back to article Show me the money, America! It's time to learn how to pronounce 'Xiaomi'

Xiaomi, the Chinese electronics upstart trumpeted as the David to Apple's Goliath (but is instead sticking it to Samsung) is planning a gentle entry into the US. At a showcase in San Francisco, Xiaomi announced it was going to start selling gadgets and gizmos Stateside – and certainly not phones nor TVs. It will instead start …

  1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

    So, how does one pronounce Xiaomi?

    I'd always assumed it was some sort of multi-lingual pun on Show Me, maybe not?

    1. Adam Hartfield

      If that's the case, I hope their first store's in St. Louis or Kansas City.

    2. Thecowking

      Tshee-ow Mee

      Or that's as close in English phomemes as I can get. If you've watched anything about Bruce Lee, the Xiao is the same as in his nickname, Xiao long (little dragon)

      1. pompurin

        I thought one of the Xiaomi Execs had already said he explains it as:

        'Show' from 'Shower'

        'Me' from 'Me'.

        Or you could go and learn Pinyin, which could take some time.

        小 = Xiao = Small

        米 = Mi = Rice

        Kind of.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I would suggest that they take a play from Sony's book and at least come up with another brand name for their US/EU operations. Sony picked their name when they realized that if they wanted to sell to American consumers, they'd need a name that the Americans can pronounce.

      And the current Chinese-Roman transliteration scheme is horrible. Western languages aren't big on "x"s or on long strings of vowels.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The clue is in the title...."show me"!

      It's actually more like the "show" as in "shower of sh1t" than in "the Voice is a great show".

  2. Hollerith 1
    Coat

    Xiaomi...

    ...the money.

    yes, that's my coat.

  3. Michael Habel

    Seems like a mistake to me....

    If... And I have a tendency to (on the face of it!), doubt that Xiaomi have... Or has anything that can beat off Samsung at it own Game. At the moment. Their stuff is only slightly cheaper. And for good reason. As a lot of the functionality that One has come to expect in Ones own Galaxy "Device" is sadly nowhere to be found on those cheapo Chinese Clones.

    Xiaomi do seem to want to break out of that mold, and good on them for doing so too!

    But, would you rather be known for producing valuable (But, affordable!), Goods... Or a purveyor in cheap tatty Headphones? As to their TV Market? I have to say I never knew they actually had One. Given how soft that market is though... I can't say I overly blame them for keeping them. That said, they should probably reconsider the Phones, if they ever want to actually get somewhere.

  4. Simon Rockman

    Americans

    Never learned how to pronounce Nokia.

    1. Uncle Slacky Silver badge

      Re: Americans

      Or Nissan, or Hyundai...

      1. Chris J

        Re: Americans

        Or Aluminium...

        1. Tom Maddox Silver badge
          Headmaster

          Re: Americans

          Not only do we know how to pronounce aluminum, we know how to spell it correctly!

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Americans

            Twas the Brits' own guy who first proposed "aluminum" as the name. We're all about lazy efficiency, so we stuck with the least tongue-twisty version:

            http://chemistry.about.com/b/2014/05/04/aluminum-or-aluminium.htm

  5. Ilsa Loving

    Wait... NOT a fork of android?

    I'd love to hear their justification for MIUI not being a fork of android, when it very obviously IS a fork of android. Specifically, it's Android with an IOS-ified interface.

    I actually installed that on a couple of my android devices way back when and actually liked it a lot. The only reason I stopped was because I switched to another device that MIUI didn't support.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wait... NOT a fork of android?

      They didn't say it wasn't Android, just that it was not forked.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    VP of Xiaomi Global, the Brazilian Hugo Barra, said shortly after taking up his position in August 2013, "Think of 'show me', and then pronounce the first word as if it was 'shower.'"

  7. hypernovasoftware

    It's pronounced 'copycat'.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Given that everything is now produced either in China or in some geographically close country, you can take you 1970's dogma and put it back in the folder marked "Obsolete".

      If we had to rely on things produced in the Northern Hemisphere, we'd have trouble getting things more technologically advanced than forks & knives.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge
        Headmaster

        Umm, China's in the Northern Hemisphere...

    2. P. Lee

      >It's pronounced 'copycat'.

      It's an mobile phone, how different were you expecting? It wasn't so long ago that phone differences were, "rotary or tone dial."

      There isn't much scope for differentiation in the genre. These days, its mostly in the quality of components.

  8. DerekCurrie
    Meh

    Brand X Is Here!

    zzzzz

  9. oneeye

    recent investigation of Xiaomi device by Bluebox security.

    Hi all,

    Here is a link to the post by Bluebox. They bought a Xiaomi m4 in China,and found it preloaded with spyware,adware,and malware. Very similar to what Palo Alto networks found on a Coolpad device. I will put up that link too. This one will be a pdf download,but has a Google tag.

    Palo Alto,Coolpad/Coolreaper

    https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/content/dam/paloaltonetworks-com/en_US/assets/pdf/reports/Unit_42/unit42-cool-reaper.pdf&sa=U&ei=Pr0FVarRLZOxsATp3IKwAQ&ved=0CAsQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNHXwD2gr3rbOYCby-3miLQzpm_4RQ

    https://bluebox.com/blog/technical/popular-xiaomi-phone-could-put-data-at-risk/

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