XiaoMi is a smartphone company that is a rage in China: its Mi branded handsets sport a highly customized Android deployment (called MIUI), and are linked to a range of cloud services provided on top of the handset, have their own market (as opposed to Google's play store), and have around 200,000 pieces of content, including customized themes (similar to Go Launcher). The MI2 handset is priced at RMB 1999 (around Rs 19000); I bought one yesterday, and by my reckoning, it is the most intuitive and usable deployment of Android I've seen so far - everything from the music player to the alarm clock and notification bar is gorgeous, and the UI, according to the MIUI website, is updated weekly, based on user feedback. At the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing, Xiaomi Founder Lei Jun spoke about issues with Android, his company, how they approach customer service, among other things (note that these notes are based on live translation of Lei Jun's talk, and some nuanced statements may have been, literally, lost in translation): - The dominance of Android in China:"Over the last few years, it is obvious that Android has become the most mainstream OS. The marketshare will increase. In China, it amounts to 90% of total market turnover. The global average is 60%, but I'm sure it will increase globally. - Issues With Android: "people have complaints against Android experience. What are people complaining about? Firstly, battery. I buy a phone, I use it for one…
