Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi will officially enter the Brazilian market on June 30 by launching its products, the company said. The South American nation will become its ninth market and its first outside Asia.

On its official Twitter account “Mi Brazil”, the company noted: “That’s the date of the launch event. Yes, you can start to scream. We have already started.”

Since opening an office in São Paulo last August, Xiaomi has been working on launching products in the market, the largest economy in South America. But this week’s announcement did not say whether Xiaomi would set up a manufacturing plant in Brazil as well.

“You cannot be in business in Brazil without manufacturing locally because you cannot import phones… The import tax is too high,” said Hugo Barra, the company’s Vice-President, in a press conference in Taiwan last month.

“The system is designed to force everybody to manufacture locally, so we have to abide by the system,” Taiwan’s Central News Agency quoted him as saying at the time.

Valued at US$46 billion by the end of last year, the company now has a presence in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and India.