Five months after being appointed General Manager of Xiaomi Italian division, we met Michael Feng at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. After a long experience within the multinational founded in Beijing by Lei Jen and Lin Bin in 2010, where he was a key player in the Colombian and Balkan markets, Feng became head of the Italian branch.

This is a significant step forward because Xiaomi is a rapidly growing brand throughout Europe, and Italy has always been an important country where Xiaomi has performed very well since its arrival. Here, as in other markets in the Old Continent, the goal is to break into the Apple-Samsung duopoly that leads smartphone sales.

To do this, Xiaomi has finally simplified its product range, with fewer but higher-performance models; it has continued to expand its IoT ecosystem, which globally has over 800 million connected devices; and, even more importantly, it has broadened its horizons beyond consumer technology.

So, with Feng, we tried to understand the present and future of Xiaomi, which can no longer be defined as just a tech company. The proof is in the SU7, the first electric car produced in a few years with investments of 10 billion dollars. Part of this project is the SU7 Ultra, the sports version of the car that was shown for the first time in Europe during the Catalan fair.

Needless to say, it was the most sought-after object and the one most photographed by journalists and visitors. It remains to be seen when the car will be sold in Europe because, considering the cost and features, it has aroused a lot of interest among car enthusiasts. We talked to Feng about the evolution of the car and, above all, about the new Xiaomi 15 Series smartphones and the AIOT ecosystem, trying to understand the strengths that have allowed Xiaomi to establish itself in European markets.