Xiaomi has only been around for a few years but it has already become one of the biggest smartphone vendors in China. The company is making all sorts of devices from smartphones to tablets, TV sets and even action cameras. It’s also expanding smartphone and accessory sales to other parts of the world. Now the company has its sights set on another industry, Xiaomi has confirmed that it’s launching its own wireless carrier.
This new venture will obviously be limited to China, at least initially, where it will compete against the likes of China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. All three carriers have 1.3 billion subscribers combined in a country that has a population of around 1.4 billion people.
Xiaomi isn’t taking the conventional route with its wireless network, it won’t be buying spectrum from the government and setting up its own infrastructure, rather it will set up an MVNO or mobile virtual network operator.
What this means is that Xiaomi will rent network capacity from these major carriers and then offer its own plans to consumers, this will enable the company to aggressively price its offerings, something that it has consistently done with its electronic devices.
Mi Mobile, that’s what Xiaomi is calling it, will have two plans. The first provides subscribers with $0.02 per minute voice calls, each text messages and MB of data. The other plan costs $9 and retains the $0.02 charge for calls and texts but provides 3GB of data per month.
Mi Mobile’s first plan will be available tomorrow whereas the monthly $9.25 plan will go live in public beta next month.