Bottom line: Xiaomi’s release of a new model and addition of a high-profile investor in India reflect the market’s key role in its global expansion this year, with a likely target of 4 million or more unit sales.
Xiaomi in new India launch
Smartphone sensation Xiaomi is working hard to repair its position in India, following a setback late last year that saw some of its higher end products locked out of the market over a patent dispute. Now the company is making a big new push at the lower end of the market, choosing India for its first product launch outside of China. At the same time, the company announced it has sold a stake in itself to one of India’s best known tech tycoons, a patriarch at the renowned Tata Group conglomerate.
Both of these news bits come from an event late last week in India, and underscore the growing importance that Xiaomi is placing on the market this year to keep its meteoric growth alive. Xiaomi is banking heavily on global markets to fuel its growth story, now that it is already king of the smartphone hill in its home China market. Read Full Post…
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.
Xiaomi adds traditional retailers in India
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…
Bottom line: Alibaba’s 2 latest big investments in Snapchat and Snapdeal look like good bets for strong financial returns, but are unlikely to produce any major strategic benefit.
Alibaba in talks for Snapdeal stake
I was a bit confused on my first reading of the headlines today, after seeing articles saying e-commerce leader Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) was in talks to invest in 2 companies whose “snappy” names sounded quite similar. But a closer reading made it clear that these were 2 very different deals, one involving the popular US social networking service (SNS) Snapchat, and the other involving a popular Indian e-commerce site called Snapdeal.
Despite their big geographic and product differences, these 2 deals seem to represent a growing trend for Alibaba, which is no longer acquiring companies but instead only buying small strategic stakes. The strategy looks mostly advantageous to the investment targets. That’s because it’s helping to push up the valuations of names like Snapchat and Snapdeal to frothy levels, much the way Alibaba used similar investments to pump up its own valuation in the run-up to its IPO last year. Read Full Post…
