Premium but Cheap
Xiaomi has released its flagship smartphone, the Mi 4.
According to news outlets in China on July 22, Xiaomi Tech held a launch event for the Mi4, which has a stainless steel case, in the China National Convention Center.
The new model is equipped with a 5.5-inch display with a resolution of 1080x1920, a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor, 3GB of RAM, 32 GB of memory, and a 16-megapixel camera that supports OIS technology.
The technical specifications of the Mi4 are comparable to those of premium phones like Samsung's Galaxy S5 or LG's G3, but the new handset is sold at only US$499 (510,000 won) per unit.
The Chinese smartphone maker saw its share in the local market exceed the figure for Apple only three years after its founding, thanks to its low-priced strategy. Xiaomi snatched third place in the local handset market in the first quarter of this year with an 11 percent share. The firm, on the other hand, occupied the sixth spot in the global market in Q1.
Xiaomi sold 26.1 million units in the first half of this year, and is planning to sell 60 million units in total by the end of 2014. The company expects that it will sell around 100 million smartphones next year.