For the last 15 days, everyone has been hearing about secret launch of Xiaomi India.
Today, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has officially kickstarted its India operations with the announcement of its flagship handset – Xiaomi Mi3.
Few months back, Hugo Bara had tweeted the appointment of Manu Kumar Jain has the Head of Operations in India for Xiaomi. Jain, who quit Jabong earlier this year, is the first hire by Xiaomi to help establish a base in the country.
Xiaomi is launching Mi3 in the mid-range segment with a superb pricing at Rs.14999. The phone would be available for order from July 15th.
The price and phone specifications put this phone in direction competition with the flagship phones of Sony, Google, LG, etc. These include products like the Google Nexus 5, the LG G2, Sony Xperia Z1, Moto X, Nexus 5 etc.
Xiaomi Mi3 specs in nutshell:
- 5 inch display
- 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution
- 2.3 GHz quad core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor
- Adreno 330 GPU
- 2 GB RAM
- 16 GB internal memory
- 13 MP primary camera
- 2 MP front facing camera
- Google Android v4.3 Jelly Bean
- 3050 mAh battery
Xiaomi is aggressively expanding its market with launch in India. Xiaomi sold off 5000 Redmi Note phones within 42 seconds of launch. Expect another huge record when they launch their phones for sales in India on July 15th.
Xiaomi sold about 7.2 million smartphones in 2012, while the number increased to 18.7 million smartphones in 2013. Xiaomi has plans to sell 40 million handsets in 2014, more than double the number it sold in 2013.
India is a very competitive smartphone market with smartphone shipment of 17.59 million smartphones expected this year.
Along with this phone launch, Xiaomi is also launching power banks in India. This hints at possible release of other phone accessories too.
But its unclear where one could buy these phones from, there are rumours that Xiaomi India would launch the phone on Flipkart.
Will you buy this phone?