Xiaomi has quickly risen to success on the back of its low cost hardware and heavily customized Android-based operating system but the company is looking to try something new with software. Xiaomi has announced that it will begin offering Windows 10 as an option to Chinese owners of its Mi 4 smartphone starting on December 3rd.

Around nine months ago, Xiaomi and Microsoft announced a development partnership and began working with a small selection of beta testers to trial run Windows 10 on its Mi 4 smartphone. Xiaomi is now ready to offer this software as a public release.

The Mi 4 will not be the first Xiaomi device to offer Microsoft’s mobile operating system. The newly announced Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 also has a version that supports Windows 10 out of the box and a boosted 64GB of internal memory, implying that Xiaomi is looking to support the OS on new devices too.

While additional choice is always welcome, it’s not exactly clear what Xiaomi has to gain by offering two operating systems, as the extra support is sure to be resource consuming. Perhaps the company is looking to better cater for the business market, an area that Android could arguable use some improvement in. Additional information may will come to light once the public release goes live. For Microsoft, which has a miniscule share of the smartphone market, a custom ROM for a popular handset is a cost effective way to put its software into a number of consumer’s hands. Especially as the company has minimal manufacturing capabilities after relinquishing control of Nokia.

The public release of Windows 10 for the Mi 4 is going to be interesting to observe and might signify the start of a longer running partnership between the two companies.