Bad news! Indians may not be able to buy the Xiaomi Mi 6 here

Xiaomi wary of the Indian market for its flagship phones.
Bad news! Indians may not be able to buy the Xiaomi Mi 6 here
Bad news! Indians may not be able to buy the Xiaomi Mi 6 here
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It has just been revealed that the Chinese smartphone major Xiaomi is not keen on releasing its latest flagship models the Mi 6 and Mi 6 Plus (for a full review of the phones you can refer here) in the Indian markets. On the face of it, the company appears to be a bit wary of the response their phones might get in the highly cost conscious Indian market. Their experience with the previous versions of their top end models in India does not appear to be quite encouraging.  

Good Response in China

The report claims that even as you are reading this column, the Mi 6 and Mi 6 Plus phones would have just reached the hands of customers in China (first flash sale slated for April 28, 2017) and as per this report, a million buyers had already registered for the sale in just a week. The buyers there would be definitely weighing the option of getting a top end smartphone with 5.15inch display, the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor and 6GB RAM at half the price of the much-celebrated Samsung Galaxy S8 with almost the same specifications!

But how does it play out in the Indian market?

The Indian market for consumer products does behave in a different way to those in many other countries. Xiaomi cannot be blamed either, for not releasing Xiaomi Mi 6 here, since they had a first-hand experience with their previous Xiaomi Mi 5. The phone received a lukewarm response. This is because a typical Indian buyer would pit Xiaomi, a Chinese phone, to another Chinese one like say One Plus 3, which advertises heavily with the evergreen star Amitabh Bachchan. And Xiaomi cannot lower itself by pricing its flagship at the levels at which a One Plus 3 may be sold here. This is the basic dilemma for Xiaomi and that might be one of the main reasons the company has decided to stay away from India for the time being.

Reports do suggest that Xiaomi may make its other variants like Mi Mix 2 and Mi Note 3 available, provided they can make these products competitive in the Indian market.

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