The Chinese company co-founded by billionaire Lei Jun is making its plans to launch its first laptop early 2016, by opening a new front in its battle against Apple and Lenovo.
Xiaomi's notebook is expected to go on sale in first quarter, and it is expected to compete with Apple's MacBook Air and Lenovo's ThinkPad; however the details are yet to be announced. Xiaomi held talks with South Korean giant Samsung recently, which would supply memory chips, and the displays. This will boost Samsung's components business as its tries to reduce reliance on providing for its own Galaxy devices. Samsung and Xiaomi declined to comment on it yet.
Within five years of its founding, Xiaomi Corp jumped into the global smartphone industry's top ranks by providing stylish smart devices with mid-range prices. Now, with the company setting its eyes on the PC business, it is expected to bring the cost pressures against the leading Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard and Apple.
Coming to the new laptop, it is rumored that Xiaomi is set to initially launch a high-end 15" notebook pitched at the MacBook Air, but at half the price. The lappie will eschew Windows for Linux, and this might point to a port of the Xiaomi MIUI user interface used on the phones to the laptop, as per Taiwanese website Digitimes.
The company has raised $1.4bn from investors and has grown to be the number-two smartphone in China currently and it determined to take it ahead of Apple for the top spot. It’s also believed that Xiaomi has been talking to manufacturing giants Inventec and Foxconn Electronics on the new expansion line. Meanwhile, the company is set to launch its smartphones in the US and Europe markets.
