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Xiaomi Corp. is a privately owned hardware firm that predominantly sells mobile phones. The company has seen a rapid growth over the last year, especially after reaching the third spot in global smartphone market in terms of volumes of shipment. Tales of its astounding growth have made worldwide fame and is seen as a second coming of an Apple like giant, who is more potent especially when it’s made and harnessed in the Chinese market.
Last week the company raised $1.1 billion in equity funding, setting the company’s worth at $45 billion dollars. This is a giant leap because that’s a four times increase in value since it was valued last year in August.
It’s one of those tales that would be etched in smartphone industry’s folklore. The company first launched its products in 2011, a mere three years, and now it’s the third largest smartphone maker in terms of shipment volume, also making it the most valuable privately funded technology startup in the world just knocking out Uber.
2014 saw the company expanding beyond the Chinese mainland and delving into markets such as India, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. And that’s not just it, the company plans to get into the markets of Russia, Brazil, Turkey, Mexico and Thailand in 2015.
The company has often been credited as an Apple clone as its CEO Lei Jun also takes up the same attire that was reminiscent of Apple’s Steve Jobs during product announcements and that’s not the end of it, the product line of the company is also quite similar to Apple, with smartphone’s, tablets (called MiPad), a set-top TV box and a cloud storage service (MiCloud). Both Apple and Xiaomi are clients of Taiwanese electronics manufacturing contractor Foxconn, where the earlier one is Foxconn’s biggest client.
