Xiaomi is getting ready to launch its first online store dedicated to the American market, but the red-hot Chinese startup will not be selling its low-cost Android smartphones in the United States just yet.
Xiaomi global vice president Hugo Barra, who left his job at Google overseeing Android devices, said in a conference on Thursday that Mi.com, Xiaomi's U.S.-targeted online store, will start selling smartphone accessories, including Xiaomi's new headphones, Mi Band wearables, and the Xiaomi external battery pack that sold 15 million units in 2014.
The sleek-looking, low-cost Android phones that have made the four-year-old startup shoot up to the No. 3 spot in the race for being the world's biggest smartphone maker, just behind Apple and Samsung, will not be available just yet because it takes "an incredible amount of work" to bring much more technologically complicated devices to the U.S. market. Instead, the U.S. launch of Xiaomi's devices would serve as a way for the company to test the waters.
"We might try things in small volumes and see how it goes," said Barra. "We'll actually gain a lot of experience from selling these products here because we'll get a lot of feedback that will actually be globally relevant for us."
Xiaomi has built a solid customer base and a reputation for itself by encouraging customers to provide feedback about improvements and new features they would like to see in the products, something that Xiaomi's fiercely loyal fan base, akin to what Apple has, wont to do so much that Xiaomi began rolling out updates based on this feedback every week.
What Xiaomi hopes to do in the U.S. is to gather feedback from savvy American consumers, who hold high standards for the products they want to buy.
"The U.S. consumer is probably the most demanding consumer, with the highest quality bar and the most informed opinions of anyone anywhere in the world," Barra said. "Part of the reason why we want to be here is because we want to enter that feedback loop. We want to hear what people think about our products, we want to get feedback and improve our products everywhere."
Barra did not reveal any plans about when Xiaomi might introduce its smartphones to the American consumer likely because the company is still figuring out how to get around the hurdles it might face in the U.S. market.
Xiaomi's success is remarkable, considering its presence has only been limited to emerging markets, including India and Brazil. However, the company still has to make a solid name for itself in the mainstream American market and has to shake off the impression that it borrows significantly from Apple's design and marketing strategies.
Also, the smartphone environment in the U.S. is different from the Chinese market, where Xiaomi can afford to sell low-cost smartphones ranging from $95 to a few hundred dollars through flash sales on its online store. In the U.S., the carrier sales and subsidy structure will virtually eliminate Xiaomi's low-cost advantage, and the company will have to form partnerships with the carriers in order to offer competitive deals.
For now, Apple can rest easy about Xiaomi not yet offering smartphones, although Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the recently held Goldman Sachs technology conference that he doesn't worry about Xiaomi any more than he worries about Samsung, LG, and Apple's other competitors.
"We've always had stiff competition," Cook said. "We always will have stiff competition, this will make us better."
