Not many people in India know that Xiaomi is first and foremost an internet services and software company. And a hardware company later. The company, in fact says, it makes hardware just so this hardware can serve as a messenger for its content, in China. On Wednesday, Xiaomi announced its foray into the Indian internet streaming market, in partnership with Hungama (and others). As part of the partnership, Mi users -- people who have Mi phones -- will be able to listen to over 10 million freemium songs from Hungama Music directly from the Mi Music app. The company is giving videos a similar treatment, bringing almost 500,000 hours of content to Mi devices through Xiaomi's Mi Video app.

Of the two, Mi video is of particular importance since Xiaomi is bringing the same content providers -- Voot, Sony Liv, Hungama Play and others -- that it offers on its Mi TV platform to the smartphone form factor. This means Mi phone users will be able to enjoy freemium video content from almost all the content providers that Xiaomi has tied up with for its Mi TVs on a Xiaomi phone, directly from the Mi Video app. The feature will be rolled out in stable via a software update to the Mi Video app starting in May.

Xiaomi says it has reworked on the app for better user experience and that more content providers will be coming on-board in the days to come.

The Mi Music app has similarly been updated to offer free HD streaming from Hungama Music for life. The Mi Music app is also getting new features like dynamic lyrics and scroll and play for seamless music playback. The update that will be bringing these features is rolling out today, Xiaomi announced.

It must be noted that the Mi Music and Mi Video app are not new apps. They've been part of Xiaomi phones for a while now, but Wednesday's announcement marks a significant chapter for Xiaomi. It's widely known that Xiaomi makes money off of its internet services in China what with its hardware devices costing peanuts. The company sells most of its hardware devices at cost which is where its internet streaming services come into the picture: it is through these services that Xiaomi actually makes money.

Xiaomi, it seems, is now in a position to do just that in India as well. People in India know about the company, they know about its products and their supposed 'honest' pricing.

FYI: Not everything that Xiaomi will be offering vis-a-vis content will be free. Music, for instance, will be free as long as you're listening to it online and in HD. Should you be looking to download the same for offline playback, you'll have to subscribe to Hungama. The same is true about Mi Video wherein only some content would be fre