It has been a busy month for Xiaomi, what with multiple product launches in its home base of China, and tentative initial forays into lucrative markets hitherto inaccessible, because of patent-related controversies, mostly concerning Apple. While the company did launch its online store for consumers in the US and Europe, the aforementioned Intellectual Property (IP) issues still prevent it from selling its smartphones and tablets to consumers in North America and Europe. Xiaomi however, has decided to go ahead and start pitching its impressive range of accessories to a whole new audience outside of its established markets. In any case, the company only ventured out of its home country just last year when it launched its products in neighboring India to a rousing reception, and has since then, expanded to a number of countries this year.
The founder and CEO of the company Mr. Lei Jun has recently been teasing imminent product launches, announcing upcoming events, publicizing price adjustments and revealing milestones for the company on Chinese microblogging site Weibo. Keeping up with that tradition, on Monday, Mr. Lei announced the upcoming launch of a new ‘Note’ device from Xiaomi on the 29th of this month. While absolutely nothing else was mentioned, the device is most likely to be a mid-range Redmi Note 2 or Redmi Note 2 Pro, according to the media in China. Only recently, a Xiaomi device featuring a 5.5-inch 1080p screen, showed up on the website of regulator TENAA. That particular device is powered by an octa-core 64-bit Helio X10 MT6795 chipset from Mediatek, and comes with a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front camera. The device is also said to support multiple networks in China including both LTE-TDD and LTE-FDD.
With the Redmi Note having been launched last year, the device is indeed up for an upgrade, as part of the well-established yearly upgrade cycle for smartphones. In any case, with the flagship Mi Note and Mi Note Pro handsets having only been launched earlier this year, their new generation iterations would probably launch later this year or maybe even next year, as there is already talk about the next generation Mi Note shipping with the upcoming Snapdragon 820 SoC, which would only start shipping to OEMs later this year.
Xiaomi was founded only in 2010, but has come a long way, and is currently locked in a head-to-head tussle with Apple for the preeminent position among smartphone vendors in China. Over this past week itself, the company launched a number of unique products, keeping in line with its stated philosophy of delivering products for the smart home to its customers in China and beyond. The products include a smart air-conditioner, which the company developed in association with Chinese appliance maker Midea. The company also released a smart router with a 6 TB hard disk, and the gesture-controlled Yeelight smart lamp, which can also be controlled with a smartphone via Bluetooth.