Xiaomi announced their MIUI 6 OS yesterday and its rather eye-catching. We already wrote about it in length, though it’s worth mentioning once again that they payed a whole lot of attention to design and the general flow of the UI. Yeah, it resembles iOS 6 a lot, that’s no surprise considering Xiaomi can be known as the “Apple from China”. That being said, it seems Xiaomi is all about expanding now. They announced their international plans a while ago. In May they announced an international expansions plans which includes 10 countries all around the world, Brazil included.
Xiaomi opened its first office in Brazil on August 6th, the office is located in Sao Paulo, though they still haven’t started selling their products there due to delays. The company has registered itself under the name Xiaomi Technology Brazil Ltd. Brazil is one of the largest consumer markets in Latin America, if not the largest. This actually seems like a perfect fit for a company like Xiaomi considering they’re well known for making devices close to cost. Xiaomi’s co-founder and President, Lin Bin, hyped this move a bit when he said to Bloomberg News that this could make waves in the global smartphone market. Considering how huge Xiaomi is in China, they could easily do that in the coming years. As you might recall, Xiaomi even hired Google’s former vice-president Hugo Barra a while ago in order to help them make the next step and expand their business internationally. Interesting enough, Hugo Barra is actually Brazilian. He is Xiaomi’s global operations vice-president and has already helped them out by pushing their products to India, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Smartphones were received incredibly well, especially in India.
Xiaomi seems ready to start the business, though the aforementioned delays are in the way for now. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal Hugo Barra said the following: “long and painful device-certification process”, pinpointing the problem. This process takes time in Brazil, it can take up to 6 months to adapt to their laws and set everything else in place. Barra also added that it might take longer than expected to get everything in order, his exact words were: “It may take a long time, probably within the next 12 months, but it’s hard to say.” Hugo Barra also announced Xiaomi will use the same competitive pricing strategy they’ve been using in China in order to be as competitive as possible. Brazil actually seems like a perfect place for selling Xiaomi smartphones considering their upcoming Mi4 device is expected to be half the price of Apple’s iPhone and it’s specs are definitely high-end. Mi4 is sporting a 5-inch 1080p (1920 x 1080) display, 3GB of RAM and a 13MP rear-facing camera along with an 8MP front-facing shooter, amongst other specs.
Xiaomi sold 26.11 million phones in the first quarter of 2014 and is expecting to sell 60 million by the end of the year. In 2015 however, they expect to raise that number to 100 million a year, according to Xiaomi’s co-founder and CEO Lei Jun who said that back in April to Bloomberg News. All in all Xiaomi seems ready to kick off their Brazil business and start their global expansion, after they’ve done with setting it up all the way we’ll see how well the sales go on the other side of the world for Xiaomi.