Lei Jun takes on Huawei head-on.

Huawei's strong comeback and Apple's decline have put pressure on smartphone manufacturers who have recently released new products. Xiaomi, which has finally achieved a "breakthrough" in the high-end smartphone market, is unwilling to fall behind. Lei Jun wants Xiaomi to compete head-on with Huawei and Apple, and even wants to showcase its strength on a broader stage.

On the evening of October 26th, after a series of intensive leaks, Xiaomi's high-end 14 series and a series of AIoT new products were released as scheduled. At the same time, Xiaomi's founder Lei Jun announced that Xiaomi's strategy has been upgraded from "Phone X AIoT" to "People, Cars, and Homes Full Ecosystem", with the key being Xiaomi's Surge OS.

Lei Jun made a bold declaration at the press conference. He said that Xiaomi has reached a "critical moment of breakthrough" and that there will be more leading technologies emerging. The more powerful Xiaomi 14 series and the launch of the "People, Cars, and Homes Full Ecosystem" allowed Lei Jun to showcase Xiaomi's present and future.

Lei Jun was straightforward at the press conference. He said, "Because the standard version of Xiaomi 14 is so powerful, we might as well benchmark it against the iPhone 15 Pro."

Xiaomi President Lu Weibing revealed that on the night of the press conference, the pre-sales of the Xiaomi 14 series were several times that of the Xiaomi 13 series during the same period. He has also discussed capacity expansion and additional orders with the team overnight.

For Xiaomi, while smartphones are important, they are just one terminal in Lei Jun's vision of an interconnected world. It was the highly anticipated Xiaomi Surge OS that left users wanting more at the press conference.

Under Lei Jun's Weibo post, discussions about the new system were also heated. Some people felt that the explanation of the new system was too rushed and suggested a separate press conference for it, while others believed that the new system was rushed to market and currently has too few compatible devices.

The curtain has been lifted on the Xiaomi Surge OS, which connects people, cars, and homes in a people-centric full ecosystem. This is a goal that Apple and other tech companies have been trying to achieve but have been unable to due to various reasons.

Lei Jun is eagerly looking forward to this vision. When he announced the official launch of Xiaomi Surge OS, there was a momentary glitch with the PPT, causing a brief pause before the highly anticipated press conference could continue.

Xiaomi Surge OS is the foundation of Xiaomi's ten-year plan for the future. When Xiaomi first entered the smartphone market without hardware advantages, it was the launch of MIUI that attracted a group of "tech enthusiasts" to Xiaomi. "Born for enthusiasts" later became Xiaomi's slogan. With the subsequent entry of Xiaomi into IoT devices, Xiaomi unified the IoT device ecosystem with its self-developed Vela OS. Xiaomi has thus formed an ecosystem that connects over 1.1 billion users and hundreds of millions of devices worldwide.

Today, the improvement and accumulation of hardware in smartphones no longer bring as significant an improvement in user experience as they did a few years ago. Further optimization of the system has become particularly important. And after Lei Jun announced that Xiaomi will enter the car manufacturing industry and is willing to stake his entire reputation on it, it is clear that Lei Jun has even more ideas. Lei Jun said that the reason for naming the system "Pengpai" is to symbolize the free flow and convergence of everyone's power, connecting the vast intelligent world.

In the future of mobile internet, the integration of various terminal products such as mobile phones, smartwatches, home appliances, and even cars is becoming increasingly important. The arrival of large models is also accelerating the widespread application of neural networks to terminal devices. In an intelligent and interconnected world, Lei Jun, who once made a name for himself with MIUI, understands the advantages of Xiaomi.

In the past, MIUI, which customized and refined the "blank house" of Android, could no longer meet Lei Jun's ambitions. With a larger hardware ecosystem, more demands are placed on the underlying system, and Xiaomi must start from scratch.

Lei Jun said that Xiaomi's Pengpai OS is a reconstruction of the underlying system, integrating the self-developed Vela system kernel with a deeply modified Linux system kernel. He revealed that Xiaomi started the development of the car OS in 2021 and unified the software architecture of multiple systems including MIUI, Vela, and car OS in early 2022. After being polished by a research and development team of more than 5,000 people, Xiaomi's Pengpai OS was officially released at the end of this year.

Xia Jun, an analyst at Guosheng Securities, pointed out that it is expected that Xiaomi's cars will also achieve the integration and interaction of the entire ecosystem of people, cars, and homes through the "Xiaomi Pengpai OS" in the field of intelligent cabins.

From the UI interface of Xiaomi's Pengpai OS shown at the press conference, it can be seen that the upcoming Xiaomi cars in the first half of next year have also been included as a key part of the ecosystem in the UI interface.

Whether it is the acquisition of Meizu by Li Shufu's company Starry Sky Era in the past, or the recent release of NIO's mobile phone by Li Bin, it highlights the important role of smartphones as intelligent terminals in human-computer interaction and device interconnection in the era of smart cars. Huawei's Harmony OS, which has a highly unified car UI and smartphone, has won the favor of users with its advantages in interactive experience.

On the contrary, tech giants like Apple have been abandoned by automotive giants including General Motors due to disputes over data usage and the dominance of intelligent cabins. In the future mobile internet world, only by mastering the ability at the lowest level of the system can one control their own destiny.

However, the beginning is always difficult. As the world's largest ecosystem, Xiaomi still needs to gradually transition from the shell of Android, both in terms of the difficulty of software development and design and the cost of user switching, before it can complete the replacement of Android at the right time.

For Xiaomi, it has just achieved initial results in the "life and death battle" of high-endization, and it has not yet shaken off the label of cost-effectiveness. Now, with the launch of its self-developed system, it wants to demonstrate its hardcore technological strength, but there are many doubts in the market.

Lei Jun also joked at the press conference, saying that many Xiaomi critics say that Xiaomi is only good at "supply chain technology". But Lei Jun said that Xiaomi is committed to becoming a new generation of global hardcore technology leader, and its R&D investment is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan in the next five years. At the same time, it will truly drive domestic supply chain companies to go global. Can they truly surge forward, surpass the past, Lei Jun and his Xiaomi still need to take more actions.