The awakening of Chinese giant Xiaomi

The awakening of a young Chinese giant, Xiaomi. This week's Tech Musings by @yedwin01

Last weekend, I was going through my usual reading list and read this particular story – how up-and-coming Chinese consumer electronics player Xiaomi Inc had paid US$3.6 million to secure the domain name mi.com . Quartz.com reported that this domain acquisition is so far the most expensive of the year; the second most expensive of which was the acquisition of whisky.com at US$3.1 million. The whopping US$3.6 million paid by a nascent consumer electronics company for mi.com was ostensibly because of the inability of ‘non-native Chinese’ speakers, a common euphemism for westerners, to properly pronounce the Beijing-based company’s name, according to Quartz . The purchase of the domain name for such an expensive price isn’t new as this phenomenon is called ‘domain parking ,’ a practice of reserving a domain name for future development and use. The move is also meant to protec...

Full article: http://www.vernonchan.com/2014/04/the-awakening-of-chines...