At a San Francisco event Thursday, Xiaomi said it will bring its mi.com e-commerce website to the U.S. to sell accessories like earphones, power banks and fitness bands.
But Xiaomi co-founder Bin Lin said the company has no plans to offer its popular handsets in the U.S., citing the difficulty of having such devices certified.
The event was Xiaomi’s first in the United States and was intended as a broad overview of the company’s products, its software and the culture it has sought to build around its brand in China. Hugo Barra, the company’s vice president of international, showed off dozens of features Xiaomi has created for its phones, like a “face beautification” option that edits facial features to make people appear prettier in their selfies.
Xiaomi was valued in a recent fundraising at $46 billion, but Lin said there are no plans for an initial public offering in the next “three to five years.”
Founded just five years ago, Xiaomi was the world’s fifth-largest smartphone maker in the fourth quarter, with 4.4% global market share according to IDC estimates. It undercuts rivals like Samsung by selling its phones at cost.
The company said in January it had sold 61 million smartphones in 2014, up 227% from 2013, generating sales of 74.3 billion yuan ($11.9 billion), up 135% from 2013.
The company now has over 100 million people using its MiUi operating system, a customized version of Google's Android, said Barra at the event.
As competition intensifies among makers of Android smartphones, Xiaomi is trying to distinguish itself.
“We are not a handset company,” said Lin. “We are an Internet company.”
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