Xiaomi has announced that it’s refunding people who bought its first smartphone device, the Mi 1, the cost of purchase of the device at the time - which is 1999 yuan, or around $308. This gesture is meant to thank them for supporting the company when it started and will have the form of online store credit. The amount would be enough for these people to get themselves a Redmi Note 10 Pro or a Poco X3 Pro as a gift from Xiaomi, so this is an awesome move from the Chinese consumer tech firm.
Back in 2011, when Xiaomi released the Mi 1, the device was considered high-end, featuring a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 with an Adreno 220 GPU, 1GB of RAM, an 8 megapixels camera, and a 4-inch TFT with a pixel density of 245 PPI to enjoy the then wondrous Android 2.3 “Gingerbread.” The device sold 184,600 units, so the total amount of the refunds the company will give away in marketing-boosting refunds is calculated to $56,856,800 today.
Xiaomi is generally celebrating its current status, which is hugely successful by all standards. Only last week, it recorded the largest number of monthly smartphone sales in terms of volume, surpassing all others for the first time in its history, leaving Samsung and Apple in second and third place, respectively. This was further amplified by the fact that Xiaomi recorded the most sales in Europe as well, a market it has been trying to infiltrate and eventually conquer for a long time now - and one that is historically considered Samsung’s fort.
Yesterday, the company announced the release of Xiaomi Mix 4, its first smartphone to feature an under-display selfie camera unit, along with a rich set of technological innovations and advancements in the area of computational and mobile photography.
Xiaomi has recently gone through some legal troubles in the United States. Still, the court judge evaluating the U.S. Department of Defense's decision to add the company to its blacklist in January 2021 found that all allegations were vague and lifted the investment restrictions. This move kept Xiaomi in the U.S. stock exchanges and the global benchmark shares indexes and in a position to take full advantage of Huawei’s demise and snatch the orphaned market share.