MUMBAI: Xiaomi is leaving no stone unturned to capture the Indian imagination. After wowing the country with its spectacular moderately priced phones, the company is looking at giving value addition to its customers here.
Considering India as its core market after its home-ground China, Xiaomi became India’s number one smartphone brand in India in Q4 2017 beating Vivo, Samsung and Apple, according to International Data Corporation. Hardly four years since launch, the company today has a whopping 31 per cent market share in the country and has over nine million units shipped in Q1 of 2018.
Xiaomi India vice president and managing director Manu Jain believes that the company’s core philosophy is to deliver innovation for everyone by making high-quality, well-designed products accessible to everyone at “honest pricing” and the company is able to do this because of its unique business model, which Xiaomi will monetise from internet services in the long run.
The mobile handset maker has now announced the launch of Mi Music and Mi Video, marking Xiaomi’s move into offering value-added internet services for local users. Mi Music is Xiaomi’s pre-installed music app which offers an integrated music streaming service along with the ability to store offline music while Mi Video is Xiaomi’s pre-installed video app which provides integrated video streaming across platforms.
The music app by Xiaomi is quite similar to other music apps available in the Indian market such as Saavn, Gaana, iTunes, Jio Music. Xiaomi has partnered with digital entertainment organisation Hungama Music wherein Xiaomi mobile consumers will have access to Hungama’s music library. The app will offer over 10 million freemium tracks across 13 Indic language choices. Users can also download music offline from Mi Music app at Rs 899 per annum.
Hungama Digital Media Entertainment managing director and CEO Neeraj Roy says, “We are delighted to launch Hungama Music on Mi Music. We are committed to delivering the best of content with unlimited playlists to the highly engaged Mi Fan community and with this launch we take our partnership with Xiaomi to the next level.”
Mi Video functions similar to YouTube. The apps are the first internet services that Xiaomi has brought to India. Mi Music in India has nearly seven million daily active users. Mi Video is designed to be a platform for video content aggregation and a powerful local video player. Mi Video content is powered by Hungama Play, SonyLiv and Voot currently, with more partners coming onboard soon.
Currently, Mi Video offers more than 500,000 hours of content with nearly 80 per cent free content. The service currently offers more than 12 video formats such as AVI, MP4, MOV, MKV, and MKA, MPEG, M2TS amongst others. It also supports multilingual subtitles, private folders, and multiple audio tracks. Mi Video also offers one tap cast to any Smart TV with DLNA and Miracast support.
Roy also announced that in the coming months, Hungama will bring more exciting features including gamification and continue to build on the rich user experience.
The apps were announced at the Mi Pop Play event, which is created by Xiaomi to bring Mi Fans from across the country for a day to celebrate with Xiaomi executives.
The company believes in giving back to its consumers. “We at Xiaomi never make over five per cent of profit on all our hardware devices whether it is a smartphone, a television or any other accessory and if we ever make more than that, we make sure we return it back to our consumers. The philosophy has worked well for our brand in China, India and other parts of the world,” says Jain.
Xiaomi currently has three manufacturing facilities in India in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The move came after the Indian government imposed a 10 per cent duty on key smartphone components.
With a presence in over 70 countries and regions, Xiaomi is expanding its footprint across the world and wants to become a global brand.
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