这个公司是雷军2010年在北京建立的。雷军是个电脑科学家，现在又是一个45岁左右的有能力的企业家。他总是无可避免地被拿来与乔布斯进行比较，既是因为他的精力和聪慧，也是因为他乔布斯式的衣着品味和产品推出。
Xiaomi's importance, though, is about more than just its growth. It's about how it grew. The company was designed, from the beginning, to assume that both social media and ecommerce were normal. The rapid and enormous success came about largely because these tools allowed the firm to do everything backward.
虽然小米如今举足轻重的地位不只是和他的发展有关，也和如何发展有关。从一开始，这个公司就是在社交网络和电子商务都成为常态的假设下进行设计的。这种快速且巨大的成功还要归功于这些网络工具的普及，这让小米公司能站稳脚跟尽情伸展拳脚。
Xiaomi's coming expansion will be its real legacy. Mobile phones are the most broadly desired category of complex goods in the world, beating out their only rivals -- cars and televisions -- by a mile. The mobile phone is also the near-universal source of connectivity for most of the world's population, increasingly the gateway to every form of communications other than face to face, to every form of content other than karaoke, and to every form of commerce other than haggling.
小米即将实现的扩张将会成为它真正的财富。手机是全世界需求量最大的一类复杂产品，甩开竞争对手汽车和电视好几条街。对于大多数世界人口来说，手机更是覆盖性占领了所有和外界交流的渠道。逐渐覆盖了除面对面以外所有交流方式，除了卡拉OK以外所有交流内容，除了讲价以外所有买卖形式。
Though Apple invented the iPhone, and Samsung spread smartphones, it's Xiaomi that showed the world how to create a defensible market between luxurious and crappy, and to scale up to meet the rising demand of the rapidly expanding middle class in Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, India, cumulatively the world's biggest market by far.
虽然苹果发明了iPhone，三星推广了智能手机，但却是小米告诉了全世界如何创造一种介于奢侈品和地摊货之间的坚韧的市场和如何加大规模来满足尼日利亚、印度尼西亚、巴西、墨西哥和印度的中产阶级不断增加的需求，而这个市场正在不断扩大，不久就会逐渐成为世界上最大的市场。
There are opportunities for the United States here since good, cheap products benefit U.S. consumers, too. There is also competitive risk, as always. But the biggest threat Xiaomi poses is for companies that don't take it seriously.
现在小米抓住了一个机会，因为物美价廉的产品也能造福美国的消费者。竞争风险一如往常，但是越是不把小米当一回事的公司越是面临来自小米的巨大威胁。
Xiaomi marks the end of China as a pure importer of products designed elsewhere. It was one of the first companies to adopt the new methods that are making China a center of innovation in design, electronic commerce and services. Xiaomi introduces a new risk in that relationship -- not a risk that Chinese firms will copy too much from the United States, but that the American firms will copy too little from China.
小米的发展标志着中国不再单纯是外国设计的产品的进口国了。它是第一批采用新方法让中国成为设计、电子上午和服务行业的创新中心的公司之一。小米给中美公司之间的关系中带来了新的风险——这种风险并不是在于中国公司会发现自己在大肆抄袭美国公司，而是美国公司将会发现他们从中国公司借鉴的太少了。