If the latest report is to be believed, Xiaomi will start selling smartphones in India later this year through its portal. Xiaomi, which currently sells devices in India through Flipkart, will bring in its website ‘Mi.com’ to India in the latter part of the year.
Xiaomi 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.” Xiaomi will continue its association with Flipkart though.
“We have always stated that India is one of our most important markets. We are big plans for India this year… We are in the process of signing the lease on a facility in Bangalore, which will be our R&D unit. This is the first one outside China,” Jain said.
Yesterday, Xiaomi launched its new handset – Mi 4 – in India for Rs 19,999. Mi 4 will go on sale on February 10, and pre-registrations for the device will start at 6pm on January 28 through its e-commerce partner, Flipkart.Consumers will have to register for it ahead of the sale. The Mi 4 sports the 5-inch full-HD display (1080×1920 pixels), Xiaomi has used a JDI OGS full lamination display. It is powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor clocked at 2.5GHz with a 330 Adreno GPU alongside 3GB of RAM. The smartphone will come in two storage variants 16 and 64GB.
Xiaomi is also trying its hands onto a retail model that involves selling of “refurbished and unboxed” units in India. Manu Jain, who heads Xiaomi’s India operations, told BGR India “At times we get devices that are perfectly fine and have no problem, but they are opened boxes. This is a pilot we are doing in India to see if such a model can work.” India is not the first market where Xiaomi has implemented this model. Being in a pilot stage, Xiaomi has released very few quantities of the Redmi 1S to the companies it has partnered.
Source- PTI | Via
