China's Xiaomi plans to boost smartphone sale in India

China’s Xiaomi will focus on boosting its India sales from retail outlets after years of big bets on e-commerce, its India president said, as the company seeks to revive smartphone sales after falling behind South Korea’s Samsung.

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E-commerce sales in India via Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart have surged in recent years, helping Xiaomi and others expand in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets, with 600 million smartphone users.

But while 44 per cent of India’s smartphones sales are now online, the brick-and-mortar segment remains the bigger play and Xiaomi expects it to grow further. “Our market position in offline is substantially lower than what it is online,” Xiaomi’s India head, Muralikrishnan B, said in an interview on Friday. “Offline is where you have other competitors who have been executing fairly well and have a larger market share.”