Xiaomi Corp (小米) sees Indian demand for its smartphones eventually equaling that of its home market China, where the company shipped 15 million devices last quarter to outpace Samsung Electronics Co and Apple Inc.
“It is the biggest market for us beyond China, it will someday be as big as China,” Xiaomi Vice President Hugo Barra said in a telephone interview on Wednesday from Bengaluru. “We are coming into India with full force.”
The push is part of Xiaomi chief executive officer Lei Jun’s (雷軍) plan to boost his global smartphone sales fivefold to 100 million next year. Xiaomi, which recently started an overseas effort targeting the Chinese diaspora, teamed with Indian e-commerce site Flipkart.com to sell its Mi3 phone last month for 13,999 rupees (US$228).
Beijing-based Xiaomi has offered 35,000 phones in three online sales in India so far, and they sold out within minutes. Barra said the company underestimated demand and is set to boost supply.
“We have to ramp up,” Barra said. “It’s not something we can do immediately because we are subject to manufacturing constraints.”
Barra declined to say how much the company is investing in India.
Sales in India have been driven by word-of-mouth, and Xiaomi underestimated interest in its products when it analyzed social media to gauge demand, Barra said. More than 200,000 people registered to participate in online sales events, he said.
Xiaomi is beginning sales in 10 new markets including Brazil and Russia. While the company started its own Web sites in Singapore and Taiwan, India has proved more difficult because its infrastructure for delivering packages and collecting payments is underdeveloped.
Four-year-old Xiaomi topped Samsung last quarter to become the largest smartphone seller in China, according to researcher Canalys, and it now is the sixth-largest smartphone manufacturer globally, according to researcher International Data Corp.
Xiaomi plans to boost staff in India to about 20 people by the end of the year, including workers to run two service centers. The company plans to contract with other companies for 34 additional service centers and is to hire software developers to build applications focused on Indian users.
“The products we make for India, they are unique,” Barra said. “It’s unique packaging, unique labels, the software on the device that we sell in India is unique.”
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