Xiaomi Likely to Launch a Lot More Smartphones in 2017

Xiaomi, also touted as the 'Apple' of China, is mulling to expand its smartphones portfolio in the wake of stiff competition especially in homeland China. Currently, Oppo, Huawei and Vivo are the biggest competitors of Xiaomi in China.

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According to a recent report by Singapore-based market research firm Canalys, the Chinese mobile phone maker is battling with smartphone shipments in the domestic market and grabbed the fourth place in Q4 2016.

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Xiaomi has already added the Mi Note 2 and Mi Mix to its smartphone portfolio but the sales have been lower than market expectations in the first quarter of 2017.

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Hugo Barra who spearheaded the company's international expansion plans, had said a couple of years ago that Xiaomi was able to keep the costs low due to a smaller portfolio that enabled a 'longer average selling time'.

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Xiaomi will however, now come up with more midrange and high-end smartphones, beyond what it would normally offer in its devices portfolio to keep up with the many releases from its competitors in China.

"Until 2016, Xiaomi relied only on online channels for smartphone sales which contributes approximately 30 per cent of the total smartphones sales in China, leaving a huge chunk of the market untapped. Its competitors invested heavily in building strong offline channels, expanding their reach to tier-2 and tier-3 cities and moving ahead of Xiaomi," said Shobhit Srivastava, Research Analyst, Mobile Devices and Ecosystems at market research firm Counterpoint Research.

Also, there are reports that Xiaomi could start sourcing display panels from a firm named Truly Opto.

Xiaomi's key markets have been China and India, which combined get more than 95 per cent shipment share. While performance in India improved in 2016, the company lost market share in China resulting in the decline of overall global smartphone ranking.

Huawei, Oppo and Vivo have emerged as clear winners with Oppo and Vivo registering significant growth in China.