Xiaomi, a well known Chinese company, lately has problems. These problems shows that isn’t growing as much as the competition. While they try to their best by releasing continuously devices, they still got ripped off of their supremacy in the Chinese market, dropping from the first to the fourth place for the first time.
Who are the companies that managed it? Companies like OPPO, Vivo and Huawei, which (I’m sure not by chance) all share one common factor: presence in offline markets.
If we take a closer look at OPPO, we will see an huge offline market contributing for more than 70% of total sales in China, with an offline retail penetration beyond tier-2 and tier-3 cities, givving the ability to OPPO to reach a 13 percent of the total market share. Same story goes for Vivo and Huawei of course, although with smaller numbers this time.
Xiaomi, on the other side, from the very beginning was a company selling its mobiles and items through internet, from online stores. While this gave them a big push at the beginning (as people were finding good devices at lower prices) it doesn’t seem to be enough anymore.
Earlier this year, at the Barcelona MWC, everybody was thinking that Mi5 could be the opening door for Xiaomi into the world distribution through offline retail, but it hasn’t been the case. This and other problems that appeared through time, where the cause for a poor success of the device, among other factors.
All these show that maybe, I say maybe it’s time for Xiaomi to follow its Chinese competitors and finally start to think in creating offline stores, so buyers can find what they want and see it at the same time. Although we’ve no way of knowing the final development, we know for certain that the current marketing strategy isn’t giving great results anymore.
So what do you think? Should Xiaomi make offline stores? Would you like to have one in your town ? Write us down your thoughts