Chinese Xiaomi has been expanding its product lines from mobile devices to include tablets, TVs, STBs, headsets, smart bracelets and financial products. But the company will also reelase its first notebook next year. The notebook will be manufactured by Inventec Corp., according to the company's chairman Richard Lee.

"I am upbeat about the business outlook for Xiaomi's notebook computers, as the firm has more than 200 million registered smartphone users," Taipei Times quote Lee as saying, on the sidelines of the 12th cross-strait forum on technical standards for information technology held in New Taipei City.

Lee said Xiaomi is likely to adopt the same smartphone business strategy for its laptop products ? which is different from other companies? conventional way of selling servers, desktop and notebook computers.

"I am not sure if the smartphone approach will be applicable to notebooks, but I expect Xiaomi?s entry into the notebook industry to bring something new to the market," Lee added.

Subsidiary Inventec Appliance Corp, which assembles Xiaomi's smartphones, is to jointly design and manufacture the Chinese company's first notebook products in Inventec?s plants in China, Lee said.

Xiaomi's notebook computers will start shipping in the first or second quarter of next year.

Xiaomi also plans to roll out new Windows-based and Intel-based tablets in 2016.The company will reportedly follow the steps of Apple to develop its own mobile processors based on ARM's architecture so that it may build up its bargaining power against chipset solution vendors including Qualcomm and MediaTek.