Chinese mobile manufacturer, Xiaomi is all set to start selling smartphones in India later of this year through its own online portal. The company is planning to double its presence in India, which is the world’s fastest growing smartphones market.
Xiaomi, presently sells its devices in India through the eCommerce major Flipkart. Now, the company is bringing out its own website ‘Mi.com’ to India sometime later this year.
Xiaomi's India Head, Manu Jain, told PTI ,“We are currently looking for warehousing and logistics partners in India, as well as deciding on a payment mechanisms like cash on delivery. It may take anywhere between three to nine months,” he said. “Beijing-based firm will continue its association with Flipkart.” he added further.
Presently, Xiaomi sells devices through its own website in most of the countries, except in India and Indonesia. The company recently launched Mi4 in India for Rs 19,999, as it is looking to expand its operations in the country.
Manu Jain also said,“We have always stated that India is one of our most important markets. We are big plans for India this year… We are in process of signing the lease on a facility in Bangalore, which will be our R&D unit. This is the first one outside China,” he said.
For Xiaomi, India is one of the largest markets outside of China. The company has by far, launched three devices in India, Mi 3, Redmi 1S and Redmi Note. The collective sales have surpassed a million units since the initial launch in July 2014.
According to research firm IDC, India is the fastest growing smartphone market in the Asia Pacific region with about 82 percent growth in July to September quarter of 2014, over the same period last year. The growth is being driven by increasing preference of consumers to upgrade to smartphones as well as shorter refresh cycles.
The shipments increased 82 percent year-on-year to 23.3 million units in the third quarter of this year, while it was higher by 27 per cent on a quarter-on-quarter basis, IDC said in a statement.
Samsung was the pioneer in the smartphone market with 24 percent share, followed by Micromax at 20 percent, Lava and Karbonn at 8 percent each and Motorola at 5 percent in the third quarter of 2014.
Founded in the year 2010, by an entrepreneur Lei Jun, Xiaomi is often called as the ‘Apple of China’ and was featured in Boston Consulting Group’s top 50 most innovative companies in the world list last year. The company ranks at the third position with 5.3 percent share in the global shipment in the July-September 2014 quarter, after Samsung, which is at the top spot with 23.8 percent and Apple, which embraces the second spot with 12 percent share.
