Kiran Upadhyay

So many eyeballs, so little growth. Or so Yahoo’s recent performance under Marissa Mayer could be summarized. Joining Yahoo as its head in 2012, Mayer quickly made a splash with a rapid series of acquisitions, from the billion dollar purchase of Tumblr to the $30 million acquisition of Summly. The performance of that strategy has been lackluster. While Yahoo has acquired nearly 50 companies during Mayer’s tenure, its financial results have done little to persuade investors that the company has found a path to growth. That has raised questions about the viability of the app studio model. Unlike platform product companies like Facebook, app studios rely on monetizing a portfolio of products. Among mobile app companies, this business structure is most common in the games industry, and indeed, there are certain parallels to Hollywood movie studios with their focus on entertainment franchises. There is one startup, though, that is proving that an app studio model can exist outside

Xiaomi’s combination of well-spec’ed phones and low price tags drove the company to over 60 million sales last year. That progress saw it replace Samsung as China’s top-selling smartphone company and become the world’s third top selling phone maker in the process. The Chinese company’s flagship Mi devices typically retail for around $300 — its new Mi Note Pro notably breaks the $500 barrier for the first time — while its affordable Redmi family is sub-$150. For comparison, Apple’s top of the range iPhones sell for over $1,000 off contract, while the Samsung Note and GalaxyS families are similarly priced. So how can Xiaomi be so aggressive with its pricing? Many theories have been put forward, including claims that Xiaomi sells at cost and makes money from other services. Hugo Barra, the company’s VP of International, lifted the lid on some of the company’s secret sauce in an interview with TechCrunch in Beijing last week. Read More