Xiaomi, the world's third-largest smartphone vendor, is partnering with Sei, a high-performance blockchain, to pre-install a crypto wallet and discovery app on millions of its phones. The initiative aims to bring Web3 technology to a broader audience, embedding blockchain infrastructure directly into the mobile devices of mainstream consumers.
The agreement, announced Wednesday, December 10, 2025, will see the "next-generation crypto wallet and discovery app" pre-installed on new Xiaomi smartphones sold outside mainland China and the United States, starting in 2026. Xiaomi ships approximately 168 million new devices annually. This partnership represents a significant hardware distribution deal in the cryptocurrency space, potentially surpassing previous integrations by companies like Samsung and Aptos.
The pre-installed app, built on Sei infrastructure, will allow users to send stablecoins peer-to-peer and make payments to merchants. It will use Google or Xiaomi IDs for simplified login and include multi-party computation (MPC) security for enhanced key protection. The wallet will also offer curated access to decentralized applications (dApps).
According to Jeff Feng, co-founder of Sei Labs, this collaboration is a "watershed moment for blockchain adoption". By embedding Sei's high-performance infrastructure directly into a popular smartphone ecosystem, the partnership aims to solve the onboarding problem and "reimagine how billions of users will interact with digital assets in their daily lives". Jay Jog, also a co-founder of Sei Labs, stated that the goal is to make crypto something that "finds you" instead of the other way around.
The initial rollout will focus on regions with relatively high cryptocurrency adoption where Xiaomi has a strong market presence, including Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Xiaomi holds significant market share in several countries, including 36.9% in Greece and 24.2% in India.
Beyond the wallet integration, Sei and Xiaomi plan to enable stablecoin payments across Xiaomi's retail network of over 20,000 stores. Customers will be able to purchase Xiaomi products, including smartphones and electric vehicles, using stablecoins native to Sei's blockchain, such as USDC. Initial rollouts for payment functionality are targeted for Hong Kong and the European Union by the second quarter of 2026, with expansion to other jurisdictions subject to regulatory compliance.
Sei is also launching a $5 million Global Mobile Innovation Program to support blockchain adoption across consumer devices as part of the initiative. This fund is meant to support developers building consumer-facing applications optimized for smartphones and other mobile devices.
This partnership leverages Sei's high-performance blockchain, which boasts finalization in under 400 milliseconds and the capacity to process thousands of transactions per second. This speed and efficiency are crucial for high-frequency trading and enhance the overall efficiency of digital transactions on the blockchain. Sei combines the network effects of Ethereum with the performance of Solana, and has processed over four billion transactions across more than 80 million wallets.
Xiaomi held third place in the global smartphone market by shipments during the fourth quarter of 2024, capturing a 12.9% market share. As of Q3 2025, Xiaomi held 14% of the global smartphone market share. The company's global smartphone shipments reached 43.1 million units in Q3 2024, up 3.1% year-over-year.
