Rise of (Xiao)Mi in India

Just to give you an insight, I have been following Xiaomi Technology when it had not entered Indian market and was no.1 in China. It was known as Apple of China back then. The key differentiator of Xiaomi has been both its hardware and software offerings.

Entry level smartphones in the market were flooded with low cost entry level CPUs of Mediatek and Qualcomm-Nvidia were confined to the likes Samsung, and Apple had its own in-house offering. Xiaomi, then, offered smartphones with the premium build of Apple, Qualcomm chip offerings like Samsung at the price of Phones by local players using MediaTek. Coming to software, Xiaomi uses a heavily customised version of Android i.e, MIUI. Over the years MIUI is refined to much that the latest MIUI9 is as fast as stock android. MIUI has the robustness of Android(because it is android) and the look and feel of iOS. So, in a country so much obsessed with the lookalikes of Apple products, China, it was an instant hit, as it gave the best of both worlds(Android and iOS).

Now, coming to its entry in India, if you could remember the launch of MotoG, which happened sometime after Moto's acquisition by Google and is launch in India was by online channels only. This was to save on retailer margin, which used to be anywhere around 20-22% that time, and lessen down the price. Xiaomi used the same strategy of Online channeling. Xiaomi had already a good fanbase in India that time(courtesy:nerds like me obviously :P). Its first launch was Mi3. At that time, Google (LG) Nexus5 was a best selling model. It had a flagship qualcomm 800 CPU, 2 gigs of ram and used to cost around 28k for the 16gb model. Mi3 on the other hand, boasted of similar specs and got launched at just half the price(14K) in India. It was something too good to be true. The bill of material of such a device would be anywhere around 10-12K INR that time. So, it was quick enough to hold a position in India. Now, coming to its 2nd offering that time, the Redmi 1s. It directly competed against another bestseller, the MotoG(2), that time(with similar on paper specs) and that too at less than half the price. MotoG(2) was priced 14K and 1S at 6K. Consumers do where a little skeptical about after sales, but then Xiaomi utilised the strategy of 3rd party service centres. Trust me, their service that time was way better than that of HTC and has improved over time.

Xiaomi has gradually dominated the entry and entry-mid segment of the market with the offerings like Redmi and Mi Note which are too good to be beaten at the price point. Their Mid segment(15k to 25K) has currently no offerings and is dominated by Oppo and Vivo and Xiaomi does not launch its flagships in India which disgusts the fans. After so many outrage on Social media platforms by fans, they did launch Mix2 but this stands nowhere near Oneplus5(T). I, myself, have been one of the first customers of Mi. The Mi3 (which i'm still using) was purchased around 3.5 yrs back. Its a 4+yr old model but still Xiaomi has been giving me the latest MIUI updates, latest 9.2 being on download now. And this very rare. Even Nexus devices get a promised update for only 18 to 24 months. I suppose it's the trust, that Xiaomi has built with its service, has made it the no.1 in India.