Many people in the US haven’t heard too much about Xiaomi. In fact, there aren’t too many outside of China who haven’t heard of them. However, in China, they just had a stellar year selling their M-series smartphones. Riding on the coattails of success, Xiaomi is looking to extend their presence into the United States by 2014 or early 2015.
According to CNet Asia, the Chinese phone manufacturer sold 7.12 million of their smartphones, totaling about $2 billion USD in revenue. For a phone that’s only available in one country, those are impressive numbers. What may surprise people is that the company actually took a loss, as they are selling their phones below their actual value.
Of course, this was all part of the strategy. The Xiaomi MI2 phone is being sold in China for $313 USD while the phone costs about $60 more than that to make. It packs a 1.5GHz quad core Snapdragon Krait processor, 2GB of RAM, 720p display, and 16GB of storage. For $313 off contract, you can’t buy a better smartphone. This was all part of a plan by Xiaomi to get a hold in the market and get their product circulated. It worked, too. Many equated the Xiaomi MI2 to the Android version of the iPhone.
Can Xiaomi make it in the United States?
They’ll have their hands full, that’s for sure. Samsung is top dog right now and HTC, LG, and Motorola are still trusted brands. In addition, OEMs like Huawei have already tried getting into the US market and haven’t been successful yet. If Xiaomi plans on selling top of the line smartphones for similar prices as their current products, it’ll be really hard saying no.
Let us know what you think about Xiaomi. Could the US use another top quality OEM to shake things up or do the other OEMs have a strangle hold?
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