Xiaomi launches its first 'Made for India' smartphone Mi4i at Rs 12,999

NEW DELHI: The Mi4i, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi’s latest offering, made its international debut in India on Thursday, breaking the company’s tradition of launching products first in its home market and underscoring the growing importance of the South Asian nation for global handset vendors.

Priced at Rs 12,999, the Mi4i will be available from April 30 on its own website as well as ecommerce portals Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal, and brick-and-mortar stores of The Mobile Store and Bharti Airtel, in India.

Xiaomi also launched the Mi smartband and promised to introduce more ‘made for India’ products. The smartband is priced at Rs 999, but the first 1,000 units will be sold at Rs 1 under a preview programme.

“India is extremely significant to Xiaomi,” said Lei Jun, founder and chief executive of the Beijingbased startup valued at more than $45 billion. “It is our largest international market outside of mainland China. We are launching Mi4i first in India, followed by our other global markets. We will launch more products for India going forward,” he added.

China’s No 1 player, which is the fifth largest in the fast-growing Indian smartphone market with a 4% share, is posing stiff competition to foreign brands including Apple and Samsung. Its low-cost strategy has also upset the apple cart among Indian handset players such as Micromax, Karbonn, Lava and Intex, who have modelled their success on offering smartphones that are affordable to the masses.

“China's smartphone market is close to saturation; so after that India is anyone's best bet,” said Tarun Pathak, a senior analyst at Hong Kong-based Counterpoint Research.

As part of its efforts to expand India footprint, Xiaomi will be setting up its own data centre in India within this financial year to address security concerns. It partnered with Amazon Web Services last year to migrate international customers’ data to centres located in the US and Singapore.

Xiaomi took 15 months to make one of the cheapest 4G smartphones in the market with dual-SIM slots, which was designed in India alongside chipmaker Qualcomm, for the local market. From next month, the device will be available in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. However, its availability in China was not shared.

“The device is made for India. Inspiration for this phone came directly from India with needs that Indian consumers have,” said Hugo Barra, Xiaomi’s vice president. The Mi4i is at a marked down price from its flagship Mi4, which was launched a couple of months ago, at Rs 19,999. The Mi4’s price was cut by Rs 2,000 last week.

“We have worked with leading global suppliers such as Samsung, Sony and Sharp among others to source the best components and collaborated with Foxconn for our latest flagship device,” said Barra.

While registrations for the device began on 8 pm Thursday, sales will begin on April 30. The company didn’t disclose the number of units it will make available to online and offline channels, but given the number of retail points it will be covering through these channels, analysts predict the numbers to be on the higher side than its previous sales.

“They will have to make sure they have more than enough stock as Xiaomi is moving into different retail formats with this launch,” said Pathak of Counterpoint Research.

The company had initially offered all its products through Flipkart.

He added Xiaomi is being smart in making products for India, like the visual interactive voice solution, a feature which simplifies and shortens an IVR (interactive voice response) call time from 3-4 minutes to 3-4 seconds. “India also has the volume and scale which they will need for growing the company.”