Xiaomi is one of the fastest growing smartphone manufacturers in the world, and the company has a huge appetite for success. This Chinese smartphone OEM was founded back in 2010, but that didn’t stop them from becoming the China’s biggest smartphone manufacturer in less than 5 years. The company has released a number of devices this year, ranging from smartphones and smart TVs all the way to various smart gadgets. Xiaomi plans to expand (their smartphone business) to India and Brazil soon, and other markets may follow soon.
This Chinese smartphone OEM did technically enter various markets like the US, UK, France and Germany, but we can’t exactly considering that an expansion considering they’re only selling their accessories over there. Xiaomi is selling their smartphones only in Asia at the moment, though you can purchase those devices through resellers, as always. We’ve talked about this a number of times before, there are various obstacles for Xiaomi to start selling smartphones in Europe and the US, the most notable ones have to do with patents and the fact that European and the US markets are completely different than Asian ones. So-called ‘Flash Sales’ are highly popular in Asia, which is not case in the US or Europe, not to mention Xiaomi uses social media heavily to advertise their products, while OEMs in the aforementioned countries have a completely different approach.
“If Xiaomi moved into a market where Apple and others have significant portfolios, the lawyer feeding frenzy will be akin to throwing chum in a shark tank,” said Terry Ludlow to Intellectual Property Magazine. Mr. Ludlow is Chipworks’ CEO and a patent advisor, and it seems that he agrees with us on this. Xiaomi will have a hard time entering the markets where Apple and Samsung are the main dogs, and it will certainly be interesting to see what happens next. If you take into consideration that Xiaomi de-throned Samsung in China, and was a huge reason why Samsung had such poor results in China last year, things become even more interesting. We doubt Xiaomi will sell smartphones in Europe or the US anytime soon, but we’ll keep you posted.