Xiaomi has been struggling to cope with the supplies ever since it entered the Indian smartphone market which is why the company has, till today, followed its annoying flash/ limited sales methodology. However, in an interview to Economic Times, Xiaomi CEO, Lei Jun said, “We are hoping for offline sales to be 50 percent of our total sales at some point in the future.”Also, where Lei Jun claimed that Xiaomi will target the $15 billion mark for the revenue worldwide, the company will try to hit the $1 billion revenue mark in 2017.
The company recently set up its second assembling faculty in Andhra Pradesh and is now manufacturing one smartphone a second. However, Lei Jun claims that even with the second faculty, the company will still fall short in terms of supply. Taking the latest launch from the company i.e. – Redmi 4A, Xiaomi claims to have sold 250,000 units of the device in just 4 minutes in its first place which apparently indicates the demand for Xiaomi smartphones in India.
“Xiaomi India journey has been way beyond our wildest expectations and dreams. According to IDC, we are number one in online. In last two-quarters, out of three phones sold online, one is a Xiaomi phone” – Lei Jun told to Economic Times.
“In China, after we have achieved such scale, the challenge is how we can achieve the same in offline with efficiency. In India, after we achieve more than 50% market-share in online space, the question is how to the same in offline” – Jun added.
Xiaomi has certainly had a good time in India so far. As per the latest IDC (International Data Corporation) report, Xiaomi is now India’s number one brand in terms of sales in the online market with about 29% of market share.
Bumping up the production and increasing the offline presence will surely help Xiaomi compete with the likes of Samsung and other OEM giants. However, Xiaomi will have to make sure that it sells its devices for a price equal or similar in the offline market as well.