Xiaomi, China's 'Apple-like' smartphone maker, to take on Samsung & Micromax in India

On Tuesday, around the time some 100,000 pre-registered Indian consumers were going berserk trying to get their orders through for Xiaomi's Mi 3 platform on e-commerce local heavyweight Flipkart's website, the Chinese budget handset maker was living up to its image of the Apple of the East back in Beijing.
A plush event to launch the flagship smartphone Mi 4 at which founder, chairman and CEO Jun Lei was clad like the late Steve Jobs, in the iconic black top and blue jeans, had many things common with an Apple launch gig — including the celebrated 'one more thing...' slide that the Cupertino, California-headquartered cult handset maker has been accustomed to unveiling in the run up to a product launch.
The reliance on Apple imagery pretty much ended there, though. Especially when Jun didn't leave anyone guessing as to who he was targeting with the Mi 4 (pronounced as me 4) launch. "Our product really is better than the iPhone," Reuters quoted Jun as saying. "Even our white colour [phone] is whiter," he joked.
If that wasn't enough, vice-president Hugo Barra, Xiaomi's prize catch from Google who heads its global business and is leading the charge into emerging markets, let on that he was "sick and tired" of the Chinese handset maker (pronounced as Shao-mee) being labelled an Apple copycat. The Mi 4 (16 GB) is priced at $320 in China, against $854 for the iPhone 5s which debuted there early this year.



The Apple halo certainly works — especially when the promise is an iPhone-like product at much less than half the price. Some 10,000 Indian consumers who succeeded in wrapping their hands around the Mi 3 earlier this week certainly felt it was worth the wait — and the money. (The Mi 4's base model is more expensive than the Mi 3 by roughly Rs 5,500, has a superior camera, higher RAM and a better processor and screen resolution.)
Priced at just under Rs 14,000 and loaded with top-end features that rivals are offering at over three times that price, the frenzied demand for the Mi 3 with its Apple-like interface led the to the Flipkart website (capable of handling 3 million customers daily) crashing.

Twitter was abuzz. Newspapers headlined the event (the online sale binge and the website crash) and buyers talked about it. "I was lucky I got it. At that price, it is a great product," says Chander Sharma, 38, a Delhi-based private sector executive.

"We are super-excited," says Manu Jain, Xiaomi India head. Adds Michael Adnani, vice-president, retail, Flipkart: "We are working with Xiaomi to ensure that the purchase experience lives up to our promise."