Earlier today, Xiaomi‘s VP and Redmi GM Lu Weibing penned an essay on Weibo where he stated the brand’s change in strategy as regards the high-end Mi brand. As you may already know, the Mi 10 series is set to go official on February 13. The rumour mill has been kept buzzing with several leaked details emerging. One of such leaks is the pricing detail for the Mi 10 which is tipped to start at $4200 ($599).
Now, the Mi-series models have not been this expensive, especially for the base variant. Lu Weibing has now clarified in his post that the Mi brand and MIX series are high-end brands in the same rank as the Huawei P/Mate series and Apple iPhones. He then added that the brand was getting rid of the price limit and is doing its best to be a flagship in order to compete favourably. The Xiaomi exec also made reference to the upper mid-range segment that is occupied by the Redmi K30 where it is the preferred choice ahead of the Huawei V30.
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Lu Weibing’s viewpoint was also amplified by Xiaomi’s CEO Lei Jun who affirmed that the brand was aiming to sprint into the high-end market with the Mi 10. Thus, just bear in mind that the era of cheap Mi flagship phones is at its end. We expect the flagship to be competitively priced like the Galaxy S30 series, Huawei P40 and others.
It is noteworthy that this is a major shift in Xiaomi’s brand strategy which is to keep prices down and focus on in-app ads for revenue. Since the company became a publicly listed firm, we have always expected this to happen someday. The Mi 10 is well-positioned with several new features such as UFS 3.0 storage, LPDDR5 RAM, WiFi 6, 108MP main camera, Snapdragon 865 5G SoC and 90Hz refresh rate, among others.
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