Xiaomi smartphone maker is extending its reach outside China to 10 new countries, but has no immediate plans to enter the competitive U.S. market.
Xiaomi, the popular smartphone maker in China, is bringing its smartphone business to 10 new countries this year in a push towards global expansion. The Chinese smartphone maker has a strong hold in its home country, so much that it even outsells the world's second largest smartphone maker, Apple. Now, the company is kicking off its world foray with plans to launch its smartphones in India, Russia and other countries.
Xiaomi made global headlines last year when it nabbed former Google VP Hugo Barra. The ex-Google employee is helping the Chinese smartphone maker to expand business beyond China and other markets like Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore where the company already has a presence. Xiaomi, which currently manufactures smartphones, televisions and routers, also plans to expand its range of consumer electronics overseas and keep the prices down.
"You can certainly call this an acceleration," President and co-founder Bin Lin told Bloomberg in an interview after the press conference in Beijing, Wednesday. "It's our mission and our belief that this model should be able to achieve some level of success outside of China."
Xiaomi's price range for its smartphones is a major winning point over Apple. The company's flagship smartphone Mi3 sells for 1,999 Yuan (almost $320) compared to Apple's iPhone 5C that retails for 4,488 Yuan (around $700) in China. Specs wise, Xiaomi's Mi3 is a winner as it boasts a larger, sharper display, camera with higher pixels and faster quad-core processors from Nvidia or Qualcomm.
Xiaomi manages to outsell most of its competitors' by directly selling its devices to consumers online and has found great success in China.
Lei Jun, Xiaomi's founder and chief executive officer, said during his press conference that Xiaomi will soon start selling its devices in Brazil, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Russia, Mexico, Philippines, Turkey, Thailand and Vietnam. Jun expects to boost Xiaomi sales fivefold to 100 million units by 2015, Bloomberg reports.
