Over the last few years, Xiaomi has made an attempt to make in-roads in categories beyond smartphones. It remains the market leader in smartphones and it’s a natural progression to flex its muscles in other categories. Xiaomi has set its eyes on a new category now — laptops under the Mi branding. In an interaction with Times of India-Gadgets Now, Raghu Reddy, chief business officer, Xiaomi India said that is the category a lot of people have been asking about since the last two years. “It is one of the most requested categories by our fans,” said Reddy. Since these “fans” are what seems to drive a lot of the company’s strategic decisions, it’s but obvious that the laptop as a category won’t be different.
The one USP on which Xiaomi built its entire brand proposition is competitive pricing. It’s a strategy that has done wonders for the brand but that’s the not approach we see Xiaomi taking when it comes to pricing its laptops.
As Reddy puts it, “It’s a different category and every category has its own nuances,” before adding, “But as a brand there are certain ethos of how the product will be and what it will offer to the end-users. We will offer everything that the customers need out there and we will compete with everyone else who is there in the market,” claims Reddy.
Xiaomi Mi notebooks will cater to those who require their devices to be able to handle the intense workload. “The Mi notebook series will be targeted very strongly at the power users. This can again be segregated across different categories. It could be students, people who are working — people who demand more from their device,” explains Reddy.
Going by what Reddy has mentioned, it is likely that the company may very well not adopt the same price strategy for this upcoming product category as it did for the smartphones. While not giving exact details about the pricing of the laptops he did hint that the laptops will be launched in across price segments.
As of now, there is no exact launch date but the launch of the Mi-branded laptops is set to happen in the second week of June.
