Xiaomi Planning To Open Two New Productions In India
February was a great month for Xiaomi as it introduced its latest flagship handset Mi 5, at MWC in Barcelona, and it look like the company has big plans for 2016.
The Chinese smartphone manufacturer involved in both, smartphone software and hardware have announced it will build another two manufacturing plants in India, and apart from the Mi 5 and Redmi Note 3 are plans to introduce more devices this year. In 2016, Xiaomi believes to sell around 140 million handsets as opposed to the 100 million sold last year.
We want to invest deeply in this market, we want to have a significant amount of research and development done here - not only for India but the rest of the world.Hugo Barra, Xiaomi's vice president of international operations, said.
In order to streamline supply of their products in the area, the company partnered with Foxconn to produce smartphones locally in India. The Chinese juggernaut has said that that it is currently in talks with Foxconn to open up two more production units in the region.
The company also has introduced its products in other groups like the Mi Bluetooth Speaker which will go on sale by the end of this month and Xiaomi expects on releasing one device in the following quarter and after that one other in the next half of 2016.
Xiaomi, as of now the fifth-largest phone company in the Indian business sector, is evaluating various locations to set up a manufacturing unit and is in talks with state governments and local partners, Barra said, including the process is likely to take at least a year.
The company has already cleared that the smartphone won't be delivered in India and will come specifically from China. But that might change soon as the demand for the handset picks up in the country. Lin Bin has also mentioned that the company will concentrate more on India and will hope to set up two new production facilities as per Foxconn world's largest contract manufacturer, which now makes 75% of the company's phones at its plant in Andhra Pradesh, INDIA.
Online sales have helped Xiaomi keep the cost of their devices low in China, a selling point they'll seek to replicate in the India market.
Lin said "Also, people buying smartphones from e-commerce are also going to grow very swiftly, and we're a big fraction of that",
He further added that the company was planning to eventually lead in India once the market consolidated.
Source: Economic Times