The Chinese smartphone market is the largest in the world, which is no surprised, and with Xiaomi achieving a record-breaking 26% market share in April, this is a whole lot of smartphones that we are talking about here.
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Xiaomi Corp. has chose to buy around 1,500 patents from Microsoft Corp.in a typical example of the increasing expenses experiencing the Chinese smartphone startup because it grows outside China. One of its ultimate goals is to sell its phones in the U.S.
Xiaomi and Microsoft have reached an agreement which will see Xiaomi shipping Microsoft Office and Skype on their Android smartphones and tablets.
Xiaomi will purchase the patents from Microsoft for an undisclosed sum, said Wang Xiang, Xiaomi’s senior vice president of strategic cooperation, in an interview. While Xiaomi devices are now only available in select countries, the company sells millions of Android phones and tablets, and soon Microsoft’s productivity apps will be front and center on those devices.
Xiaomi has temporarily halted the launch of new products in Brazil due to uncertainty in government policy, Hugo Barra, Xiaomi’s vice president of worldwide, said in an interview on Tuesday.
Microsoft has struck plenty of app pre-load deals with other manufacturers – most notably Samsung starting with the Galaxy S6 – and has also managed to work out patent cross-licensing deals with others, particularly in lieu of payments for direct licensing of Microsoft’s intellectual property. Hence we can say that Xiaomi takes the No.1 place from Huawei by a small margin.
Xiaomi, China’s leading smartphone maker, is buying patents covering wireless communications, video, cloud and multimedia technologies, spokeswoman Kaylene Hong said by phone.
Jonathan Tinter, corporate vice president at Microsoft, said the company was keen to tap into Xiaomi’s young, affluent and educated users by having its products pre-installed on their devices.
There is still no timeline for smartphone sales in the USA, although it won’t be this year, Mr. Barra said.
“We are taking the necessary steps for launching in the USA, but for the time being, the focus remains in India”, Mr. Barra said. The top two sellers are Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc.
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Xiaomi entered the Indian market a year ago, but its scale there is still relatively small.
