Xiaomi and Tencent Jointly Launch New Budget Smartphone For USD 130

Yesterday, Chinese mobile phone company Xiaomi announced its first low price smart phone for only 799 yuan (USD 130) named “Red Rice”. This phone will be firstly preordered through Tencent’s Qzone, one of the Chinese biggest social networking websites.

“Red Rice”, it is understood that Xiaomi’s first TD-SCDMA dual SIM standby mobile phone model starts to be ordered in advance from today, and will be officially purchased in August 12. By far Qzone is the only entrance of the sale. The payment and logistics service will be completed by the company soon. It’s undoubtedly that Xiaomi hopes to use Qzone to vigorously promote its low-end phones, so that it will gain the market share as much as possible.

The industry is very concerned about the cooperation between Xiaomi and Tencent. Recently, the news that Xiaomi has obtained 2 billion U.S. dollars financing from DST has spread quickly. While Tencent who owns 10% equity interest in DST is considered to be the real investor. Yesterday, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun did not mention any financial relationship with Tencent in the interview, and the co-founder Liwan Jiang also tried to bypass on the topic. Some insiders believe that it is unlikely that Tencent is engaged as it has little financial and strategic effect by cooperating with Xiaomi on the project.