India- Xiaomi Mi3 sale, the first smartphone by the manufacturer, seems to be few in numbers as the statistics suggest, in a month, but its impact could be felt.
Xiaomi has become centre of interest for everyone in India, although not all can pronounce the name properly. But the fact is that smartphone has made an impact on the Indian market. Few days ago, Motorola announced to cut INR 2,000 or US$ 32 on its Android phone, the Moto G. Even the cut is applicable to limited numbers of sets but it is the first decrease since its launch few months ago. Motorola was bought by Lenovo from Google. Motorola recently announced that it has sold around one million handsets in India through Flipkart, the Motorola’s online retail partner. Seeing the huge smartphone market of India the numbers seems to be small but selling one million sets in less than year is an important figure. The Motorola in India has to offer only 3 phones but despite this it has become fourth largest manufacturer in India.
The reduction in price by Motorola shows that even giant like Motorola is threatened by the entry of new Chinese Company Xiaomi. Although Moto G and Xiaomi Mi3 are available in INR 10,000-14,000 or US$160-230, this range seems to be attractive for budget smartphone users. In Indian market, the number of features of mobile phones seem to hold more importance than abstract qualities e.g., build quality, software etc. The Moto G bank on these abstract qualities, thus giving feature rich Xiamoi Mi3. Not only Motorola is affected by the competition, the market leader like Samsung is also feeling the impulse. Samsung recently launched three versions of budget phones which are under price range of INR 8,000 or US$ 130. The specifications of these budget phones may not hamper the budget phones of Motorola and Xiaomi Mi3 in terms of specification but it clearly shows that Samsung would not give the share of budget phone market that easily. In addition, the pricing strategy of Xiaomi may force other market players to readjust the prices of mid-range and high-end phones, also.
