[dnlrn]

Xiaomi only sells them in their online shop and only in specific regions like China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and I believe India. There are no retailers of Xiaomi phones and everybody buys them online at their shop.

There are some grey market importers for other countries, but even those originally have to buy them online at their shop in a country where Xiaomi sells.

[wemysh]

Ah, so they dont tackle the US at all? Why that? Surprising that I hear so much about them regardless.

[jacobolus]

My impression is that Xiaomi is unapologetic about copying other products without licensing the associated patents &c., but is sticking to markets where they won’t be sued for it. Samsung, which did the same thing, has been embroiled in extremely expensive legal wrangling for years.

Moreover, most US phones are sold under the cheap-up-front-with-2-year contract model, something Xiaomi doesn’t do as far as I know. Getting phones sold through cell carriers takes a lot of wheeling and dealing. More generally, scaling out to new countries takes lots of work on regulatory compliance, advertising/sales, customer service, etc. which they might not be ready to tackle.