Xiaomi is already dominating the smartphone market in its home country, and now has a 14% share of the Indian market, which means the Chinese company already has two of the world’s three largest smartphone markets locked down, but what about the United States? Well, that’s going to be difficult for Xiaomi, as the company is pretty much guaranteed to be bombarded by lawsuits as soon as it launches a smartphone in the United States, but CEO Bin Lin has made it clear that his company still has its eyes on the country.
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp. has sold more than three million phones in India since entering the market in July 2014, and is considering entering the U.S. market, its president said. “India is doing well. Our model works quite well in countries where e-commerce is growing very fast,” Bin Lin said in an interview Wednesday at the WSJD Live global technology conference. Beijing-based Xiaomi, the world’s second most valuable startup after Uber Technologies Inc., rose to the top of the Chinese smartphone market—the world’s largest with more than 500 million users—in just four years. Now, it is expanding into other devices including TVs and expanding smartphone sales in countries beyond China. Mr. Lin said Xiaomi is on track to sell 80 million smartphones world-wide this year and has 14% market share in India. He said Xiaomi phone sales grew 34% in the first six months of this year, compared with a year earlier, and the fourth quarter is typically strong. Xiaomi said earlier this year it began assembling its handsets in India in a plant run by Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group.
