Xiaomi has some big plans in the works, and it’s no wonder given their recent trend of successes in homeland China. If you’re out of the loop on exactly who Xiaomi is, don’t worry, because right now they only sell to mainland China and thus have a fairly limited worldwide fanbase. Xiaomi makes some inexpensive but highly specced Android phones that run their own custom version of Google’s OS, called MIUI. MIUI takes a lot of visual cues from iOS for sure, but packs in more features than most ROMs out there could even bother with. Xiaomi’s phones are usually pretty darned cheap and fall right in line with Nexus pricing and specs, as the recently released Mi4 shows. The Mi4 was Xiaomi’s first LTE-enabled phone too, and seeing as how many markets around the world have already moved to LTE or are moving to the tech, it makes sense for Xiaomi to now expand to a more worldwide market.
Xiaomi posed the question of “Where in the world are we going to next?” to its fanbase, complete with a map featuring Xiaomi’s little mascot all over the globe. Given the reports released yesterday of worldwide Android marketshare and the fact that Xiaomi has quickly moved up to the spot of fifth largest manufacturer among all the other Android manufacturers, it makes sense that Xiaomi is now planning on moving to other markets worldwide to expand its base. Right now Italy, Turkey and Indonesia are the top trending places being guessed at for Xiaomi’s upcoming presence, but that’s not to say that they could be in more than one place at a time. Xiaomi currently specializes in selling online as a way to purchase straight from the manufacturer, and it helps keep cost of the phones down since there’s no retail chain that needs to mark the price up to make money. Being such it wouldn’t be surprising to see all of the countries listed in the map above to start getting region-specific devices in the near future.