Hey. It’s Brady here.

The folks at Xiaomi have been busy. Their smartphone unit—the company’s mainstay business—is now the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer, and that’s on top of founder Lei Jun’s vision to build electric cars. Simone, one of our editors, unpacked the company’s strategy.

Xiaomi logged particularly strong sales in Europe, Africa, and Latin America. My key takeaway here is that despite the tech press often being shaped by US outlets, there’s a wealth of possibilities that deserve attention. Consumers around the world don’t have the same hang-ups about buying Chinese brands, so Xiaomi has managed to eat into the sales of Apple and Samsung.

Sure, the company might have started off by aping Apple’s image, with Lei Jun even dressing like Steve Jobs for promo photos and keynote speeches. But look past the superficial imagery and you’ll see a company that puts a lot of thought into developing product lines that augment each other. There are good reasons behind Xiaomi’s fans being die-hard loyal to the brand, and the company takes every chance to highlight this.

As emerging economies around the world transform and integrate with the global internet economy, the first step for people to take part is to acquire a smartphone. This is why we think it’s important to track where these devices are made and what the problems might be, like chip shortages that might hinder production. We’ll keep watching this space.

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