A chinese smartphone maker has bought a two letter domain name for £2.1 million or 3.6 million dollars.
Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone firm, paid the sum for Mi.com.
It is believed the firm chose the domain – trimming off the first four letters of its company name – to help it break into Western markets where customers may struggle to pronounce or spell the full name.
Former Android executive Hugo Barra, who is in charge of the firm’s international roll-out, tweeted: “Shorter name, bigger world :)”
Xiaomi says the “mi” in its logo and domain name stands for mobile internet – and mission impossible.
It expanded to Singapore in February and is tipped to expand internationally in the coming months.
Until now, Mi.com was a parked domain, meaning there was no content on the site.
This suggests it was held by an individual or company looking to sell it for a profit.
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But the price paid for the domain looks a snip compared to some other big web address sales.
The most expensive domain name ever is VacationRentals.com which sold for $35m (£20m) in 2007.
That is followed by the $16m (£9.5m) Insure.com, and Sex.com which was snapped up for $13m (£7.7m).
Mi.com stands as the 17th-most expensive domain ever.
