Xiaomi now has 100 million users of its Android-based mobile OS

The latest version of Xiaomi’s MIUI

Upstart Chinese phone maker Xiaomi revealed today that its version of Android, called MIUI, now has 100 million users. Xiaomi’s MIUI includes an app store, cloud-based syncing to the company’s own Mi Cloud, and a host of adaptations that make it different to stock Android.

Xiaomi launched MIUI in August 2010, a full year before the first phone actually launched. It was made available to anyone to put on their own Android device (in a tricky process called “flashing”, which erases the version of Android that came on your phone out of the box) as a way of testing MIUI out among keen Android tweakers. It’s still available for dozens of phone models.

Its growth has been especially quick in 2014. MIUI users doubled in the past eight months.

The highly customizable MIUI is an important part of what helped Xiaomi grow to 61 million phone sales in 2014. It’s also a way for Xiaomi to make money from its software, though Xiaomi has not provided recent revenues figures for its software ecosystem. The last time such a figure was provided in December 2013, Xiaomi was raking in $4.9 million from its MIUI-based services.

See: Xiaomi to take tentative first step into US, but not by selling phones