Bottom line: Xiaomi’s diversified sales strategy in India could help reverse recent setbacks, but could ultimately undermine the carefully cultivated cool and trendy image that has been key to its broader success.
Smartphone sensation Xiaomi is making a risky move in India, abandoning its trendy online-only sales model as it faces headwinds in a market that has become its first major stepping stone onto the global stage. Xiaomi is calling the decision to sell its phones through traditional retail stores a tactical move, in a nod to the less advanced state of India’s Internet compared its home China market.
While that may be true, this new move also hints at signs of distress as Xiaomi faces new challenges in India on several fronts. One of those centers on an intellectual property dispute with global telecoms titan Ericsson (Stockholm: ERICb), which forced Xiaomi to stop selling its higher-end phones in India last December. The other big challenge is coming from other Chinese smartphone makers like Meizu, which are attempting to copy Xiaomi’s early success in India. Read Full Post…
More than 3 years after receiving the booby prize when China awarded its 3G mobile licenses, China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) is still sulking about being forced to build a network based on a problem-plagued homegrown Chinese technology and now wants one of its rivals to share the misery. That’s my broader interpretation of the latest reports that say China’s dominant mobile carrier is lobbying hard for the industry regulator to force one of its 2 rivals to build a future 4G network based on the problematic technology, known as TD. (
There’s quite a bit of telecoms news coming out this week from the city of Barcelona in Spain, where China’s telcos and equipment makers are all showing off their latest wares at the world’s biggest annual telecoms show. Most of it looks like the usual display of new gizmos and gadgets, but the item that caught my eye was a relatively detailed update on China Mobile’s (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) 4G plans, which indicate that both the company and, perhaps more importantly also the government, are moving aggressively forward to build a commercial network based on a homegrown Chinese standard called TD-LTE. Equally significant is who was discussing the plans, as the comments came from a relatively youthful Li Yue, a fast rising star who recently took over as president of China Mobile’s state-run parent, rather than the company’s longtime aging Chairman Wang Jianzhou, who is getting set to retire. Li said China Mobile will move ahead with plans to expand its large-scale trials of TD-LTE to 9 cities later this year, adding Qingdao, Tianjin and most importantly Beijing, to its current trails in 6 major cities that began last year. (
