After a massive success with Redmi Note 4 in India, Xiaomi is all set to launch another handset, Redmi 4A this Monday. This device which was launched back in November 2016 in China is now set to hit the Indian market.
Assuming it will retain the internals from the Chinese variant, the Redmi 4A does looks promising given it is priced aggressively. Will it take the budget segment by storm? We are not sure! But, If Xiaomi takes care of factors such as pricing, performance, reliability and competition, success can be a low hanging fruit.
Price
Although we don’t know the price and commenting on the same without any factual information would be vague at this point of time, Xiaomi always manages to win the price battle. The Redmi Note 4 is currently the cheapest device with the kind of specifications it boasts and that’s quite evident from the response the Chinese handset manufacturer received. Xiaomi Redmi 4A is more of an affordable variant of the Redmi 4 series so we expect it to be priced below than last year’s Redmi 3S which was priced at Rs 6,999. This might go on the other path but it’s very unlikely for Xiaomi to play gamble in terms of pricing. The device currently sells CNY 599 in China which roughly converts to Rs 5,500 which is where we expect Xiaomi to price the Redmi 4A in India as well.
Performance
Xiaomi Redmi 4A is expected to come with Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 Processor which, going by the name, is a slight downgrade from the popular Snapdragon 430 SoC. It is a 64-bit Chipset and hosts 4 cores instead of 8 cores on the Snapdragon 430. It also goes down in the overall RAM speed. On the other hand, the clock speed is better on the Snapdragon 425 at 1.4 GHz. The whole point of we comparing the two chipsets is to not compare the Redmi 3S Prime with the Redmi 4A. For the performance, the Snapdragon 425 chipset should do relatively well when compared to other devices under this price range. Further, given how optimized is the latest version of MIUI, the Redmi 4A will be a tough one to beat in terms of performance.
Reliability
Believe it or not, Xiaomi over a period of time, and of course Hugo Magic, has managed to strengthen its recall value among Indian consumers as compared lot of other handset players in India like Oppo and Vivo. It one of the few Chinese handset players which has built up on its brand value pretty well.
Competition
If we talk about the price point of about Rs 6-7K, there are not a real contender for the Xiaomi war. Redmi 3S Prime changed the entire sub 10K segment and Redmi 4A is expected to follow the same road. We do have some options from Coolpad or even Xolo Era 2X looks decent for the price but not even comes really close to the Redmi 4A. So with the 4A, Xiaomi can have a smooth ride if they manage to price the device competitively.
Keeping aside the good points, Xiaomi has struggled with the availability of its devices. The company introduced the concept of flash sales in India and since then have followed it quite strictly. While the demand for recent Xiaomi devices has been increasing with every launch, people often shift to other devices in the same price range, eventually.
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