This week, Xiaomi and Lenovo-Motorola, two powerful smartphone players in the affordable price segment in China, announced their latest entry-level smartphones for China market, Redmi 3 and Lemon 3, respectively. Those two smartphones have almost the same specifications in terms of processor, display size, metal body, primary and secondary cameras and memory configuration, and are priced at the same price.

The main two differences between two are (1) Redmi 3 boasts larger battery capacity, and (2) Lemon 3 has better display resolution.

 It still remains up in the air whether Chinese consumers would still prefer to buy more Xiaomi's budget smartphones in 2016 than any other Chinese brands, but it is getting clearer that Xiaomi's best strength, the decent performance per price, is getting slimmer and dimmer as most of other competitors including Lenovo-Motorola are starting to roll out the similar-priced smartphones with decent performance.

We recommend Xiaomi seriously revamping its product, price and marketing strategies to maintain its strong position in China in 2016 and moving forward.