Xiaomi to stop making 4G phones by the end of 2020 to focus on 5G, satellite internet and more

Xiaomi and its sub-brand Redmi have been aggressively launching 5G smartphones in the past couple of months. Now word is that the company is planning to shift its focus from 4G to 5G entirely.

In an interview with Xinhua (via GizmoChina) Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun revealed some of the company’s future plans. He also shared how the company was reacting to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the interview, the Xiaomi founder revealed that his company would stop making 4G-enabled smartphones to focus on 5G technology by the end of the year. This change, however, will be made only in China, which means that the company would continue selling 4G LTE smartphones in global markets including India.

According to Lei Jun, 5G will revolutionise the tech industry significantly. He cited three major applications for 5G technology, which include 4K and 8K ultra-high definition video conferencing, cloud games and autonomous driving.

However, Covid-19 adversely impacted the company’s 5G strategy. The outbreak essentially emptied the company’s 5G warehouses. And so when the company resumed production, it made a conscious decision of subsidizing the factory for 250 million Yuan to boost production. "Due to the impact of the epidemic, the speed of 5G promotion has indeed slowed down, but our strategy has not changed, and we will continue to push 5G mobile phones." Lei Jun said in the interview.

Apart from focusing on 5G, Xiaomi will also focus on AIoT, a strategy that the company revealed last year. It will also work with the Chinese government to build a disaster warning system and other public service systems. Lastly, Jun said that Xiaomi is doing a pre-research on 6G technology and paying close attention to the development of satellite internet. "It is not enough to have base stations and satellites alone, you have to have terminal support, so we will have a lot of preliminary research in this regard, but we will not directly get involved in commercial aerospace." he said.