing the Xiaomi 15 series and the Xiaomi 14 series in their first 35 days of sales, the Xiaomi 15 series actually performed worse by 8%. If we are considering the period after subsidies were put into place (after 1/1/25), the Xiaomi 15 series perfermoned better, but the non-pro Xiaomi 15 would not count as premium.

It's true that the Mate 70 series performed worse than the Mate 60 series. However, the delay played a large part in that. There's strong evidence that this helped the sales of the Pura 70 series and the Mate 60 series given that both are still selling so well many, many months after their release. The full statistics for 2024 by segment are not out, but in the first 3 quarters, Huawei trounced Xiaomi in the premium segment (26% vs. 4%, 30% vs. 4%, 33% vs. 3%). In Huawei's worst quarter, it still sold 6.5 times the number premium smartphones as Xiaomi. And looking at the YoY gains for each quarter (+67% vs. -43%, +82% vs. +50%, +34% vs. +88%), there's scant evidence of Xiaomi catching up. By your critieria, Xiaomi performed worse than Honor (6%, 4%, 5%) in the high-end (¥4000+) market last year. There's no reason to compare against Huawei until Xiaomi can prove it can beat Honor for second place and that it can sell premium smartphones well without subsidies.

Legume7 said:

Your claim was that Xiaomi is catching up to Huawei, and your criteria is comparing the ¥4000+ segment. I explained why this is too one-dimensional of an analysis, but even using your stated criteria, your are overlooking many things. Comparing the Xiaomi 15 series and the Xiaomi 14 series in their first 35 days of sales, the Xiaomi 15 series actually performed worse by 8%. If we are considering the period after subsidies were put into place (after 1/1/25), the Xiaomi 15 series perfermoned better, but the non-pro Xiaomi 15 would not count as premium.

It's true that the Mate 70 series performed worse than the Mate 60 series. However, the delay played a large part in that. There's strong evidence that this helped the sales of the Pura 70 series and the Mate 60 series given that both are still selling so well many, many months after their release. The full statistics for 2024 by segment are not out, but in the first 3 quarters, Huawei trounced Xiaomi in the premium segment (26% vs. 4%, 30% vs. 4%, 33% vs. 3%). In Huawei's worst quarter, it still sold 6.5 times the number premium smartphones as Xiaomi. And looking at the YoY gains for each quarter (+67% vs. -43%, +82% vs. +50%, +34% vs. +88%), there's scant evidence of Xiaomi catching up. By your critieria, Xiaomi performed worse than Honor (6%, 5%, 4%) in the high-end (¥4000+) market last year. There's no reason to compare against Huawei until Xiaomi can prove it can beat Honor for second place, and that it can sell premium smartphones well without subsidies.

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I just showed you the data of the flagship phones from this past Q4 and Xiaomi 15 was the top seller.

Xiaomi doesn’t need to outsell huawei for my statement to be true. It just needs to be capturing a larger % of premium market (which again is widely known to be 4000 RMB in China)

I am actually not sure why there is such resistance from people here that there is a second Chinese OEM that’s winning more of the premium market.

clearly, Xiaomi Su7 has been the breakout hit of the year in EV land and my working theory is that it’s helping with overall brand value.

As consumers (myself included), we should all welcome more competition in the market . I've said repeatedly that I use both Huawei and Xiaomi premium phones, but it's important to base conclusions off of facts. The latest data I have is that as of 2/8/25, the Xiaomi 15 series is actually selling worse than the Xiaomi 14 series by 5%.



Unlike Xiaomi, Huawei has older models (Mate 60 and Pura 70 series) selling in large numbers in addition to the delayed Mate 70 series. As evidence, I've organized the ordinal sales of domestic premium phones since the release of the Mate 70 series, which makes for a fair comparison (data taken from RD观测 on Weibo, which includes the top 30 models per week):


We can see Huawei has substantial premium sales outside of the Mate 70 Series, while the 15 series is the entirety of Xiaomi's premium sales. It simply absurd to say the Mate 70 series represents Huawei's premium sales, especially since it was delayed.

As I said before, it's debatable whether the Xiaomi 15 non-pro is a premium phone after factoring in subsidies. Even if it is, we can conduct a careful analysis of sales from 10/29 (Xiaomi 15 series release) to 2/8 (latest data). This is the most generous window for Xiaomi. If we start at the Mate 70 release, the results would favor Huawei even more.

Sales of the 15 series (Xiaomi's entire premium sales) declined 5% in the period of 10/29 (release) to 2/8 YoY relative to the 14 series (Xiaomi's entire premium sales).

For Huawei, from 10/29 to 11/26 (Mate 70 release), a period of roughly 4 weeks, Huawei sold the Pura 70 series and Mate 60 series. The previous year, Huawei only sold the Mate 60 series. In this period, Huawei's premium sales are probably the same YoY, maybe sligthly less. From 11/26 to 2/8, a period of roughly 15 weeks, Huawei sold the Mate 70 series, Pura 70 series, and Mate 60 series. The previous year, Huawei only sold the Mate 60 series. With very high confidence, Huawei's premium sales in this period are significantly more than the previous year. Therefore, Huawei's premium sales are almost certainly up YoY from 10/29 to 2/8. In summary, we know for a fact that Xiaomi's premium sales are down, while we can say with very high confidence Huawei's sales are up. Futhermore, we know that Huawei premium phones can keep selling well over a year after their release, while that is not the case for Xiaomi.

The Xiaomi 15 series are great products, but we shouldn't cherry pick data nor discount the effect of subsidies, which will almost certainly not be present in future years. If people are wondering why Xiaomi's sales are down, I believe it has to do with the price increase of Qualcomm SoCs, which caused Xiaomi to increase its prices while downgrading specifications like camera sensors. Oppo also sold very very well this year by integrating many iPhone features into its Find X8 series.

Legume7 said:

As consumers (myself included), we should all welcome more competition in the market . I've said repeatedly that I use both Huawei and Xiaomi premium phones, but it's important to base conclusions off of facts. The latest data I have is that as of 2/8/25, the Xiaomi 15 series is actually selling worse than the Xiaomi 14 series by 5%.

View attachment 145902

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And how sure you are off this guy?

All the posts I saw from this Weibo user showed that Xiaomi 15 was ahead of 14.

Legume7 said:

Unlike Xiaomi, Huawei has older models (Mate 60 and Pura 70 series) selling in large numbers in addition to the delayed Mate 70 series. As evidence, I've organized the ordinal sales of domestic premium phones since the release of the Mate 70 series, which makes for a fair comparison (data taken from RD观测 on Weibo, which includes the top 30 models per week):

W49 2024	Mate 70 > Mate 70 Pro+
W50 2024	Mate 70 > Mate 60 > Xiaomi 15 > Pura 70 Pro
W51 2024	Mate 70 > Mate 60 > Xiaomi 15 > Pura 70 Pro > Pura 70 Satellite Edition > Find X8
W52 2024	Mate 70 > Mate 60 > Mate 70 Pro > Xiaomi 15 > Pura 70 Satellite Edition > Find X8
W1 2025	Mate 70 > Mate 60 > Pura 70 Pro > Mate 70 Pro+ > Pura 70 Satellite Edition > Xiaomi 15
W2 2025	Mate 70 > Mate 60 >Pura 70 Pro > Mate 70 Pro+ > Xiaomi 15 > Pura 70 Satellite Edition
W3 2025	Mate 70 > Pura 70 Pro >Mate 60 > Xiaomi 15
W4 2025	Xiaomi 15 > Pura 70 Pro > Mate 70 > Pura 70 Satellite Edition > Huawei Mate 60
W5 2025	Xiaomi 15 > Pura 70 Pro >Pura 70 Satellite Edition >Mate 70 > Mate 60

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Find some other data point. I don't see him as reliable.

Legume7 said:

We can see Huawei has substantial premium sales outside of the Mate 70 Series, while the 15 series is the entirety of Xiaomi's premium sales. It simply absurd to say the Mate 70 series represents Huawei's premium sales, especially since it was delayed.

As I said before, it's debatable whether the Xiaomi 15 non-pro is a premium phone after factoring in subsidies. Even if it is, we can conduct a careful analysis of sales from 10/29 (Xiaomi 15 series release) to 2/8 (latest data). This is the most generous window for Xiaomi. If we start at the Mate 70 release, the results would favor Huawei even more.

Sales of the 15 series (Xiaomi's entire premium sales) declined 5% in the period of 10/29 (release) to 2/8 YoY relative to the 14 series (Xiaomi's entire premium sales).

For Huawei, from 10/29 to 11/26 (Mate 70 release), a period of roughly 4 weeks, Huawei sold the Pura 70 series and Mate 60 series. The previous year, Huawei only sold the Mate 60 series. In this period, Huawei's premium sales are probably the same YoY, maybe sligthly less. From 11/26 to 2/8, a period of roughly 15 weeks, Huawei sold the Mate 70 series, Pura 70 series, and Mate 60 series. The previous year, Huawei only sold the Mate 60 series. With very high confidence, Huawei's premium sales in this period are significantly more than the previous year. Therefore, Huawei's premium sales are almost certainly up YoY from 10/29 to 2/8. In summary, we know for a fact that Xiaomi's premium sales are down, while we can say with very high confidence Huawei's sales are up. Futhermore, we know that Huawei premium phones can keep selling well over a year after their release, while that is not the case for Xiaomi.

The Xiaomi 15 series are great products, but we shouldn't cherry pick data nor discount the effect of subsidies, which will almost certainly not be present in future years. If people are wondering why Xiaomi's sales are down, I believe it has to do with the price increase of Qualcomm SoCs, which caused Xiaomi to increase its prices while downgrading specifications like camera sensors. Oppo also sold very very well this year by integrating many iPhone features into its Find X8 series.

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You seem to be basing this entire post on what this one guy, who I'm not sure how accurate his numbers are.

As such, there is not much for me to make of your post.

It seems to me pretty straight forward that Xiaomi's flagship phone is ahead in sales so far of all the new flagship phones this year.

tphuang said:

And how sure you are off this guy?

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We can both agree that Digital Chat Station (数码闲聊站) is the most reliable leaker in this field. You cite him extensively, as do I. RD观测 has consistently provided information that is later corroborated by Digital Chat Station. We can see this in leaking the 2024 smartphone market share, where RD观测 was earlier by over 12 hours. There are plenty of other examples. This is extremely strong evidence of his credibility. On the other hand, I haven't found an instance where he's been wrong. I welcome any examples.

tphuang said:

It seems to me pretty straight forward that Xiaomi's flagship phone is ahead in sales so far of all the new flagship phones this year.

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I never disagreed with this claim. I simply said the 15 series is selling worse than the 14 series as of 2/8. This is not unbelievable at all since the base model increased in price by ¥500 while cutting features. Keep in mind the 14 series sold extremely well, so this really isn't a knock on Xiaomi. I don't discount the possibility the Xiaomi 15 series could make up enough ground on the 14 series to have higher sales in the end, but that's not what we're talking about here.

I also objected to comparing the sales of the Mate 70 series and Xiaomi 15 series and using that to say anything about each brand's premium market share. Huawei has other premium series selling in high volume, while Xiaomi does not. This is the most critical hole in your comparison. In addition, the Mate 70 series was delayed, which makes a "series-versus-series" as opposed to "premium segment total-versus-premium segment total" comparison problematic.

Even being extremely charitable to all of your claims and disregarding the sources I linked, I don't think you can deny that Huawei sold more premium phones YoY from 11/26/24 to present simply by having 3 series (Mate 70, Pura 70, Mate 60) selling in high volume compared to 1 (Mate 60) the year before. Playing devil's advocate and assuming the Xiaomi 15 series outsold the Xiaomi 14 series, Huawei's premium sales also massively increased YoY in the same time period. I see no siginficant evidence that "Xiaomi is catching up to Huawei in the premium segment," which was the original claim. On the other hand, there is evidence to the contrary, whether one considers such evidence as credible is up to their own analysis.