In less than five years, Xiaomi has risen from a fresh startup with some cool ideas to a burgeoning behemoth of a smartphone company that is consuming everything in its path. In that time, the Chinese company has managed to expand its user base to a whopping 100 million globally. According to Xiaomi, that’s how many people are currently running its MIUI firmware platform.
The upstart Chinese mobile device maker Xiaomi says 100 million people around the world are now using devices running its MIUI firmware platform. MIUI (pronounced “Me You I,” a play on UI, the common abbreviation of the words user interface) is an aftermarket firmware platform based on Android. The company says the firmware now runs on 347 different mobile devices from 96 brands. Xiaomi says it saw 135 percent growth last year, selling 61 million devices. That’s up from selling in the mid 20 millions of devices in 2013. Revenues last year were the equivalent of $12 billion U.S. It adds that it is the biggest handset maker in China, with a 15 percent market share. Apple, research shows, sold more smartphones than anyone else in China in the last quarter of 2014. Xiaomi was founded in 2010 and has leadership recruited from Microsoft, Motorola, and Google.
