Xiaomi have just confirmed that they’re working on a brand new smartphone, the Xiaomi Mi3S, a successor to Xiaomi’s last phone the Mi3 which was dubbed the most powerful smartphone in the world at the time.

But who is Xiaomi? As someone living in the UK I’ve met plenty of people who have no idea who Xiaomi is and that is to be expected as Xiaomi don’t have a presence in the country. But Xiaomi are causing quite a stir in at home and abroad at the moment. In just three years since forming the company has grown from a start-up to the 4th largest smartphone brand in China and the creator of one of the most popular Android custom ROMs Worldwide. It’s time the world learns about Xiaomi, who they are and what they’ve done

A BRIEF HISTORY OF XIAOMI – CHINA’S TECH SUCCESS STORY

‌‌Xiaomi have just confirmed that they’re working on a brand new smartphone, the Xiaomi Mi3S, a successor to Xiaomi’s last phone the Mi3 which was dubbed the most powerful smartphone in the world at the time.

But who is Xiaomi? As someone living in the UK I’ve met plenty of people who have no idea who Xiaomi is and that is to be expected as Xiaomi don’t have a presence in the country. But Xiaomi are causing quite a stir in at home and abroad at the moment. In just three years since forming the company has grown from a start-up to the 4th largest smartphone brand in China and the creator of one of the most popular Android custom ROMs Worldwide. It’s time the world learns about Xiaomi, who they are and what they’ve done.

A History of Xiaomi

Xiaomi was founded in April 2010 by ex-Kingsoft CEO Lei Jun, as a software company creating a new custom ROM based on Google’s Android. Their aim was to provide additional functionality that Android had yet to offer and an easy to use user interface. MIUI, the ROM which the team created, became a huge success and has been ported to many devices. As of 2014 MIUI can be downloaded and installed to over 200 devices in both English and Chinese, even non developers can easily install MIUI to their phones using the MIUI Express APK. As of the end of 2013 Xiaomi had over 30 million MIUI users worldwide! Very impressive for such a young company!

The MIUI ROM was likened to Apple’s iOS for being very easy to use whilst providing sophisticated services such as cloud backup, an easy to use music player and their own app store. The team at Xiaomi have alwasy wanted users to feel part of the company and happily take on fan feedback via multiple channels and update the ROM every Friday with bug fixes, optimisation and additional features. To good to be true? Well try it out for yourself as it’s probably available for your device already.

Xiaomi enter the hardware market

In 2011 Xiaomi announced the Mi One phone. Xiaomi was now not only making its own software, but its own hardware too. The Mi One was a top spec phone with a great price way ahead of its time, this has remained Xiaomi’s philosophy from day one.

While commentors are quick to call the Beijing based company “The Apple of China”, Xiaomi prefer to compare themselves to Amazon, they create powerful hardware which they sell at cost price and rely on their services and content to make up most of the revenue. Speaking of which their revenue for 2013 alone over $5 billion extremely impressive for a new company. There are similarities between Xiaomi and Apple however, they are both hardware and software companies, both have strong control over supply chains and both have a feverish fan base. Apart from this the two companies don’t have much else in common, Apple price their smartphones at ludicrous prices and don’t take on much customer feedback where as Xiaomi do the opposite.