Xiaomi's smartphone taps into US market

Xiaomi Corp, the world's third-largest smartphone manufacturer, is expected to launch its new smartphone at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January in Las Vegas, the first appearance of the fast-growing Chinese IT company in the US market.

According to the Economic Daily News in China, Xiaomi next month might launch its flagship Mi5 smartphone, which has high-end specifications but a low-end price, like most of the smartphones that have come out of China.

It has been reported that the new smartphone will pack a Quad 5.7-inch HD display, a powerful Qualcomm chipset and fingerprint-scanning technology as standard.

According to a report from International Data Corp (IDC), Xiaomi's smartphone shipments in the third quarter of 2014 ranked third after Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co.

Lei Jun, Xiaomi's founder and CEO, dubbed "China's Steve Jobs", said the company might become the world's largest smartphone maker in the next five to 10 years, during a forum at the World Internet Conference in November in China.

Xiaomi stepped into the global market by entering 10 new markets, including India, Brazil and Russia, this year. It also set a goal of increasing sales to 100 million phones in 2015, according to an April 23 report from Bloomberg News.

The company recently has been making a series of aggressive investments in preparation for entering the US and other foreign markets. Analysts point out that Lei has started to make Xiaomi's own ecosystem to challenge Apple.

On Dec 1, the company announced its participation in a $40 million round of fundraising for Misfit, a Silicon Valley-based startup. It is the first time that Xiaomi has taken a stake in a US mobile-device maker.

Misfit, which claims to make the best-selling activity and sleep tracker in China, said on Dec 2 that it had raised new funds from Xiaomi, e-commerce company JD.com Inc, and venture capital firms GGV Capital, and Shunwei, a VC firm set up by Xiaomi.

Xiaomi Corp and Kingsoft Corp announced on Dec 4 that the two companies will invest $1 billion for cloud services in the next three to five years.

Lei, co-founder of both companies, revealed details of the first-round, $222 million investment in the Nasdaq-listed 21Vianet Group Inc, the largest carrier-neutral Internet data center-service provider in China. Temasek Holdings of Singapore also agreed to inject $74 million into 21Vianet.

"Cloud service will become one of the prime costs of IT companies in the future," Lei said on Dec 3.

"For instance, at the current data-upload speed, Xiaomi after next year will have to pay an annual $488 million fee for the data storage, most of which are the pictures and videos from users of Xiaomi's smartphones and other mobile technology products," said Lei.

"Sixty-eight million Xiaomi users are uploading 90 million pictures and 2 million videos every day," said Lei.

On Nov 19, Xiaomi also made a $294 million investment in online video provider iQiyi, a unit of search giant Baidu Inc.