Xiaomi CEO says competition with Apple is ‘a war of life and death’

It’s been a while since Xiaomi no longer hides its ambitions to dethrone Apple and become one of the champions of high-end smartphones. But this time, the CEO of Xiaomi Lei Junwas even more explicit on the microblogging site Weibo : “We aim to fully compare with Apple in product and user experience, and become China’s largest premium brand within the next three years.”. Further, Lei Jun even describes the competition in the high-end smartphone market as “a life and death war”.

To achieve this goal, Xiaomi will invest $15.7 billion in R&D over the next 5 years. For information, this amount is 20% lower than what Apple invests in R&D… over the year. Xiaomi ended the year in third place among smartphone manufacturers, behind Apple. The Asian manufacturer is second in the French market, but surprisingly remains far behind Apple in the Chinese market.