China's Xiaomi Gearing Up For US Debut (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg report: Xiaomi is preparing to enter the U.S. smartphone market "in the near future," employing the same online sales and social media marketing tactics that helped the six-year-old startup become China's largest privately funded startup. Xiaomi can no longer afford to ignore the world's largest smartphone arena by revenue, company vice president Hugo Barra said in an interview. Its international expansion is taking on new-found urgency as growth at home slows and rivals such as Huawei erode its market share. "The U.S. is a market that we definitely have in our sights," Barra said on Bloomberg Television. "We will lead with social media, with the channels that allow us to get in touch with the young generation that are enthusiastic about new technology. We are definitely going there." Barra, who oversees the Chinese company's international expansion, has signaled Xiaomi's U.S. debut before. But the smartphone vendor is now in a better position to launch an incursion onto Apple's turf. In June, the Beijing-based company announced the acquisition of nearly 1,500 technology patents from Microsoft -- a deal that may smooth potential legal tangles over intellectual property as it pushes abroad.

Comments

Subsidy == No Sales

[s.petry]

Like we saw with Solar panels, it's easy for China to subsidize products to cause irreparable harm to foreign manufacturers. I have no doubts that the current administration does not care, they only have to suffer the people's wrath for a few more months. The rest of us however should be demanding that the company has it's books wide open for review.

Party Officer

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere, in every Chinese company, there is a Government Party Official sitting in an office, with sole purpose to make sure the business adheres to Communist Party ideology.
Don't fool yourself kids, these cheap Android phones all have backdoors to China.