Why Xiaomi's Lei Jun has earned the right to call himself China's Steve Jobs

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Our fortnightly series profiling the mainland's economic elite looks at the man dubbed 'China's Steve Jobs', Xiaomi chairman and founder Lei Jun

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Xiaomi's Lei Jun gives a briefing, Steve Jobs-style, on a new smartphone in Beijing in July, Photo: Kyodo

James Griffiths

Published: 5:15am, 20 Sep 2014Updated: 2:44pm, 8 Apr 2015

The shadow of Steve Jobs looms large over Lei Jun, chairman and chief executive of Xiaomi, which overtook Samsung to become China's leading smartphone vendor in the second quarter of 2014.

Lei, worth an estimated US$3.9 billion according to , was inspired by the late Apple co-founder at an early age. While studying scientific engineering at Wuhan University, Lei read , Paul Frieberger and Michael Swaine's account of the early days of the PC industry and vowed to follow in Jobs' footsteps.

"I was greatly influenced by that book, and I wanted to establish a company that was first class," Lei told in 2013. "So I made a plan to get through college fast."

After leaving university, Lei helped found software developer Kingsoft in 1992, becoming chief executive in 1998 and guiding the company to a successful initial public offering on the Hong Kong stock exchange. While at Kingsoft, Lei was heavily involved in the establishment of Joyo.com, an online bookstore and e-commerce site which was sold to Jeff Bezos's Amazon.com for US$75 million in 2004. Around that time, Lei became a leading Chinese angel investor, with stakes in online clothing retailer Vancl and video-based social network YY, whose US-traded shares have risen more than three-fold in the past year according to .

"If [Lei's] career stopped after Kingsoft, Joyo, [mobile internet company] UC Web, and YY, he would still be a remarkable entrepreneur and investor," Hamish McKenzie, author of told the . "What he's doing with Xiaomi however, is likely to be his legacy, and the start the company has got off to already suggests he deserves to be considered in a similar class to Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Bill Gates."

Founded in 2010 by Lei and former Google executive Lin Bin, Xiaomi has seen huge success with its cut-price, high-quality smartphones, most of which sell for less than half the price of similar Apple or Samsung devices. This year, Xiaomi led China's second-quarter smartphone shipment rankings with a 14 per cent market share, according to research firm Canalys, followed by Samsung, Lenovo, and Yulong, each with 12 per cent. In 2013, Xiaomi was valued at more than US$10 billion, on a par with Lenovo, a company with over 10 times as many employees founded a full 26 years earlier.