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Microsoft sells patents to Xiaomi
- babayega2 10y agoin Africa most of the mobile phones sold here are from huawei, xiaomi and other Chinese companies. And you find them cheaper and with most of the features a high end smartphone have as.
- aavotins 10y agoI have been eyeing Xiaomi for some time and even bought some of their products. And I was not disappointed. Something tells me that it's going to be the next Samsung.
- mtgx 10y agoBut, you know, with more backdoors.
- kyriakos 10y agoI did buy two Xiaomi phones for members of my family. They are really good for the price when compared to more mainstream brands. They also have strong community support and both models I tried have unofficial Cyanogenmod firmware. To be honest though other than the possible "spying" from the Chinese ROMs, Xiaomi's MIUI is beautiful, well thought, and gets updated every week.
- pawadu 10y agoGiven that all phones are manufactured in China, I would say that ship has already sailed. But I am an equal opportunity guy - if NSA is spying on me it is only fair to let the Chinese in too :) More seriously, since these phones are often bought from "gray market" vendors, I am more worried about cybercriminals planting malware in them when they are imported: http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/07/security-firm-finds-pre-installed-malware-on-xiaomi-mi-4-smartphone/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/07/security-firm-finds-pre-in...
- rahimnathwani 10y agoThis article says that xiaomi has started shipping phones with locked bootloaders for this reason: http://www.xda-developers.com/xiaomi-locks-bootloaders-unlock-approval-takes-up-to-21-days-bricked-devices-must-wait/ http://www.xda-developers.com/xiaomi-locks-bootloaders-unloc...
- jb613 10y ago> if NSA is spying on me it is only fair to let the Chinese in too :) I never understand this self-defeatist mentality. One represents a democracy while the other represents a communist dictatorship. If you trust them so much why not just move there and become a citizen :-) I mean, I hear there's lot of jobs have moved there the past ~decade.
- olalonde 10y agoOr you could say that one has a recent history of imperialism and militarism while the other is relatively peaceful and non interventionist.
- tonymm 10y agoReady to enter US market.
- nitin_flanker 10y agoAcquisition of patent is one of the top priority of Xiaomi at this stage when it's trying to expand itself globally. I believe Hugo Barra is doing an excellent work here. The acquisition of Microsoft patent gonna open the door of the US smartphone market for Xiaomi. As per this report -- http://www.greyb.com/patent-portfolio-analysis-of-xiaomi-global-expansion-plan/ http://www.greyb.com/patent-portfolio-analysis-of-xiaomi-glo... -- one of the biggest hurdle is Xaiomi's miniscule patent portfolio in the US. In the past they acquired patents from Broadcom in the US. Still they had only 220 patents there and now with these 1500, they are going to have like 1700.
- ptaipale 10y agoIt is kind of sad that the power of innovation is not really in making something that is new and customers want to buy; even entering the market means you need to possess a portfolio where you count the patents by hundreds or thousands, and then you hire lawyers to negotiate a balance scale where each side throws a portfolio in the cup.
- bkor 10y agoIt is telling two things: 1) The ability to compete and cost associated to compete is worse in US and Europe. 2) Further, patents are mostly used as anti competitive behaviour; it is not related to "innovation", nor is it related to research and development.
- jb613 10y ago> patents are mostly used as anti competitive behaviour; it is not related to "innovation", nor is it related to research and development. Generally, patents are derived from R&D which is where innovation directly comes from so it is "related". At the very least this is true in Microsoft's case. Regarding anti-competitive - it's only anti-competitive if someone else attempts to COPY the innovation. They are free to innovate and come up with an ALTERNATIVE. The more alternatives, the more choices for consumers. If you want to copy then sure - patents block, but if you want to innovate then patents can provide incentivizes to carry that out.
- yread 10y agoAnybody wants to speculate on price?
- rasz_pl 10y agoI would guess around 1 Billion dollars ... worth of patents given away by Microsoft as an 'investment' in Xiaomi. Just like Intel was forced to a 1.5B 'deal' last year. There is a LOT of talk about anticompetitive practices by Microsoft lately, this usually results in such pseudo investment/partnership with native chinese company, or $1B anti competitive fine like the one Qualcomm received. Apple is also on a short list of getting fined/kicked hard.
- jonathankoren 10y agoThe top-end Xiaomi Max retails at 1999 RMB which is 303 USD.
- ben1009 10y ago流氓会武术
- techmicrobiz 10y agoI wonder if this move by Microsoft signals that the rumored Surface Phone will be made by Xiaomi and to be potentially co-branded with Xiaomi?
- pawadu 10y agoI think in 2-4 years, xiaomi will be a market leader. I believe this for three reasons: 1. the Chineese government got their backs. (e.g. foreign competitors have been forced to agree to not sue these guys to get their mergers approved) 2. they make long term strategic decisions. xiaomi is owned by the employees and don't have any short-sighted shareholders to please 3. their engineering and manufacturing teams have a very efficient iterative workflow. many other companies ship a product and move on to the next but xiaomi updates and improves their products every four weeks (eight ?).
- li-ch 10y agoNo they will not. 1. Chinese Gov has Huawei's back, not Xiaomi. 2. Their decision to make their OS to show crazy amount of ads is really short sighted. 3. They are falling dangerously behind Huawei in both sales and quality of product.
- pawadu 10y agoMIUI showing ads? Are you sure they come from first party apps?
- snnn 10y agoMIUI has another popular name: ADUI
- philliphaydon 10y agoThere's no ads. At least not here in Singapore versions.
- partiallypro 10y ago> 1. Chinese Gov has Huawei's back, not Xiaomi. The Chinese government backs several companies in the same industry, there's no reason to believe they don't have both company's backs >2. Their decision to make their OS to show crazy amount of ads is really short sighted. This must be a Chinese mainland thing, I've never seen this on any of their devices. > 3. They are falling dangerously behind Huawei in both sales and quality of product. I don't think so, I find the Xiaomi products to be very inticing and well built for the price. In the new era of smartphones where people will no longer be willing to shell out big bucks and subsidies of smart phones from providers are faltering (or just ending.) Companies like Xiaomi stand to gain.
- ksec 10y agoIt is one way to equip itself with patents for International Market. It is also worth mentioning Xiaomi, should they decide to enter US market, will cost a little more due to 4G licensing cost. And Microsoft will get Office into the hands of million Xiaomi users.
- neves 10y agoPhone manufacturers have to pay 4G licensing?
- ksec 10y agoYou will be surprised how much the 4G licensing are, they are based on % of final sales. That is why the BOM cost people continue to use in Apple Products are pointless. The amount of money from a phone feeding into the patents system is insanely large. Hence, Another reason why Apple do not have LTE in their Macbook yet.
- Aissen 10y agoSo, Xiaomi is getting the last pieces it needs to move into European markets. If it comes here (which has begun already), it has to play the patent game. Expect a $60+ markup on high end phones for that (industry sources). (old source: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/400-smartphone-pay-120-patent-royalties-research-claims/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/400-smartphone-pay-120-p...) Now they just need to solve their cash flow issues to fuel this growth…
- ocean3 10y agoLower end mobiles don't need to pay? There are many mobiles under 60 at least in India.
- RealityVoid 10y agoWell, that's not really an European market, is it?
- neves 10y agoWould this break the New World Order? This is really interesting, maybe this will set a precedent for the creation of tech companies in the developing world. The Developed World have a clear plan: they will own all the "intellectual property" and use the cheap work in developing countries. It is not a problem if the same company produces all brands of printers. If it starts to sell a print itself, it will be sued to death. The world is completely ordered: high value jobs for the rich, low value for the poor. We don't need brute force imperialism anymore. If Xiaomi builds a rift in this structure, it may pave a way for other companies/countries around the world.
- asadlionpk 10y agoAs a resident of developing world, this is depressing.
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoWait, how is this worse than developing country steals IP for domestic market, can't sell abroad in countries where IP matters? China can and does appropriate IP as needed, this is basically xiaomi's modus operandi. It stops working when developing country company wants to make money in developed market where IP is owned, which I guess is what they want with the patent portfolio. China in general has said "we don't care" about IP rights, it is only changing now because (a) they are beginning to have their own IP to protect, (b) it is a race to the bottom between local companies when NO IP is protected, and (c) you will get sued to death on products sold in developed markets that are questionable in IP usage. High value jobs for the rich, low value jobs for the poor. Sounds like China, the USA, and the rest of the world. Do not treat China as one homogenous pile of poor workers.
- jb613 10y ago> China in general has said "we don't care" about IP rights, it is only changing now because (a) they are beginning to have their own IP to protect, (b) it is a race to the bottom between local companies when NO IP is protected, and (c) you will get sued to death on products sold in developed markets that are questionable in IP usage. Or is China now caring about IP because they have seen that it's more profitable to the innovator rather than after-the-fact-copycat. The bigger question is whether they can become the innovator. In some instances, they have indicated they might but overall I'm not sold that they can.
- happywolf 10y agoRemember Nokia.
- samwestdev 10y agoI'd love a Xiaomi with vanilla android
- greatergoodguy 10y agoI agree. I imported the Xiaomi Mi Note Pro and the hardware is fantastic. I bought it when it was already 8 months old so it dropped in price from $500 to $350. Adding a $20 import fee and the total was $370. It comes with 64 GBs storage, 4 GBs ram, and a quad hd display (2560x1440). Some things that are lame. No fingerprint sensor and no NFC.
- kennell 10y agoI agree. MIUI isn't bad at all, but it feels like a waste of engineering resources developing and supporting your own little Android flavour when the majority of people enjoy a vanilla Android.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kennell 10y agoI own two Xiaomi phones, the Redmi 3 and the Mi 4C. I imported both directly from China for <$200 each. The hardware feels just like a $600-700 flagship phone from a big brand, including Apple. I had to do some fiddling to get a perfect english language ROM with the Playstore and without chinese bloatapps, but now i am very happy with it. Quite frankly, i see no reason to ever pick up a big brand phone again. Of course if they enter western markets, the prices will go up (US/european regulations, warranty law, license costs etc.), but if that price bump stays reasonable... some of the big boys are in trouble.
- Negative1 10y agoWhen you say imported, do you mean you literally paid import fees in addition to just the shipping cost? If so, how much was that?
- kennell 10y agoWithin the EU you only pay the sales tax on the total invoice (phone+shipping cost), here in Germany thats 19%. So if the phone invoice was 150€ + 10€ for shipping, you will be paying roughly ~30€ in taxes ("Einfuhrumsatzsteuer"). However... that is only IF your phone gets stuck in customs. If you get lucky you won't have to pay this* * technically thats tax fraud - but even with the extra tax, it's still cheaper than buying from a EU-based reseller