29 Dec 2014
Xiaomi working on laptop, may price it below Rs.30,000
Xiaomi, a company that has changed the phone market in China and in India with its aggressively priced phones, is now reportedly entering the laptop market. And to compete in the new market, it is going to use the same tactics -- aggressive pricing -- to take on the established players.
According to a report at Gizmo China, Xiaomi is working on 15-inch laptop with top configuration and a slim design. The laptop, which has a design similar to that of Apple's MacBook Air, has powerful hardware. According to the leaked specifications, the machine is powered by Intel i7-4500U processor and 16GB RAM. It also sports a FullHD 15-inch display.
According to Gizmo China, the laptop will be sold for around $480 (around Rs.30,000).
While one paper the laptop looks good, one issue that could potentially be a deal breaker is the operating system. According to reports, Xiaomi may not use Windows on this laptop. Instead it may use its own custom operating systems -- likely based on some variant of Linux -- on the laptop.
This is again somewhat similar to the approach taken by Xiaomi in the phone market. instead of using pure Android, Xiaomi uses a customised version of MiUI, which is based on Android, to power its phones.
While Xiaomi started as a smartphone company, it has slowly branched out into several other markets. It now sells a number of accessories in both India and China. Recently, it also announced a low-cost air purifier.
With its aggressively-priced phones, Xiaomi has been so successful in the phone market that recently it became one of the top phone sellers in the world.
"Xiaomi made its debut among the top-five smartphone vendors in Q3, 2014. It experienced the highest growth of the quarter, with an increase of 336 per cent driven by strong performance in China where it became market leader," said Gartner, a market research firm.
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