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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.
After replacing my Samsung Galaxy S4 (flagship device, cost when new 550 euro) with a Xiaomi Mi4 (flagship device, cost when new 200 euro), I have never looked back. I tried the switched because there were a couple of annoyances with the Samsung, plus I actual made money from the switch (yes, people were buying a second hand S4 for more than a new Mi4!). Not only you get the top specs, same as every other flagship, including high quality screen, good battery (the Mi4 lasts about 20-25% more than my S4), but you also get some unique stuff that only the Xiaomi has. For example, without even using a PC, you can go to the Xiaomi website, download the latest ROM image, save it and either upgrade or rename it, reboot in service mode and have it clean-install (useful when ordering from cheap retailers that make up for the lower price by installing spyware/adware crap). Oh, and when you do something bad and break your installation, it is dual boot with a clean basic image installed on an extra partition! Even better, Xiaomi continuously updates all their phones, you can be running Android 6.0.1 (official) whether you have the latest flagship (Mi 5), or the previous flagship (Mi 4) or the flagship before that (Mi 3 from 2013) or their cheapest device from 2 years ago (Redmi 1S) etc...
And they have some other cool devices as well, but their phones have really done it for me, I'll be going with Xiaomi as long as they don't screw it up. Since you have to go through sometimes shady retailers sometimes currently, it will be great if they officially export to the US and other countries.
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embarrassing? Apple pride themselves on copying others well, Xiaomi seems to follow in the same footsteps though with slightly better specs and much better prices. Not sure on their quality as I have never had one but all the reviews are pretty damn good and I am considering one as my next phone.