When I founded xiaomi, I wanted to change the whole Chinese manufacturing industry and change the impression of the whole China on domestic products. How to use China's strong manufacturing capacity to make the world's top products and benefit everyone in the world was the dream of xiaomi.
Founded in April 2010, xiaomi is an innovative technology company focusing on the construction of high-end smart phones, Internet TV and smart home ecological chain.
Xiaomi was founded seven years ago. In 2010, it was founded for the simple purpose of how to use Internet thinking and Internet methodology to help China's manufacturing industry transform and upgrade. So we started from scratch seven years ago, with seven or eight guns for a dozen people and 30 million yuan.
Looking back on the past seven years, I think we have achieved a lot today. For example, the mobile phone industry is the most competitive industry in the world. There are apple, samsung, huawei and lenovo. Today, there are only two major mobile phone companies in the world, namely apple and samsung.
After we entered the market, a miracle happened. A very small company beat all the peers at home and abroad in two and a half years, and became the no.1 company in China and the no.3 company in the world. What does that mean? This shows that xiaomi has shocked the world with a series of innovations and has strong penetration.
What are xiaomi's main innovations? In the early stage, many people may be shocked by xiaomi's business model innovation and neglect its core technology innovation as a product company. What has xiaomi innovated? Or how? This past week, for example, the term "full screen" became very popular. In fact, in October last year, xiaomi released the first full-screen concept phone of the mi MIX, which shocked the world after its release.
Last month, the mi MIX won the gold award for the IDEA design. IDEA is one of the world's top three design awards, and only 12 phones have won the gold medal for innovation in its 37-year history. Even for a company like Apple, only the first iPhone has that distinction. This also shows that the global design community has given high recognition to the design of mi MIX. On September 1, the national design museum of Finland announced the collection of the mi MIX. I was shocked by the reason why they collected the mi MIX. The museum says it's because the mi MIX points the way to the future of mobile design, which is the full screen.
The idea came from a discussion among a group of engineers in early 2014. They thought that the mobile phone industry would become more and more boring, and then everyone's mobile phones would become more and more the same. Why is it the same? Because the iPhone was defined in this way ten years ago, the iPhone has dominated the design direction of mobile phones for the whole decade. We're a group of engineers who don't want to do exactly what everybody else does. Start to think about the future of mobile phones will be what direction? Of course, there are many directions for mobile phones in the future. When we discussed, we said that maybe it should be like the mobile phone in science fiction movies, which should be a transparent glass, that is, the front of the mobile phone should be all screens.
At the time of discussion, many people thought it was impossible, because there were too many technical problems to be solved, so at the beginning of 2014, I decided to make a concept phone. There was no timetable and no budget, so we just wanted to have a try. The phone's launch last October sent shockwaves through the world's tech media. This year, we can see that the mi MIX not only indicates the direction of future mobile phones, but actually from this moment on, it is found that almost all companies have issued phones with full screen. Undoubtedly, xiaomi stands at the top of the world mobile phone design and leads the direction of future mobile phone design.
Also, we've worked hard on communications computing. This time, MIX2 has the world's largest band, supporting 226 countries, the largest number of mobile phones in the world, and our engineers have been to nearly 100 countries to do field tests, and they've done extremely well.
Some say xiaomi is China's Apple. In fact, we are definitely not Chinese Apple. I think xiaomi is a mobile phone company, a mobile Internet company and a new retail company.
Xiaomi is a hardware company, making mobile phones and televisions. When I founded xiaomi, I wanted to change the entire Chinese manufacturing industry and change the impression of China on domestic products. How to use China's strong manufacturing capacity to make the world's top products to benefit everyone in the world is my dream of running xiaomi.
Everybody, let's break it down one by one. Do the world's coolest products, the world's best quality products, the world's most beautiful design products, is not a premise, to spend a lot of money, high cost. Our dream is to do the price of honest products, to do the world's top quality, but also sell less than half the price.
Guys, is it possible that you can sell it for half the price at such a high cost? Commercially impossible. How do we make the impossible possible? I think the core problem of Chinese business is that business is inefficient. It means that everything has to go through many layers to sell to consumers, and the price is very high. There may be many Yale alumni here, and the things you buy in the United States may also be made in China. The quality and price are much better than those in China.
In fact, it also makes me wonder that our products made in China have been shipped across the sea to the United States at half or even a third or even a tenth of the price of those made in China. I was thinking, how can you change business efficiency? My question is that only by improving business efficiency can we have the opportunity to improve product quality. I don't think the Chinese lack the spirit of craftsmanship, I don't think we lack the spirit of innovation, and I don't think we can't do things well. After I found this problem, I decided to compress all the process to the maximum extent. After the compression, I spent all the cost on product development and product itself.
When I made xiaomi in the early stage, I mentioned zero advertising budget, almost zero channel budget, cost pricing, and the amount of money for production materials, which is why I have to do hardware research and development and retail. Because of this high efficiency, we quickly crowded out all the copycat phones in China, and in turn forced the domestic phone manufacturers to make progress. If they could not improve the quality, efficiency and design, all the companies would be eliminated.
We started from e-commerce and then went offline to innovate various retail business models. We spend so much money on making products, we spend so much money on controlling and improving the efficiency of selling products, and then a new problem comes out, which is that the company will not make money or even lose money after it is finished. We strictly limit our gross margin, and we want it to be as low as possible. This is different from what the business school said. We hope the lower the gross profit rate, the better. The culture of the whole company is to control greed. I believe people are the same all over the world, as long as you really do well, people will be willing to pay tips. So I don't think it's sustainable for a company not to make money commercially, so we do a whole bunch of Internet services to pay for it.
In addition to the high quality of Chinese products, we believe that design is short version. When I founded the company, two of the eight partners were professional designers, so we attached great importance to design in the early stage. So far, xiaomi has won all three design awards in the world this year. At the beginning of this year, it won the IF gold award in Germany, and later the red dot gold award and the IDEA gold award in Germany. Chinese companies are the only ones to have won three gold MEDALS in a year. In addition to the three golden design awards, we have also won about 150 or 60 industrial design awards.
Xiaomi stresses high cost performance. We believe that e-commerce technology can achieve this effect by doing offline retail and selling the same products offline at the same price. But how? If we can turn the original planned sales volume, say, 100,000 units into 10 million units, and increase it by two orders of magnitude, the research and development cost will become 1% of the original, which is almost negligible. Because the selling price is low, the marketing cost is also very low, the channel sales cost is also very low, and then after large-scale raw material and manufacturing cost is reduced, a positive cycle will be generated. That's what I just told you. Of course, for many elites, it must be a Low price, but it's only because you don't understand that the world is changing fast.
Is this the kind of product that only Chinese people like? In just two or three years, we have ranked among the top five in 12 markets and entered the market of 46 countries. I think people all over the world like it.
雷军：小米创新的故事
我在创办小米的时候要改变整个中国制造业，改变整个中国对国货的印象，怎么利用中国强劲的制造能力做出世界的顶级作品，来造福于世界的每一个人，这就是我办小米的梦想。
小米公司正式成立于2010年4月，是一家专注于高端智能手机、互联网电视以及智能家居生态链建设的创新型科技企业。
小米是七年前创办的，2010年，创办小米的目的其实很简单，主要是想怎么利用互联网思维和互联网方法论，帮助中国制造业转型升级。所以我们七年前从零开始，十来个人七八条枪，3000万人民币开始起步。
回顾过去的七年，今天想起来我们还是创造了很多很了不起的成绩。比如说我们最先进入的是手机行业，手机行业是全球竞争最激烈的行业，有苹果、三星、华为、联想，包括到今天来看，全球主要只有两家手机公司，就是苹果、三星，所以竞争非常激烈。
我们进入市场以后奇迹发生了，一个很小的公司两年半时间击败了国内外所有的同行，成了中国第一，世界第三。这说明什么呢？说明小米的一系列创新震撼了全世界，并且具备非常强的穿透力。
小米的创新主要在什么地方呢？在初期的时候，可能很多人被小米的商业模式创新所震撼，忽略了其实作为一个产品公司核心技术的创新。小米创新了哪些东西呢？或者怎么创新的呢？比如说，最近一周“全面屏”这个词非常热。实际上去年10月份小米发布了小米MIX全球第一款全面屏的概念手机，发布完以后震撼全球。
上个月小米MIX获得了IDEA设计金奖。IDEA是全球三大设计奖项之一，在三十七年历史里获得创新金奖的只有12款手机。哪怕像Apple这样的公司，也只有第一代iPhone获得了这个殊荣。这也说明了全球的设计界对小米MIX的设计给予了高度的认可。9月1日芬兰国家设计博物馆宣布收藏了小米MIX。他们收藏的理由让我很震撼，为什么收藏小米MIX呢？博物馆说是因为小米MIX指明了未来手机设计的方向，就是全面屏。
这个想法是来自于2014年年初一群工程师在一起讨论，觉得手机行业越做越无聊，做到后来大家的手机都越来越一样。为什么会一样呢？是因为十年前iPhone定义成这个样子，所以iPhone左右了整个十年手机的设计方向。我们一群工程师就不想做的跟大家一模一样。就开始想未来的手机会是什么方向？当然，未来的手机方向很多，我们在讨论的时候，我们说也许应该像科幻电影里面的手机一样，应该是一款透明的玻璃，就是手机的正面应该全部是屏。
讨论的时候，大家很多人觉得完全没有可能，因为有太多的技术问题要解决，所以在2014年年初我就拍板说，咱们做一款概念手机，没有时间表，没有预算，我们就是要试一试。去年10月份这款手机的发布给全世界的科技媒体以巨大的震撼。今年大家看到，小米MIX不仅是指明了未来手机的方向，其实从此时此刻开始，大家发现几乎所有公司都出了全面屏的手机，无疑小米站到了世界手机设计的巅峰，引领了未来手机设计的方向。
还有一点，我们在通讯计算上下了很大工夫，这一次MIX2具备的全球频段，它支持了226个国家，是目前支持频段数最多的手机，我们的工程师去了将近100个国家做场测，表现都极为出色。
有人介绍小米说是中国的Apple。其实我们绝对不是中国的Apple。我认为小米是一家手机公司，也是一家移动互联网公司，更是一家新零售的公司。
小米是一家硬件公司，做手机、做电视，我在创办小米的时候要改变整个中国制造业，改变整个中国对国货的印象，怎么利用中国强劲的制造能力做出世界的顶级作品，来造福于世界的每一个人，这就是我办小米的梦想。
各位，我们一个个问题来拆解。做世界上最酷的产品，世界上品质最好的产品，世界上设计最漂亮的产品，是不是都有一个前提，要花很多钱吧，成本很高吧。我们的梦想要做价格厚道的产品，要做到世界顶级的品质，还只卖一半以内的价钱。
各位，你这么高的成本还卖人家一半的价钱，可能吗？在商业上是不可能的。我们要怎么把这种不可能变成可能？我认为，中国商业的核心问题是商业效率低下。就是任何一件东西要经过很多层卖到消费者手上，价格都非常高。可能在座有不少耶鲁的校友，你在美国买东西可能也是中国制造的，无论是质量还是价钱都比中国好很多。
其实这也让我很纳闷，我们中国做的产品飘洋过海到了美国，还只有中国一半甚至三分之一，甚至十分之一的价钱，这很让人崩溃。我就在想，怎么能改变商业效率呢？我提的问题是，只有改善商业效率才有机会改善产品品质。我不认为中国人缺少工匠精神，我也不认为我们缺少创新精神，我更不认为我们不能把东西做好。我找到这个问题之后就决定把所有的过程最大限度的压缩，压缩完以后把所有的成本用来做产品研发，做产品本身。
我在初期做小米的时候提到，零广告预算，也几乎是零渠道预算，成本定价，生产材料多少钱就定多少钱，这就是为什么我做硬件研发还必须要做零售。就是因为这样的高效率，我们迅速挤走了中国所有的山寨机，而且反过来逼着国产手机厂商进步，如果不能改善品质，不能改善效率，不能改善设计的公司就全部被淘汰了。
我们从电商开始，又进入到线下，做了各种各样的零售商业模式的创新。我们花了这么多钱做产品，我们花了这么多钱控制提高效率销售产品，接着一个新的问题出来了，这样做完以后公司是不挣钱的，甚至搞不好会亏钱。我们严格地限制了自己的毛利率，我们希望毛利率越低越好。这又是跟商学院讲的不一样，我们希望毛利率越低越好，整个公司的文化是控制贪婪，只有这样这个公司才是长期可持续的一家伟大的公司。我相信全世界的人都是一样的，只要你真心做的好，大家会愿意付小费的。所以我认为从商业上一个公司不挣钱是不持续的，所以为了付费我们做了一大堆的互联网服务。
中国产品除了高质量以外，我们觉得设计是短版，我在创办的时候8个合伙人有2个是专业的设计师，所以我们在初期的时候就极度地重视设计。到现在为止，世界上三大设计奖项今年小米全部揽过来了，今年年初获得了德国IF金奖，后来还获得了德国红点金奖和IDEA金奖。中国公司在一年内荣获三大金奖的公司应该仅此一家吧。除了三大设计金奖，我们还获得了大概一百五六十项的工业设计奖项。
小米讲究高性价比。我们认为，用电商的技术做线下的零售，线下销售同样的产品，电商一样的价钱，能够做到这样的效果。但是成本是如何降低的呢？假如我们能够把原计划的商品销量，比如说卖10万台变成卖1000万台，提高两个数量级，研发成本就变成了原来的1%，几乎可以忽略不计。因为卖的价格低了，市场推广成本也很低，渠道销售成本也很低，接着大规模以后原材料和制造成本又降低了就产生了正向循环。刚才我给大家讲过的，就能产生这样的效果。当然，对于很多精英阶层来说，卖的这么便宜一定很Low，那只是因为你不了解，这个世界变化快。
就是这样的产品，是不是只有中国人喜欢呢？在短短的两三年时间里，我们在12个国家市场中位列前五位，进入了46个国家的市场。我觉得这一套东西全世界人民都喜欢。
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