The company focuses on India, the world's second-largest smartphone market. Xiaomi announced on 2 May 2018, the launch of Mi Music and Mi Video to offer "value-added internet services" in India. On 22 March 2017, Xiaomi announced that it planned to set up a second manufacturing unit in India in partnership with contract manufacturer Foxconn. On 7 August 2018, Xiaomi announced on its blog that Holitech Technology Co. Ltd., Xiaomi's top supplier, would invest up to $200 million over the next three years to set up a major new plant in India.
In 2019 Xiaomi started to sell simple goods such as sunglasses, caps, pillows, glass lunchboxes, cups, filters, bags, backpacks, luggage, screwdrivers, and umbrellas.
In April 2019, researchers at Check Point found a security breach in Xiaomi phone apps. The security flaw was reported to be preinstalled.
In 2019, the company announced that it would launch more than 10 5G phones in 2020, some of them being: Mi 10/10 Pro with 5G functionality included.
In March 2020, Xiaomi showcased its new 40W wireless charging solution, which was able to fully charge a smartphone with a 4,000mAh battery from flat in 40 minutes.
In December 2020, Xiaomi collaborates with award-winning photographer Steve McCurry, to promote the photographic capabilities of the Mi 10T Pro handset. The brand’s ‘My Unsung Hero’ campaign features images captured on the Mi 10T Pro.
Xiaomi was unfavorably covered for its non-compliance with the terms of the GNU GPL. The Android project's Linux kernel is licensed under the copyleft terms of the GPL, which requires Xiaomi to distribute the complete source code of the Android kernel and device trees for every Android device it distributes. By refusing to do so, or by unreasonably delaying these releases, Xiaomi is operating in violation of intellectual property law in China, as a WIPO state. Prominent Android developer Francisco Franco publicly criticized Xiaomi's behaviour after repeated delays in the release of kernel source code. Xiaomi in 2013 said that it would release the kernel code. The kernel source code is available on the GitHub website.
Xiaomi has been compared to the American corporation Apple Inc., as reviewers found some of Xiaomi's phones and tablets similar in appearance to Apple's. In addition, the marketing strategy of Xiaomi is at times described as riding on the back of the "cult of Apple". It is reported that, after reading a book about Steve Jobs in college, Xiaomi's chairman and CEO, Lei Jun, carefully cultivated a Steve Jobs image, including jeans, dark shirts, and Jobs's announcement style at Xiaomi's earlier product announcements. Given the above, he was categorized as a "counterfeit Jobs."
In 2012, the company was said to be counterfeiting Apple's philosophy and mindset. In 2013, critics debated how much of Xiaomi's products were innovative, and how much of their innovation was just really good public relations. Others point out that while there are similarities to Apple, the ability to customize the software based upon user preferences through the use of Google's Android operating system sets Xiaomi apart.
In November 2012, Xiaomi's smart set-top box stopped working one week after the launch due to the company having run afoul of China's State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television. The regulatory issues were overcome in January 2013.
In August 2013, the company announced that it was hiring Hugo Barra from Google, where he served as vice president of product management for the Android platform. Barra has declined to comment on the timing of the Google relationships, and stated that he had been in talks with Xiaomi for over a year prior to announcing the move. He was employed as vice president of Xiaomi to expand the company outside of mainland China, making Xiaomi the first company selling smartphones to poach a senior staffer from Google's Android team. Barra's focus was to help Xiaomi grow internationally.
Barra quit his position in January 2017 to join Facebook as VP of virtual reality.
Xiaomi's cloud storage service Mi Cloud stores all user data in its servers in China. As a company based in China, it is must share data with the Chinese government under the China Internet Security Law and National Intelligence Law. Xiaomi's Cloud messaging service sent some private data, including call logs and contact information, to Xiaomi servers. Xiaomi later released an MIUI update that made cloud messaging optional and that no private data was sent to Xiaomi servers if the cloud messaging service was turned off.
In October 2014, Xiaomi announced that they were setting up servers outside of China for international users, citing improved services and compliance to regulations in several nations. Around the same time, the Indian Air Force warned against Xiaomi phones, stating that they were a national threat as they sent user data to an agency of the Chinese government.
On 30 April 2020, Forbes reported that Xiaomi extensively tracks use of its browsers, including private browser activity, phone metadata, and device navigation, and more alarmingly, without secure encryption or anonymization, more invasively and to a greater extent than mainstream browsers. Xiaomi disputed the claims, while affirming that it did extensively collect browsing data, and claiming that the data was not linked to any individuals and that consumers had consented to being tracked. Xiaomi later posted a response stating that the collection of aggregated usage statistics data is used for internal analysis, and would not link any personally identifiable information to any of this data. However after a followup by the report's originator, Gabriel Cirlig, Xiaomi backed down and added an option to completely stop the information leak when using their browser in incognito mode.
The Taiwanese Fair Trade Commission had investigated the flash sales and found that Xiaomi had sold fewer smartphones than advertised. In December 2014, three flash sales were investigated. In those flash sales Xiaomi claimed that the number of smartphones sold was 10,000 units each for the first two sales, and 8,000 units for the third one. However, FTC investigated the claims and found that Xiaomi sold 9,339 devices in the first flash sale, 9,492 units in the second one, and 7,389 for the third. It was found that during the first flash sale, Xiaomi had given 1,750 priority ‘F-codes’ to people who could place their orders without having to go through the flash sale, thus diminishing the stock that was publicly available. The FTC fined Xiaomi .
On 9 December 2014, the High Court of Delhi granted an ex parte injunction that banned the import and sale of Xiaomi products in India. The injunction was issued in response to a complaint filed by Ericsson in connection with the infringement of its patent licensed under FRAND (Fair, Reasonable and Non Discriminatory Licensing). The injunction was applicable until 5 February 2015, the date on which the High Court was scheduled to summon both parties for a formal hearing of the case. On 16 December, the High Court granted permission to Xiaomi to sell its devices running on a Qualcomm-based processor until 8 January 2015. Following that, Xiaomi held various sales on Flipkart, including one on 30 December 2014. Following that sale, the company received press coverage after its flagship Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G phone sold out in six seconds. A judge extended the division bench's interim order, allowing Xiaomi to continue the sale of Qualcomm chipset-based handsets until March 2018.
On 27 June 2020, CAIT - the Confederation of All India Traders - criticized Manu Kumar Jain, Xiaomi global vice president and managing director of Xiaomi India, for disrespecting the sentiments of Indian citizens, after he claimed a "Boycott Chinese Products" campaign was the result of mob mentality.