Xiaomi has made no secret of its plans to expand its reach to global audience. Since the Chinese market has now become super competitive, the only way to justify $45 billion valuations is to look for sales elsewhere. Xiaomi seems keen to expand to the US and a new development might be very helpful.
According to a new report, Xiaomi has now inked a pact with US software giant Microsoft. The deal involves patent transfer agreements and pre-installation of Microsoft’s software on Xiaomi devices.
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After the agreement, it was announced that Xiaomi will start shipping a number of Xioami devices from September with Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Skype. The Chinese handset maker is expected to pre-load the Mi 5, Mi Max and Mi 4s, as well as cheaper Redmi Note 3 and Redmi 3 smartphones with Microsoft apps.
“Microsoft has sold Xiaomi nearly 1,500 high-quality patents that read on a variety of technologies including wireless communications, video, cloud and multimedia,” a Xiaomi spokesperson told a leading tech portal.
The alliance with Microsoft is part of Xiaomi’s bigger strategy to expand to the US. The company has also recently had a patent deal with Qualcomm. Further, they’ve also built an Android set-top box in collaboration with Google. All this clearly hints that Xiaomi wants to build relationships with top tech brands in the US.