Xiaomi, the Chinese smart device and mobile service provider, has launched a new website, Mi.com, for the company wants to make it easier for non-Chinese to say the company’s name, Lei Jun, CEO of the company, said today at a press event in Beijing. Actually the company was named after MI; abbr. Mobile Internet. The new domain name cost USD3.6 million.
Mr. Lei announced today that Xiaomi will expand to ten more countries in 2014 as the initial expansion to Taiwan, Hong Kong and, more recently, Singapore performed “way better than expected”. The ten are less-developed markets in Asia, Europe and South America, including Malaysia, the Philippines, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Russia, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico.
Xiaomi ships products overseas from two warehouses in Shenzhen and Taiwan. It partners with third-party logistics services for product delivery.
MIUI, the customized Android system for smartphone, smart TV and other Xiaomi devices, now has 25 language versions and 2 million users outside China.
Xiaomi’s international business is overseen by Lin Bin, President and co-founder (a former exec at Google China), and Hugo Barra, former Vice President of Android at Google who joined Xiaomi last year.
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Xiaomi officially launched the smart WiFi router series today. Apart from the high-end one released in late 2013, another one, smaller and with lower specs, debuted today — sorry to tell you its name is Xiaomi Router Mini. The high-end one is priced at RMB 699 (a little more than USD100) and the smaller one will be sold for RMB129 (roughly USD21). They are made by Foxconn.
The Linux-based operating system in the routers is named MiWiFi. The apps pre-loaded include one that helps users in mainland China visit websites that have been inaccessible — You know what I mean. As we reported before, a smart home solution, supported by Broadlink, has been introduced to Xiaomi routers so that users will be able to control connected home appliances through mobile apps.
The company has also improved its set-top box that now supports 4K videos.
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11 million Xiaomi smartphones were sold in the first quarter of 2014, which encouraged the company to upgrade the goal for this year to 60 million. That’s more than three times of the number in 2013 which is 18.7 million.
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