Xiaomi has definitely been growing fast in emerging markets, but until now the company has focused mostly on stealing as much of Samsung’s Chinese smartphone market share as it can. According to Gartner’s most recent numbers, the company rose in Q3 to take a spot in the world’s top 5 smartphone manufacturers. But the company has other products beyond just smartphones, and now it has apparently begun working on a new Mi-branded laptop—and, to no one’s surprise, it looks just like a MacBook Air. Update: a Mi spokeperson has refuted that the image in question is a Xiaomi laptop. This appears to be the original. As you can see in the image above, everything from the black chiclet keys to the wedge-shaped sides are eerily similar to Apple’s line of thin laptops. The design of the back hinge, the device’s camera, trackpad, and the aluminum and black color scheme would confuse most if it weren’t for some obvious differences. The Xiaomi “Mi” logo is placed directly in the center of the screen’s bottom bezel, and it looks like the company decided to go with bright orange for the device’s keyboard power button as well. All of this comes via Gizmochina, which claims to have a little insight on what kind of hardware this device will pack as well. The insides of the device will supposedly include an Intel Haswell i7-4500u processor, 2 x 8 GB dual channel memory, and a 15-inch 1080p display. As for software, it’s apparently going to run a version of Linux that has been customized by Xiaomi. It’s said to be starting at about half the price of a real MacBook Air—somewhere in the range a little less than $500. Here are a few more images of the device:
Xiaomi announced today that it completed a round of $1.1 billion in funding, with the company now valued at around $45 billion total. Along with that announcement, the company says that its next flagship smartphone (which will likely be almost as much an iPhone copycat as this is a MacBook copycat) will be announced at some point this month.
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