Report: Xiaomi to Add Even More Devices to Their Portfolio in 2017

A couple of years ago, Hugo Barra was working at Xiaomi and he spoke about what he believed the company's secret sauce was. Mr. Barra said that the company was able to keep the prices of their smartphones as low as they were due to two main factors: One was a small portfolio of devices and the other was because their devices had a "longer average selling time per device." He said that "the more focused the portfolio, the more efficient [they] can be at managing those costs."

Mr. Barra has since left the company and now it seems Xiaomi may be shifting those original plans in order to keep up with competition from the Chinese market. A new report from China talks about how Xiaomi is facing increased competition from the likes of Huawei, Oppo and Vivo. This has resulted in Xiaomi not meeting the smartphone sales numbers that they had hoped. This report from DigiTimes specifically mentions the Mi Note 2 and Mi Mix and are citing "industry sources" for this information.

These sources go on to say that Xiaomi will be adding more mid-range and high-end smartphones to its portfolio throughout the year. At first, it seems logical to assume that Xiaomi would be releasing more smartphones this year as that is their normal pattern. But this report seems to imply that they will be going beyond the norm and manufacturing more than normal so they can keep up with the likes of Huawei, Oppo and Vivo.

The report does go on to state that Xiaomi is working to improve the management of its supply chain, saying that they are considering allocating new suppliers for certain components used in their products. It specifically mentions Xiaomi sourcing display panels from a company named Truly Opto-electronics, but doesn't go into further details about other components. Industry sources like to think they know exactly what a company will do, but we'll just have to wait and see if Xiaomi releases more devices in 2017 than they normally do in any given year.

Source: DigiTimes

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