Based on an article posted on Fitch ratings about the increase of competition in the smartphone business. When people think of smartphones, they are generally more likely to think about Samsung and Apple. Their brand names have made them market leaders and is mostly what people look for when buying smartphones. However, with the high interest in smartphones there are bound to be more and more people interested in becoming part of the market and possibly taking over Samsumg or Apple’s position.

A perfect example would be China’s smartphone Xiaomi. After its release, Xiaomi have successfully become a favorite in China and even surpassing Apple in terms of generated revenue. In an interview with CNN, Lei Jun (founder of Xiaomi), talked about wanting to branch out on a global scale with Google as their first foreign partner. Although it is possible to branch out Internationally, I wonder just how far can they really go. Chinese products may be famous within China, but with Apple, Samsung and other Smartphone companies continuously updating their software and launching new phones, it would be difficult to set themselves apart.

This theory is also based on my experience with Wechat (a social media application). China is known to block social medias such as Facebook and in recent news, Instagram. However, they allow Wechat to be accessed domestically and internationally. Yet there are far too many social media applications to compete with big names such as Facebook, Twitter and many others. Thus the idea of using yet another type of social media (in this case wechat) to people who have access to something like Facebook or Line, would generally discourage them as there are little that they offer to set themselves apart from each other.

Therefore in my opinion, big names such as Apple, Facebook, Samsung have had a huge advantage in terms of branding and reputation that it makes it that much harder for other companies to try and compete with them.