Xiaomi could arrive in US in 2019

Xiaomi launched its flagship the Mi 6 last week, but Mi fans from US and Europe need to once again search for unofficial channels to get the new device. Senior VP Wang Xiang at Xiaomi said the company wants to expand to the Western world but working with carriers is too much of a hassle and prefers to bring technology to emerging markets.

Wang Xiang took the Senior VP position after Hugo Barra left Xiaomi for Facebook. After the Mi 6 launch, he sat down with some reporters to talk about the company plans.

Xiang shared that Xiaomi is currently operating in 30 markets, most of them still emerging. The company' main aim is to reach the mass market and to bring “innovation for everyone.” This means Xiaomi is currently satisfied with its 2nd position in India and 3rd position in Ukraine and does not want to explicitly aim for the “premium, elite thing,” as Xiang put it.

Another barrier, according to the Xiaomi VP, are the carrier-driven markets - the US and the UK would bring extra work to the R&D department. “The engineering team is super busy and would struggle to serve such carriers,” Xiang admitted. More interestingly, he revealed that 2019 is a realistic goal for Xiaomi to enter the US market.

Xiaomi is constantly having trouble to respond to pre-orders, the towards Redmi Note 4, so probably the company is just playing it safe.

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