Xiaomi

Lore & Background

Xiaomi was founded on 6 April 2010 in Beijing by Lei Jun along with six associates, including former Google China Institute of Engineering vice president Lin Bin and senior director of the Motorola Beijing R&D center Zhou Guangping. Lei Jun had previously worked as an executive at Kingsoft and was involved in founding Joyo.com, which was sold to Amazon for $75 million in 2004. The company launched its first Android-based firmware, MIUI (now Xiaomi HyperOS), on 16 August 2010, and its first smartphone, the Xiaomi Mi 1, in August 2011. By 2014, Xiaomi had the largest market share of smartphones sold in China. The company initially sold products only online but later opened brick-and-mortar stores. As of August 2024, Xiaomi was the second-largest seller of smartphones worldwide with a market share of about 12%, according to Counterpoint.

Reader's Guide

Xiaomi's significance lies in its rapid rise from a startup in 2010 to a global top-three smartphone seller by 2025, challenging established giants like Apple and Samsung. Xiaomi has expanded beyond smartphones into a wide range of consumer electronics, including televisions, flashlights, unmanned aerial vehicles, air purifiers, and wearable items, all integrated through its Internet of Things and Xiaomi Smart Home product ecosystems. The company also entered the electric vehicle market. Xiaomi's international expansion began in 2014 with a headquarters in Singapore, and it later entered markets in India, Europe, and Japan.

Did You Know?

• Xiaomi purchased the domain name mi.com for a record US$3.6 million in April 2014, the most expensive domain name ever bought in China.
• In 2013, Xiaomi hired Hugo Barra from Google, making it the first smartphone company to poach a senior staffer from Google's Android team.