Xiaomi To Increase Its Pricing, Who Will Take Over Its Position?

Xiaomi CEO recently said that the Chinese phone maker might increase the price of its upcoming phones soon. The company has been known for offering high-tier hardware specifications for much more affordable prices compared to its competitors. It seems like Xiaomi decides that its time to increase the price to make more profit. This actually happened to another Chinese phone maker Huawei when it increased its pricing since the Huawei Ascend P6 days. OnePlus, which shares the same reputation with Xiaomi, appears to adopt the same strategy as well.

Even though Xiaomi CEO didn’t confirm that it would raise the pricing of all of its devices across all price ranges. However, it still makes us wonder which companies might be the next Xiaomi and become the king of the budget segment.

Former sub-brand of Oppo, Realme, has created quite a lot of noise in the Indian market since its launch in the country. Its first offering, the Realme 1, offered impressive specifications for just Rs. 8.990. The brand then quickly launched several more devices like the Realme C1, selfie-centric Realme U1, and Realme 2 series. And again, these handsets were all priced at around Rs. 14,000 or lower.

And hardly anyone was surprised when the brand claimed the first position for the overall sale during Diwali season in the country. In addition, according to Counterpoint Research, the company occupied 8 percent of market share in the local market in the fourth quarter last year. It is pretty impressive for a brand that is only present in the market for nearly a year.

The success of Realme in India continues to grow as it announced to reach more than 300,000 shipments with the recently-released Realme 3 in just really a month of launching. It shows that the company still has a lot of growth potential.

To recall, the latest Realme 3 sports a 6.3-inch HD+ display with a water-drop notch. It is powered by an MTK Helio P70 chipset. As mentioned, it will come in two memory configurations: 3GB of RAM/32GB of storage and 4GB of RAM/64GB of storage. Its storage can be expanded via a microSD slot up to 256GB.

In the imaging department, it sports a dual camera system on the rear, including a 13MP main sensor with an aperture of f/1.8, 5P Lens. It is coupled with a 2MP secondary depth sensor and a single LED flash as well. On the front, the Realme 3 packs a 13MP selfie camera backed by AI with an aperture of f/2.0, AI beautification, and support for HDF.

Are there any other notable candidates?

Realme is not the only company who can take over the Xiaomi’s crown. For example, HMD Global has also been getting quite a lot of success with the Nokia phone brand. Even though its best offerings like the last year’s Nokia 7.1 or Nokia 8.1 are not the most affordable mid-range smartphones out there, but they still show that HMD Global is still fully capable of competing against its Chinese rivals. One of the main strength of the Nokia-branded phones is its timely updates as well as the stock version of Android which is quite rare these days.

Samsung with its new Galaxy A series is also a force to be reckoned with. This new series shows Samsung’s real commitment to join the mid-range segment. It no longer offers over-priced and under-specced handsets anymore as the new Galaxy A phones have been getting quite a lot of praises recently.

The competition might also come from Xiaomi’s sub-brands like Pocophone and Redmi. With the recent Redmi Note 7 Pro and Poco F1 offering high-tier specs with mid-range pricing, Xiaomi might as well hand over the crown to these brands and focus on the flagship segment.