Xiaomi has opened its first store in Chile, in the business district of the country’s capital Santiago, Xinhua reports. The 250-square-meter store features all of Xiaomi’s latest products, spanning smartphones, wearables, and smart home products.
The company has long sold devices in Latin America through local partners and unofficial channels, and first attempted to crack the market alone during a botched entry into Brazil in 2015. Since then, the company has successfully landed in Mexico in 2017 and opened stores in Uruguay and Colombia.
It is now planning six store openings in Chile throughout 2019, including a large store dedicated for its smart home products.  The company stoked rumors of a launch in Peru after it listed two job postings in the country.
In a CNBC interview last month, Xiaomi CFO Shou Zi said the company was eyeing an expansion in Latin America and Africa, though he emphasized the prime importance of the Indian market—where Xiaomi has led the smartphone category for the past six quarters—and of Indonesia and Western Europe, which he said were a focus for 2019.
Mobile network trade body GSMA estimates smartphone penetration will reach 71% of Chile’s roughly 18.3 million people by 2020, up from 47% in 2016. It also expects an adoption rate of 71% across Latin America by 2020, which would translate to about 460 million smartphone users.
