White-hot phone startup Xiaomi plans US launch by 'end of 2017' - CNET

Instead the phone, which features a ceramic rear and costs $415 (£295 or AU$575), will launch in China, followed by India.

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When asked what the ideal weste market would be for Xiaomi, Barra pointed to the US.

"It's the hardest market to enter, there's so many frequencies, the carrier requirements are so steep, but at the same time, if we manage to launch a phone in the US, from an engineering perspective, we've arrived," Barra said.

Unlike China, where millions of customers buy Xiaomi phones directly from the company's website, US customers tend to buy their phones through the wireless carriers. But carriers dictate which phones they want to sell, and put them through an exhaustive battery of quality assurance tests. It's a tough enough environment that Chinese vendors like ZTE and Huawei have started offering their best phones directly to customers through online retailers or their own sites.

In addition, the US runs on different bands of spectrum than China does, forcing Xiaomi to redesign the inteal components to meet the unique needs of the states.

"We don't want to be in a position where we launch a phone that doesn't have all of the LTE requirements, because US consumers are very demanding," Barra said.

Legal challenges

A frequent knock on Xiaomi is that its designs tend to look a lot like Apple's products, and that it would be a target of patent lawsuits if it entered the US. Barra said he wasn't worried about potential issues involving intellectual property, hiring or licensing. Instead he sees the problem as one of engineering.

Patents, however, could still be a minefield for Xiaomi to navigate.