While Xiaomi remains a worthy but not so popular brand locally, in its home turf, China, it surpasses Samsung. In fact, the Xiaomi MIUI app store just hit over 10 billion downloads, and Xiaomi has now opened its international app store.
The Android-based MIUI firmware (now at MIUI 6) which runs on all of Xiaomi’s mobile devices (Mi 3, Mi 4, Redmi 1s) is both highly customizable and provides a tight and coherent user-experience. Here’s the run down. Since its launch, the Xiaomi MIUI app store has
- gained more than 17 million active users
- gotten upwards of 1.3 million searches daily
- clocked in 50 million downloads daily
- more than 3000 apps for the Mi Pad
The Google Play Store isn’t currently available in China, allowing third party Android app stores to thrive.
Xiaomi has also paid roughly $60 million to developers. The MIUI app store comes installed on Xiaomi devices though it’s not hard to side load Google Play Store apps. The MIUI app store is now ranked 5th among more than 200 various third party Android app stores in China.
Xiaomi’s international app store is said to allow developers from Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong to upload apps and in the process reach a wider audience. The store hopefully will open up to more countries (like India and the Philippines).
Lately, Mi Philippines is trying to address the Filipino preference for physical stores through Pop-up stores and through its physical service center based in Greenhills, San Juan.
