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Journalism of Courage
Chinese smartphone major Xiaomi today said sales from the mainstay online channel will further decline to about 70 per cent going ahead, as it boosts offline presence in India.
Nearly 80 per cent of the company’s sales still come from the online route, but the share has come down from about 95 per cent in less than a year. The share of online sales will reduce to 70 per cent in the near future, Xiaomi India head, Online Sales, Raghu Reddy said.
Xiaomi has turned aggressive in the offline space in the last one year, having presence in 15 cities with over 1,000 sales points mostly through franchisees. There are a total of 14 exclusive company-owned stores.
Among India’s top smartphone brands, it has re-emphasised its focus on the budget smartphone category, by announcing the Redmi 5A. This ‘Desh ka Smartphone’, as the company coined it, was its latest attempt to attract first-time smartphone users. Its mid-range titles have steadily increased in popularity, which the Chinese smartphone giant considers as incentive to look increasingly toward brick-and-mortar sales.
The smartphone maker will enter more cities after consolidating its position in the existing ones, he said. Reddy added that the company has a market share of 50.8 per cent in online smartphone sales in the Q3 period of 2017.
