Xiaomi is a Chinese smartphone company whose primary products are smartphones in a relatively cheap price range from about CDN$370 to CDN$148.  After having a huge success in China with two billions sales in 2012 with Mi2, the company launched their set-top TV box.  In the beginning,  the TV box not only contained various TV shows including many TV shows from China and some American and Korean Dramas. Some of them,  including a very popular music show I am a Singer and Korean drama My Love from the Star, were only available on Xiaomi TV Box before they were available on TV. Another intriguing feature was that by downloading an app and used smartphones to connect to TV, costumers can watch videos from China video websites. In Hong Kong, Xiaomi TV box seemed to be popular with a monthly sales of 10,000.

However, Xiaomi’s strategy of making all TV shows and videos in China available on Xiaomi Box was clearly causing  Copyright Issues. Xiaomi TV box stole many contents that were only available in certain video websites. The biggest video website in China Youku demanded USD$830,000 for copyright issues and a public apologize.  As a result, some contents had been removed.

From my point view, it is perceptive and far-sighted that Xiaomi took advantage of its popularity and immense number of consumers in China to launch products other than smartphones since the market had become increasingly saturated. However, Xiaomi was too rush in wining a portion of market share as it illegally provided contents that some videos websites had exclusive rights. Costumers might start to question the legality for its products which would result in a bad company image. In addition, without having the priority of having various China’s TV shows and videos, Xiaomi had to come up with a new strategy that could provide them with competitive advantage.