14 DAY TRIAL // Xiaomi is a Chinese smartphone manufacturer that registered incredible success on its home market by selling affordable smartphones with high-end specifications.
One of the key secrets through which Xiaomi managed to reach such high levels of glory is probably its e-commerce-driven business model.
The company’s sales strategy is based on flash sales which make available limited batches of products for a select handful of customers who have to register beforehand to be eligible to purchase.
While Xiaomi has grown so popular in its home country to the point that it has gained the nickname of China’ Apple, the device maker doesn't seem to have the same luck while other markets are concerned.
Xiaomi can't seem to expand overseas
A new report coming from DigiTimes this week claims that Xiaomi is facing major difficulties in its quest of expanding beyond Chinese borders.
This isn’t an exaggeration. A few days ago we reported that Xiaomi was banned by the Delhi High Court from selling its smartphones in India, due to an infringement on Ericsson’s patents.
A few days after, the court agreed to cut Xiaomi some slack and allow it to continue selling some models of its handset until January 2015, when the trial will resume.
But that’s not the only problem plaguing Xiaomi on the external market. The Chinese company has often been criticized for plagiarism, and if it were to take its business outside the borders of its home court to any other territory, major smartphone manufacturers in the region would probably start legal action against it.
That’s probably one of the main reasons Xiaomi has yet to officially launch any product in the US.
With each product launch, the Chinese device maker is accused of copying some aspect of the Apple ecosystem. You name it, Xiaomi has taken inspirations from Apple products’ form factors, coloring schemes and OS design.
Xiaomi's biggest problem is related to patents
Another reason why Xiaomi has big problems branching out of China is the fact that most of its handsets aren't patented. But to gain legal rights for them, the Chinese manufacturer would have to spend a lot of cash and concentrate a lot of legal battles with other major OEMs.
So as you can see, it’s not exactly easy for Xiaomi to expand its business internationally. Although the company kept saying it was planning to expand its grasp in order to include markets like the US, at this point this scenario is not very likely to happen anytime soon.
