Xiaomi is currently the number one smartphone manufacturer in China, and it’s valued at $46 billion, which makes it second-most valuable startup in the world, right next to Uber. That being said, Xiaomi isn’t exactly that active outside of Asia, the company does sell one smartphone in Brazil, and does sell accessories outside of the continent, but their smartphones are limited to Asia. Xiaomi, of course, plans to change that in the future, we might actually see them launch their Mi Note Pro phablet in the US in the near future.
This company is actually much more than just a smartphone OEM. They have manufactured tons of various devices over the last couple of years, and the company’s co-founder made sure everyone knows that in his interview with the Wall Street Journal. “We are more in the area of smart consumer electronics, We’d rather be called an Internet company,” said Lin Bin. The company has introduced a number of different products lately, smart TVs, fitness trackers, air purifiers, smart scales… every single one of these devices, including many more, are a part of Xiaomi’s portfolio, along with a number of smartphones, of course.
Xiaomi is making a huge push in this direction, they’ve already opened up an online store in Europe and the US, which feature electronic accessories, while phones aren’t available there… yet. This really does make Xiaomi a consumer electronics company, and it kind of makes it comparable to the likes of Amazon and Alibaba, even though Xiaomi sells their own products only. It is worth mentioning that this China-based company did partner up with a number of other companies which helped them develop a number of those ‘smart’ devices.
”It’s been clear for a long time that it has much broader ambitions and that seeing Xiaomi as just a smartphone company was missing the bigger picture,” said Jan Dawson, Jackdaw Research’s analyst. ”The last couple of years in China the smartphone business is changing from rapid growth to a replacement market, so the absolute growth of the smartphone market is flat.” added Lin Bin. Xiaomi’s co-founder didn’t seem all that worried when it comes to innovating, he’s confident that Xiaomi can come up with innovative and exciting products moving forward.