After beating out Samsung and Apple in the perpetual war for China's mobile market, Xiaomi is preparing to establish itself in India, the country with a population that's second in size only to China's.
Xiaomi's vice president says he's heading to India and doesn't have a return ticket.
With a name that roughly translates to "little rice," Xiaomi has delivered a feast of powerful smartphones at cut-rate prices to China's seemingly insatiable mobile market. Hugo Barra, Xiaomi vice president, projects the mobile market in the sub-continent of India will be as big as China's wireless industry some day soon and says his company plans to refresh its products to better serve the emerging mobile market.
"We know it's a market where it will pay off to really build a local brand in a full-on local operation," Barra said. "We've got to move faster than what we previously assumed."
Barra said Xiaomi makes unique products for India -- he says the packaging, labels and device software Xiaomi sells in India are all unique to the country. However, Barra says Xiaomi is aware that there is much more work for it to do to flourish in India.
"We have to ramp up," says Barra. "It's not something we can do immediately because we are subject to manufacturing constraints."
While Xiaomi has been only able to deliver 35,000 phones to a sub-continent that is home to more than 1.2 billion people, the company has been encouraged by how quickly the smartphones sold out.
As Xiaomi prepares to step up its presence in India, it'll face off against a bruised Samsung that has already lost it's No. 1 position in the country to Micromax. Samsung is hardly out of the fight in China or India, but its losses to Xiaomi and Micromax only gives Little Rice more confidence in its ability to surpass the South Korean tech company in India.
Tom Shepherd, senior analyst at Canalys, told Time that Xiaomi's sales accelerated just as movement of Samsung's products was slowing. Shepherd suggested that Samsung may not regain its lead any time soon.
"Samsung had been the leading vendor in China for the last two-and-a-half years, but [Xiaomi's strong performance] comes in the context that Samsung has had an uncharacteristically weak performance," says Shepherd. "We expect a sort of rally in terms of [Samsung's third quarter] performance, but will that performance be sufficient to re-establish a leadership position over Xiaomi?"
