Xiaomi Beat Samsung To Become No. 1 in India; Ready To Launch MIUI 10!

The Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has overtaken Samsung to become India’s largest smartphone seller. Samsung lost its crown for the first time as the ‘Top Smartphone Seller in India’ in last six years. Xiaomi has outsold Samsung in the final quarter of 2017, to become India’s largest smartphone brand.

Xiaomi now leads the total number of shipments, close to 8.2 million units, which is 27% of total market share in Q4 2017. In spite of an annual growth of 17%, Samsung failed to make it to the top and shipped just over 7.3 million smartphones, which is 25% of the total market share, to take the second place.

How Did Xiaomi Beat Samsung?

Xiaomi has always followed an aggressively priced suite of high-spec smartphones and market expansion strategy, which helped them to take the top spot. India is now the world’s largest smartphone market after China.

The company has flash sales on leading e-commerce sites like Flipkart and Amazon, an approach which has helped Xiaomi to gain the majority of the market without having to spend heavily on marketing or promotions.

Xiaomi now stands with a 25% market share in India for the fourth quarter of 2017, based on shipments. That puts it ahead of ahead of Samsung, Lenovo, Motorola, Oppo and Vivo in that order, each with around 6 percent of market share.

Samsung Leads in Total Smartphone Shipments in 2017

Mobile phone shipments have crossed 300 million units in the country for the first time with a whopping 44% of smartphones of the total volume.

Samsung has remained the market leader in the total number of shipments with a 24% market share in 2017, compared to Xiaomi with 19% overall. Vivo with 10% is at number three for 2017.

The overall mobile phone shipments have grown 37% and the total smartphone shipments grew around 12%, with feature phones growing at a 55% rate during the fourth quarter of this year.

MIUI 10 Announced – A Mix of AI & Machine Learning

Xiaomi has announced the development of their next UI update, the MIUI 10, their upcoming which will soon be rolled out to users worldwide. The software update has been announced for 40 devices. The new MIUI 10 will include a retooled notification pane, an all-new image editor, 2x faster app load times, new Mi video app, split screen and more.

Xiaomi has said that their main focus for MIUI 10 will be on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Stay tuned for more updates on this.

Reliance Jio Partners With Xiaomi

Reliance Jio is entering into a partnership with Xiaomi to explore a retail partnership where Reliance Retail stores will now sell Xiaomi televisions, smartphones and other products.

Xiaomi will sell televisions, smartphones and other Xiaomi products exclusively on the Jio retail network and Reliance Digital chain of stores. Under the new partnership, the company will explore options to sell the Xiaomi B2B products like smart point-of-sales devices to the Jio retailers.

The new partnership will help Reliance to bring a wide range of products to the Indian market, where Xiaomi is the new leader in the smartphone segment.

Xiaomi will also launch its range of TVs in the country soon while Jio is planning to roll out their home broadband services in the second quarter.