Chinese IT firms aspire to knock down Apple

Lei Jun, founder and president of the Beijing-based startup Xiaomi Innovation Co., said on Tuesday that China Unicom, the country's second biggest wireless carrier, will start selling the company's flagship smartphone by the end of the month pursuant to this agreement a multimillion-unit deal.

That followed a buying frenzy greeting the one-and-a-half-year-old company's latest public sale this Sunday. A total of 100,000 Xiaomi phones, which made their debut in August and in the near future hit a pre-order record of 300,000 units, sold out within three hours.

As the world's biggest manufacturers are yearning for a shift toward research, Chinese IT firms may then lead the way as they are honed in on opportunities to cash in on the smartphone craze ushered in by the late Steve Job's mighty Apple. WHEN INTERNET MEETS SMARTPHONE

Coincidently, Chinese search-engine giant Baidu Inc. as well shook up the market on Tuesday, as Dell Inc. unveiled its first Chinese smartphone, as well customized for China Unicom and to go on sale then January, using Baidu's software platform Baidu Yi.

Apart from Baidu, other Chinese Internet giants just as Alibaba, the e-commerce powerhouse, and Tencent, which runs the country's largest instant messaging platform, as well teamed up with handset vendors to carry out their vision for how research such as cloud computing could redefine smartphones.

Xiaomi has deep Internet roots. The founder Lei, as well chairman of China's leading software developer Kingsoft, is an Internet pioneer and has extensive reach across the industry.

He co-founded online retailer Joyo.com, which Amazon acquired in 2004. Now an angel investor, Lei is behind a number of successful Internet startups just as Vancl.com, a clothing outlet, and UCWEB, a mobile software provider.

"It's an emerging trend for Internet companies to make smartphones. Xiaomi is doing the right thing intentionally," Lei said at Tuesday's presentation.

New era of mobile Internet has come

Many industry insiders like Lei believe that a new era of mobile Internet has come, thanks to the visionary Steve Jobs and Apple, and as the most populous mobile market, China is rife with business opportunities.

"The industry is ripe and is calling for an integration of Internet and hardware," said Liu Qin, partner of Morningside Ventures.

Huge market of 900 million cell phone users

"With a huge market of 900 million cell phone users and 400 million Internet users, China is expected to see a boom in mobile Internet," said Xiong Xiaoge, vice president of U.S. venture capital IDG.