Xiaomi officially launched Mi 5X yesterday in Beijing, together with MIUI 9 and a voice-controlled AI speaker. Kris Wu, the local pop star and Xiaomi’s first brand endorser, joined the event. This is the vendor's latest initiative to fight back in the hype-competitive Chinese smartphone market.
Priced at RMB 1499 (USD 220) at retail, Mi 5X comes with a 5.5’ inch LTPS display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chipset, dual 12MP rear camera, 5MP front camera, 4GB RAM, 64GB ROM, and a 3080mAh battery. Mi 5X will be available in China starting on August 1st 2017 mainly in the vendor’s offline channels, including over 149 self-operated experience stores and 68 selected retail partners.
The design, the promotion, and the price have made Mi 5X a concrete competitor for OPPO’s A series, vivo’s Y series, and Huawei’s Nova series in China. By the launch of Mi 5X, Xiaomi is taking solid actions to expand its target group to female consumers and to younger age group. Xiaomi started to utilize its heavily-invested offline channels.
It will take a while before Xiaomi starts to bear fruits for this initiative, as it needs to go through the learning curve, to carefully manage the brand perceptions among different target groups, and to further strengthen its offline distribution system in its domestic market. But Huawei, OPPO, vivo, and other Chinese vendors need to be cautious, as Xiaomi is definitely back to the arena.
