While Apple's success in established markets around the world is taken for granted, the company is having a harder time gaining a solid foothold in two large and growing smartphone markets -- China and Brazil. As GigaOM's Erica Ogg notes in a recent post, a Chinese manufacturer and Brazilian mobile carrier are demonstrating that Apple may need to tweak its model for success in emerging markets.
In China, handset maker Xiaomi is following the Apple plan for success quite well. It designs the hardware, uses NVIDIA mobile chipsets and Samsung memory, and lets Foxconn assemble the hardware. Also like Apple, the company waits about a year between introducing new models. Xiaomi
