Xiaomi Battles for The Future of Instant Messenger, Established IM Labs and Acquired MSNLite

17 millions vs. 100millions, obviously in terms of registered users, Xiaomi’s mobile messenger MiLiao (Mitalk) has failed in competing with Tencent’s Weixin. But it does not means Xiaomi will give up. LEI Jun, CEO of Xiaomi recently said on his weibo,

Xiaomi has reached 17 millions registered users and 1 million concurrent users online. I believe this is just a beginning.

Xiaomi’s Miliao is changing its strategy and looking at the future of IM.

Instant Messenger Labs

Xiaomi’s Instant Messenger (IM) Lab has been established. On its official website, it asked the question to all Xiaomi’s fans: “We are using QQ and Weixin for instant messaging for now, but what shall we use in future?” Xiaomi’s IM Labs is to explore the next generation of IM. It encourages users to open their minds and send innovative ideas to the lab.

Acquisition of MSNLite

MSNLite is a third-party PC-based MSN client which simplified the official MSN client (which I think it became really a crap). MSNLite also enhanced the original, for examples,  it enhanced the security of MSN as it has all instant messages encrypted; it offers message backup to cloud which allows users to access their chat history using any PC; it supports offline file transferring which means you can send files to someone who’s offline. MSNLite’s first released in April, 2010 and is reported around 1 millions active users. With this acquisition, surely we are going to see Miliao’s PC client coming soon. And this will obviously trigger the war against Tencent’s QQ.

Xiaomi is to battle for the future of instant messenger, and not just on mobile.