Xiaomi made its first 100,000 units of its China Unicom-compatible WCDMA Hongmi phones (also known as Red Rice) available for purchase today on its Web site. Expectedly, the smartphone sold out, and the Chinese smartphone manufacturer tells CNET Asia that the WCDMA version of its entry-level smartphone was scooped up in just 4 minutes and 5 seconds.
In true Xiaomi fashion, co-founder and CEO Lei Jun first announced on Sina Weibo that the smartphone would go on sale November 5.
The sale of this budget smartphone, for just 799 yuan (US$131), marks the first version of Hongmi compatible not only with China Unicom, but also European 3G carriers due to its WCDMA support -- the Hongmi smartphone that went on sale in August uses TD-SCDMA, for use only in China. When asked about the number of European purchases of Hongmi, Xiaomi explained that its sales were exclusive to China.
While ex-Googler Hugo Barra is heading and strategizing Xiaomi's international expansion, and there is anticipation of the company's official Western debut, international fans are, for now, still left up to their own devices to snag the device through scalpers.
Xiaomi's 4.7-inch Hongmi sports a quad-core 1.5GHz Cortex-A7 processor, 4GB of storage and runs MIUI, the company's custom version of Android's 4.2 Jelly Bean.
The latest smartphone in Xiaomi's lineup, its Mi-3 smartphone, has yet to be sold as a WCDMA-compatible version -- the version that was sold out earlier this month is the TD-SCDMA variant. Rumors however suggest that the WCDMA version of Xiaomi's Mi-3 will be made available some time in mid-November or early December this year.
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