Xiaomi's desperation to grasp marketshare could also cost it dear

Xiaomi’s rise to fame and popularity in India has certainly not peaked. Not yet at least and we expect better smartphones to come from the Chinese smartphone maker in the years to come. Setting things in concrete, Benchmark creator AnTuTu has also clearly laid out how the Xiaomi’s smartphones along with OnePlus dominate its ‘10 Most Popular Smartphone in India’ list with not one, but two smartphones taking two out tens spots in the ranking. Everything seems to be just fine. In fact, it now appears that Xiaomi is confident about its supply-demand problems as well, as it soon plans to look at offline channels for sales. But appearances can be deceiving and the cracks are gradually beginning to show. While the above mentioned moves may seem like positive ones in terms of expansion and reach, to me this appears to be one of desperation. Xiaomi has started to look for offline sales recently and this stems from consumer’s inability to procure a Xiaomi smartphone. Gone are the days when flash sales were a thing, everyone’s following that model now(even OnePlus has moved on). They were good to build the hype, but consumers have moved past that and want to buy a smartphone, right now and not a day or a month later. Selling in offline in stores is not going to be easy either. First you enter an existing smartphone market, force everyone to avoid brick and mortar retailers by lining for your online sales. Now that sales are down, you head back to the same retailers for help and that does not look like a great move, it’s a sign of tough times. The push for offline came just around the same time that reports about the company’s worrying investors came to light. Xiaomi had missed it 80 million smartphone sales target that now puts the company in a spot in terms of valuation. Xiaomi recently announced its investment in  Hungama for content, a move that should have come long before or may be when LeEco (a major player in the content business) began selling its first smartphones in the country. We aren’t clear where Xiaomi fumbled, but it’s costing the company now since users will easily get more by switching to brands like LeEco. Another indicator of desperate times can be derived from the fact that the smartphone maker has begun to experiment with segments and form factors. We loved the recently launch Mi Max in our review . But it was a bit surprising as to why Xiaomi would suddenly jump on to the “max” smartphone bandwagon and that too with a big-screened smartphone. Kind of reminds us of Apple’s move to a bigger 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus, which was soon followed by a 12.9-inch iPad Pro. [caption id=“attachment_324671” align=“aligncenter” width=“194”] This could be Xiaomi’s premium flagship. Image: GizmoChina[/caption] Recently we even heard about Xiaomi moving to the premium smartphone segments with its first smartphone expected to priced around the Rs 40,000 mark. Indeed, the first question that comes to mind is “Why would I pay Rs 40,000 for an Xiaomi smartphone?”. This is something that even Xiaomi’s own Mi Fans would think about before investing, forget the casual premium smartphone buyer who is probably flashing an Apple or a Samsung Galaxy flagship. Then again there’s the confused software. Xiaomi’s MIUI was a safe haven for Android tweakers at a time when Google’s Android did not look polished, but now it does and this poses one too many question for Xiaomi. This is because even with Android 6.0 onboard its latest MIUI V8, it is getting hard to believe that one of the most highlighted features, Google Now on Tap is missing. Many may not use it, but there’s more coming from Google (in Android Nougat) and we aren’t too sure how much Android users will begin to miss these new features; because Xiaomi is not providing any alternatives. While this may work in China(that is mostly devoid of Google) it becomes hard to explain the lack of it to Indian audiences. Xiaomi’s success to the general public seems like joyride right now and like every joyride it has to end. The company seems to be struggling with pushing out new software (MIUI V8 with Android 6.0 mind you) and premium smartphones, but is not delivering enough to make for worthy innovations that it can showcase in its portfolio. Do this a bit too frequently and consumers begin to lose interest, which could lead to its downfall. Today, even Apple seems to be finding ways to make its iPhone more useful and standout from the crowd. The company’s hero product after almost ten years, finally seems to be losing steam . Xiaomi needs to innovate and its upcoming premium smartphone really needs to showcase that innovation, else it’s doomed. Software features and affordable pricing only works in the lower rungs; competing with the big boys like Samsung and Apple will need a lot more than that.