Xiaomi is moving towards premium devices. Hugo Barra, the Vice President of Xiaomi in his own words said ”Customers are demanding for premium phones from us, so we are delivering higher quality with more premium components”.
This new development will see Xiaomi phones take up challengers from Samsung, Huawei, Motorola, and LG; and maybe get them back into the top 5. It also further confirms the news that Xiaomi will be releasing a 4000 Yuan ($600) phone this year.
Xiaomi’s latest flagship, the Mi 5 has a starting price of 1999 Yuan ($300) for the base version and goes up to 2699 Yuan (about $400) for the Pro version which has 4GB RAM and 128GB ROM.
While there might be a request for high premium devices, it will be wise if Xiaomi doesn’t stop manufacturing low priced phones with great quality as most of their fans are concentrated at that level. The Redmi 3 Note which sells for between $170 and $200 is an evidence of their success at that part of the pyramid. And going premium doesn’t equal to sales, you can ask HTC and LG.
