At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Shenzhen today, Microsoft announced a new partnership program with Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi (hat-tip to iFeng).
Once Windows 10 is released, Xiaomi Mi 4 owners can choose to flash the Windows 10 ROM onto their device, replacing the stock Android-based MIUI operating system. In a blog post, Microsoft said:
Through a new program with Xiaomi, one of the top smartphone distributors in the world, a select group of Xiaomi Mi 4 power users will be invited to help test Windows 10 and contribute to its future release later this year. These power users will have the opportunity to download the Windows 10 Technical Preview – installing it and providing their feedback to Microsoft.
Photo from iFeng
We’ve reached out to Xiaomi for more details on the partnership, and many questions still remain. Will Xiaomi sell Mi 4 phones with Windows 10 pre-installed? Will it be available on any other Xiaomi devices, such as the Mi Pad or Mi Note? Who would want to replace MIUI with Windows, anyway? Update: In a canned statement, Xiaomi gave the following response to our questions:
This is an experimental program entirely led by Microsoft, working directly with select members of our Xiaomi fan community in China. Microsoft will create a custom build of Windows 10 and provide it to select Mi 4 power users who are already familiar with re-flashing their devices with custom ROMs.This is not a commercial partnership announcement and Xiaomi continues to fully embrace the Android ecosystem through our MIUI software platform.
Microsoft announced yesterday that it is launching Windows 10 this summer in 190 countries and 111 languages in a campaign for globalization. It also struck strategic partnerships with other Chinese tech giants Lenovo, Tencent, and Qihoo 360 in order to boost the number of people upgrading their current laptops or PCs to Windows 10.
But the deal with Xiaomi is perhaps the most interesting, as its beloved MIUI operating system has been a pillar of its success from the beginning.
Editing by Steven Millward
(And yes, we’re serious about ethics and transparency. More information here.)
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