Thanks to a single product line, Xiaomi is the second largest wearable vendor in the world, behind only Fitbit and ahead of Apple. Today, the company announced the Mi Band 2 at a ridiculously affordable price of $23 (RMB 149). It keeps the marquee feature of long battery life, while adding a display and heart rate monitor.
Update: Looks like US Mobile has pulled the phones from its online store already following Xiaomi’s statement that sales were unauthorized.
One of 2016’s major trends will be the entrance of large Chinese OEMs into the American phone market. Announced at CES, Huawei is entering with their Honor lines of phones and now more are joining in. While Honor is selling unlocked phones through numerous retailers, Xiaomi and Meizu devices are being sold by US Mobile.
Xiaomi is openly facing increased competition as it missed its 2015 target of selling 80 million phones—the 70 million devices they did sell is a clear miss compared to an optimistic 80-100 million device target. According to a Reuters report, the Chinese company that fashions itself as the Apple of China is now planning new stores in hopes of doubling offline smartphone sales…
Investors are “beginning to question” Xiaomi’s $46B valuation after the company reportedly failed to hit its sales target of 80M smartphones in 2015, reports the WSJ. That target was itself reduced from 100M last summer, and the company has also not yet delivered on its promise of substantial revenue from Internet services.
Xiaomi has faced tougher competition from more established brands like Huawei.
Huawei’s engineering strength and brand image, built up over decades, make it difficult for Xiaomi to compete in China, analysts say.
“The competition in China’s smartphone market has intensified tremendously this year,” said a Xiaomi spokeswoman, who declined to comment on the company’s valuation or say whether it met its 2015 sales target.
Huawei comfortably overtook Xiaomi to become the Chinese market leader in October of last year …
A Xiaomi device likely to be the Redmi 3 has passed through China’s TENNA regulatory agency and the process has revealed photos and specifications of the upcoming device. The Redmi is the company’s more entry-level smartphone and has specs to reflect that.
[tweet https://twitter.com/xiaomi/status/616414920855257089/]
Xiaomi has announced sales of 34.7M smartphones in the first half of 2015, up 33% year-on-year. While the number is a substantial one, it’s a long way short of the 227% growth it experienced last year, and the company told Re/code that it has reduced its target for the year from 100M to 80M units …
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After a “beta test” earlier this month, Xiaomi today announced on its Facebook page that its Mi.com online store will officially launch in the US on June 1st at 7pm PDT and in Europe (UK, Germany, France) on June 2nd at 1pm CEST.
Before Xiaomi introduced its store to the US and Europe on May 19th, Hugo Barra in a Q&A session at a Xiaomi press event in San Francisco said that the company’s tablets and smartphones would not be coming to the US later this year, but was considering bringing Mi.com and some of its accessories stateside. That of course happened, although this time it seems that the store will stay live indefinitely or at least have more than the “very limited quantities” from last time.
Developing…