Why Xiaomi Has So Many Taiwanese Talents

If you mean that in Xiaomi's mainland headquarters, phone R&D, supply chain, and display/hardware teams, you feel there are particularly many engineers and managers with Taiwanese backgrounds, this phenomenon does have industrial reasons. But first, let's clarify one point: there is currently no publicly reliable data proving that "Taiwanese people account for a particularly high proportion of Xiaomi employees." In fact, most of the current core management disclosed by Xiaomi does not have Taiwanese backgrounds.

The thing that easily gives people this impression is that in certain departments of the phone hardware supply chain, the density of talent with Taiwanese industry backgrounds may indeed be relatively high.

The most core reason: Taiwan has accumulated too deeply in the consumer electronics supply chain

Over the past two to three decades, Taiwan has formed a very complete talent system for consumer electronics. For example, in fields like chips, panels, touch, optics, structural components, ODM/OEM, and supply chain management, there have long been a large number of mature engineers.

Typical industries include:

IC/Semiconductors
→ MediaTek, TSMC, Novatek, Realtek, etc.

Panels/Displays
→ AUO, Innolux, etc.

ODM/OEM
→ Foxconn, Quanta, Compal, Wistron, Pegatron, etc.

Phone/PC Hardware
→ HTC, ASUS, Acer, etc.

So during the rapid expansion phase of the mainland smartphone industry, what was needed was often not just "pure software engineers" fresh out of school, but rather:

People who have done mass production, understand suppliers, understand modules, know how factories improve yield, and know why products encounter various hardware issues.

This happens to be a group of talent that Taiwan's electronics industry has cultivated over a long period.

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Especially a company like Xiaomi particularly needs this type of person.

In its early days, Xiaomi was not like Samsung, which is highly vertically integrated—having its own panels, storage, chips, and factories—but rather relied more on global supply chain integration.

Simple understanding:

Xiaomi defines the product
↓
Qualcomm/MediaTek provide the SoC
↓
Samsung/CSOT/BOE etc. provide the screen
↓
Sunny Optical/O-Film etc. provide modules
↓
ODM/JDM participate in design and manufacturing
↓
Foxconn etc. handle manufacturing
↓
Xiaomi integrates the whole system

This model heavily relies on supply chain engineering experience and mass production experience.

And Taiwanese engineers happened to work in similar systems very early on.

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If you are in departments like display, optics, screen, TP, camera, mechanics, RF, hardware, NPI, SQE, or supply chain when dealing with Xiaomi, you are more likely to have this feeling.

For example, in the display field you are now familiar with:

OLED → Driver IC → TCON/DDIC → Gamma → Mura → Demura → AOI → Lens/Prism → Bonding → Module → Yield

Many of these technologies and management methods have deep historical ties with Taiwan's panel, IC design, and electronics manufacturing industries.

So you might encounter a very typical resume:

Taiwan panel factory/IC factory/ODM
→ Mainland panel factory/phone factory
→ Xiaomi/OPPO/vivo/Honor/Huawei supply chain system

It may not even be that the person is Taiwanese, but rather that the entire professional training system comes from Taiwan's electronics manufacturing industry.

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Another reason is that talent flows in batches along management relationships.

The hardware industry is not like pure software in the internet, where recruitment can be completely independent.

For example, after a display executive joins a phone company, they often know:

Which panel expert is strong
Which Driver IC engineer is strong
Which optics engineer has done mass production
Which supply chain head has close ties with Samsung/Qualcomm/MediaTek

So it happens that:

A joins → recommends B → B recommends C → forming an industry talent network.

Over time, a department may clearly carry the "bloodline" of a certain company.

In mainland tech companies, you can often see:

"Huawei clique"
"ZTE clique"
"Gionee clique"
"OPPO clique"
"MediaTek clique"
"Foxconn clique"
"Taiwanese panel factory clique"

This is more about industry talent networks, not because the company deliberately prefers people from a certain region.

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However, if you mean the highest management of the entire Xiaomi Group, the situation is different.

As of now, in Xiaomi's official management information, the career backgrounds of Lei Jun, Lu Weibing, Liu De, Zeng Xuezhong, Wang Xiaoyan, Zhu Dan, Qu Heng, Xu Fei, Zhang Jianhui, etc., are mainly from Kingsoft, ZTE, Gionee, Google, Motorola, etc., and cannot be summarized as "many Taiwanese."

On the contrary, Xiaomi's Taiwan branch has historically been operated by local Taiwanese teams for a long time, which is normal. When Xiaomi entered overseas markets in 2013, Taiwan was the first stop, and it has long been managed by Taiwanese managers familiar with the local market; in 2024, there were also news reports of concentrated adjustments among Xiaomi Taiwan's senior management.

So a more accurate statement is:

It's not "why does Xiaomi like to hire Taiwanese people," but rather "the phone/consumer electronics industry Xiaomi is in has itself absorbed a large number of talents cultivated by Taiwan's electronics industry over decades."

Moreover, this phenomenon is especially obvious in hardware R&D, display, camera, semiconductors, supply chain, NPI/manufacturing; if you happen to be in these departments, your perception will be much stronger than that of ordinary Xiaomi employees.

If you'd like, I can also explain "why there are so many Taiwanese technical cadres in the mainland phone/panel industry" along this line, sorting out the talent migration chain of Foxconn—MediaTek—AUO/Innolux—Huawei/Xiaomi/OPPO/vivo—BOE/CSOT. That's actually quite interesting.

You can understand them as two completely different roles in the phone supply chain:

IC design = designing the "chip"
ODM = helping the brand "design and manufacture the entire product"

If you're just starting to learn about the phone supply chain, these two concepts are very important.

1. What is IC design?

IC = Integrated Circuit, commonly known as a chip.

An IC design company is a company responsible for designing chips. It decides how the chip's internal transistors, circuits, and functional modules are designed, but many IC design companies do not manufacture the chips themselves.

For example:

MediaTek designs the Dimensity phone SoC
↓
Hands the designed chip to a wafer foundry
↓
TSMC is responsible for actually manufacturing the chip
↓
The chip is then sold to phone makers like Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, etc.

So is a typical IC design company, while mainly belongs to wafer foundries (Foundry).

There are actually many different ICs in a phone:

For example, if you're in the display industry, DDIC (Display Driver IC) is a very typical IC.

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2. What is ODM?

ODM = Original Design Manufacturer.

You can roughly understand it as:

The phone brand outsources part of the work of "designing the phone + manufacturing the phone" to another company.

For example, suppose Xiaomi plans to release a 2000-yuan phone.

One way is for Xiaomi to do everything from scratch:

Xiaomi defines the product
→ Xiaomi R&D
→ Xiaomi selects the screen/chip/camera
→ Xiaomi completes the hardware design
→ Finds a factory to produce

The other way is to use an ODM:

Xiaomi gives requirements
"I want a phone around 2000 yuan, with a Dimensity chip, 5000mAh battery, OLED"
↓
The ODM manufacturer handles a large portion of the specific design work
↓
Motherboard design
Structural design
Component selection
Testing and validation
Supply chain integration
Mass production introduction
↓
Finally sold under the "Xiaomi/Redmi" brand

Typical phone ODM companies include , , etc.

Note that this only explains the industry model; it does not mean that a specific Xiaomi phone is necessarily ODM'd by one of the above companies.

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3. What's the difference between ODM and contract manufacturing like Foxconn?

This is the most confusing part.

Simple way to remember:

OEM is more like "you design, I produce"; ODM is more like "I help you design, and I also help you produce."

For example:

Xiaomi: I want to make a phone

OEM mode:
Xiaomi basically designs the phone → Foxconn and other manufacturing systems handle production and assembly

ODM mode:
Xiaomi gives product requirements → ODM participates in or even takes on a large portion of the specific R&D design → Then completes manufacturing/mass production introduction

The actual supply chain is much more complex than this, and the boundaries between brand companies, ODM, and EMS/OEM are not absolute.

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4. Put them into a Xiaomi phone, and you'll understand easily

Suppose you want to make a Redmi:

Brand: Xiaomi
→ Decides the selling price, target users, and core specifications.

↓

IC design companies: Qualcomm/MediaTek/Novatek, etc.
→ Design SoC, display drivers, and other chips.

↓

Foundry: TSMC, etc.
→ Actually manufactures the chips from the design.

↓

Screen/camera/battery suppliers
→ Provide components like OLED, camera, battery, etc.

↓

ODM
→ May participate in the overall device solution, motherboard, structure, testing, supply chain, and mass production introduction.

↓

OEM/EMS manufacturing system
→ SMT placement, assembly, testing, packaging, and finally producing the phone.

↓

Xiaomi
→ Sells under the Xiaomi / Redmi brand.

So in the future, when you hear in the company:

"Whose IC is this?"
"Is the DDIC from Novatek or Chipone?"
"Is this project self-developed or ODM?"
"The ODM hasn't given the solution yet."
"Let the ODM coordinate with the panel factory."

You'll basically understand.

IC design is about making the "chip" inside the phone; ODM is about making the "whole phone project."

If you want to truly understand the jargon in your work group like Panel, Module, TP, DDIC, TCON, FAE, ODM, OEM, NPI, SQE, DQA, RD, PE, ME, I can also explain it to you in the flow of "from project initiation to mass production for a phone."