Chinese technology giants’ global strategy discussed at GMIC (3)

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Another Chinese speaker at the conference was Lei Jun, CEO of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi.

"We believe Xiaomi's business model has great opportunities outside the Chinese mainland," Lei said. "This year, we did a test in Taiwan, which proved to be very successful.

"When we enter a new market, we first take our business characteristics（direct-sales model）into consideration. So we are looking for countries that have the most well-developed ecommerce," Lei said.

"The second criteria we are looking for is the development of social media. We have such active fans, so we need really active social media to support them," he added.

Sharing the stage with Lei was Hugo Barra, vice-president of Xiaomi global and former vice-president of Android product development at Google.

"Hugo is a very smart person and his hiring will help us reach very good product," Lei said. "Xiaomi is aiming to be a global company and in order to achieve that, we need top talent from around the world. We believe Hugo is truly the very first international talent who joined Xiaomi."

Many observers see the company's recent move of hiring Barra away from Google to head its international business development division as a sign that Xiaomi is gearing up to grow beyond China.

However, the country Xiaomi wants to tap into next was not revealed by either Lei or Hugo. While the US would be a key market for Xiaomi's international ambitions, there are no immediate plans for the company to go rushing in there.

"We want to enter the US, but only when we are ready," Lei added.
Yu Yongfu, CEO of Chinese mobile Internet browser company UCWeb, sounded more aggressive about his company's overseas expansion plans.

During his speech — entitled A New Ecosystem in the Mobile World — Yu announced a new partnership with Amazon based on UCWeb's plug-in platform.

Founded in 2004, UCWeb's flagship product UC Browser has grown to having 400 million users worldwide. It is a dominant third party mobile browser in China, with more than 50 percent market share as well as the number one mobile browser in India, where it has a 30 percent market share.

"UCWeb is an active player in the strategic investment of the mobile Internet industry chain," Yu said. "In the past few years, we have invested in more than 20 mobile Internet entrepreneurs.

"In the future, we will increase support for mobile Internet entrepreneurs in the US. We would help those US entrepreneurs who have global vision to quickly access the Asian markets," he added.

As Silicon Valley's largest mobile conference, the event drew more than 10,000 attendees, 220 speakers from more than 60 countries this year, including leaders of some of China's tech titans.

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