Xiaomi could topple the smartphone budget market in India

Xiaomi has caused a wave in the smartphone market in India. Ever since they have launched themselves in India, Xiaomi has already sold over 1.75 lakh units.

The Xiaomi Mi3 has made a mark in the Indian smartphone market with a high-end hardware under a budget price. The Mi 3 has a good performance and also features a great 13MP camera.

The next handset introduced by Xiaomi was the Redmi 1S. This is a super-budget handset with an above-average hardware. At just Rs 5,999, Xiaomi offers the Redmi 1S with a sufficiently large 4.7-inch Dragontrail display, a quad-core processor, 1GB or RAM, 8 GB internal storage (expandable) and a good 8MP rear camera and a 1.6MP front camera. The Redmi 1S directly competes with Motorola’s Moto E, which retails at Rs 6,999.

Also read: Xiaomi Redmi 1S review

The Moto E is priced Rs 1,000 above the Redmi 1S. It offers only a dual-core processor, a 4.3-inch display, a dual-core processor, 4GB of internal storage (expandable) and just a 5MP camera with no front camera. Compared to the Redmi 1S, the Moto E fails to impress the money-conscious and budget smartphone fans. However, there are a few too many who believe in well-known brands that have existed for long. This is where a Motorola product stands strong, as compared to the Xiaomi. After all, Xiaomi is considered a new comer, and has the ‘Chinese’ tag to it.

Well, Xiaomi has already sold 80,000 units of the Redmi 1S in two weeks. On the 16^th of September, Flipkart has another 40,000 handsets for the flash sale. Flipkart has posted on their website that 3,00,000 customers have already registered for the flash sale for the 15^th of September. With only 40,000 handsets this time, the flash sale will last less than four seconds.

Also read: Tips to get a Xiaomi smartphone from Flipkart flash sales

By selling handsets from a single website and manufacturing and shipping smartphones as per required, Xiaomi has a smart sense of marketing their products. Single point of sales makes it easier to track their sale and turnover and makes it easy to know the demand of the product. By knowing the demand, they manufacture only limited number of handsets. This reduces wastage of smartphones by overproducing. Shipping handsets immediately, when manufactured, also cuts down on storage and shipping costs. Lastly, least advertising or almost no advertising also increases the profits.

Also read: Xiaomi Redmi 1S vs Motorola Moto E

However, Xiaomi manages to keep the handset prices lower as they cut the profit margin down to a great extent. This is the main reason why Xiaomi handsets are cheaper than other brands who manufacture in bulk, spend on advertising and overcharge the customer by three to four times the original costs to cover up for unsold units.

Xiaomi has put up a tough competition for Indian smartphone manufacturers and branded budget smartphones in the Indian market. With above-average quality and performance from their low-priced handsets, they seem to win hands-down. Xiaomi has been applying this theory all around the world, making sufficient profits and selling huge number of handsets. This has made them the number five smartphone manufacturer in the world in just four years of existence.

So will you buy a Xiaomi or prefer to hold on to a branded smartphone? Do the after-sales really matter on low-priced smartphones? Are you actually happy with the service centres of other brands? With people usually upgrading their smartphones at least once a year, it looks like disposable smartphones are here to stay.

We want to know your comments.

Do let us know, which smartphone you presently own, how often do you upgrade your phone, did you ever visit a service centre for a smartphone problem and what would you rate the service centre you visited (give star ratings from 1 – 5). This would be a big help to those hunting for a good smartphone.