China’s phone market is now dominated by five companies, none of which is Samsung

China is the most unique smartphone market in the world: a phone maker can be a global sales leader without ever treading beyond Chinese borders, and small upstart challengers can suddenly explode in popularity from out of nowhere. The latter aspect is becoming harder now, however, as the latest data from Kantar Worldpanel shows that China’s top five phone vendors are becoming a more solid and dominant group. Kantar reports that, for the calendar quarter ending in October, the top five of Huawei, Xiaomi, Apple, Vivo, and Oppo accounted for…

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Xiaomi: China’s big Apple rival isn’t worth getting excited about (yet)

Xiaomi, the third-largest smartphone maker in the world, is coming stateside, but not in the way pundits expected. The company announced at a conference Thursday that its e-commerce website, Mi.com, could start selling products to U.S. customers in five months. Surprisingly, smartphones will not be among them — at least, at first. Instead, Hugo Barra, Xiaomi’s Global VP, suggested the company might start with items such as a recently-launched pair of headphones and its popular external battery pack, the latter of which sold 15 million units in 2014. The company has…

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