An Analysis On The Commonalities Between DJI, Airwheel and Xiaomi
With technology getting increasingly more sophisticated with time, smart products are permeating into our everyday lives. With newer, more convenient tools making it easier for us to do things and stay in touch, in ways our previous generations would have never thought possible. With constantly evolving technology gradually seeping into people’s lives, our daily demand for convenient smart products have given rise to an entire industry catering to the growing clamor for more intelligent products.
This has given rise to entire industries, which promise to deliver smart homes, smart health care, all types of robots and mechanizations we didn’t even know we needed just a couple of decades ago. In recent times, all kinds of smart technology companies are being incorporated in the Chinese domestic industry, the three most notable amongst whom happen to be DJI, Airwheel and Xiaomi.
DJI is a company mainly recognized for its UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), popularly known as drones or quad-copters. The company owns more than 50 percent of the global consumer-level UAV market. Airwheel’s main business happen to be battery-operated self-balancing personal transportation vehicles, much along the lines of Segway, but with a single wheel rather than two (think unicycles with gyroscopes). Xiaomi of course, started off with Android-based smartphones, but has since diversified into a number of product categories.
The three companies may have seemingly unrelated business, but they all have one thing in common. They’ve all turned products, which would otherwise have been pricey, unattainable aristocratic toys, into practical consumer-level products for the middle and working classes to use on a daily basis, thereby opening a new chapter in the history of 21st century industry.
Electric personal transportation self-balancing vehicles, for example, originated in Europe, and was inordinately expensive for regular domestic consumers in China, and for that matter, much of the emerging markets. Which rendered the vehicles rich man’s toys, as regular working class people just couldn’t dream of buying one. It was in this scenario that Airwheel appeared on the horizon, breaking the shackles of monetary seclusion. The technology which was once the preserve of only a few, is now daily recreational transportation equipment for the working class.
DJI, Airwheel and Xiaomi may seem to be in three completely unrelated industries at first sight, but upon closer inspection, it is easy to see that their journey has been very similar. They say, “Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan”. When businesses fail, they may each have their own reasons and excuses for their failure, but successful businesses are always based on the masses, so that the product enjoys popular support. Only then, companies can continue to innovate and keep themselves relevant with the passage of time.
