Xiaomi's Q3 sales crossed 2 mn mark in India

Xiaomi has claimed that it has sold over 2 million smartphones in India in the third-quarter of 2016. The Chinese company's India head Manu Kumar Jain tweeted saying the company has sold over 2 million smartphones in Q3 2016 marking a 150% year-on-year growth.

Xiaomi's strong sales in this quarter is its best yearly performance in India. In October, the company sold 1 million smartphone units in just 18 days. This was announced by CEO Lei Jun in an open letter to employees.

According to IDC's Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker released in November, Xiaomi recently became the second biggest player in India based on online sales and the fourth biggest when taking offline into account as well.

The same report claimed that Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 and the Redmi 3S series "fuelled the online shipments" to a large extent for the company. Xiaomi made it to the top five smartphone vendors list based on shipments. The research firm had said that Xiaomi grew over 2.5 times over the same period last year.

There have been several factors to Xiaomi's success in the country.

The Redmi Note 3 effect

Xiaomi launched its flagship device in March this year.  The Redmi Note 3 and the Prime 3S series have become one of the bestselling smartphones in the range in India. According to the company, it managed to sell over 2.3 million units of the Redmi Note 3 till September this year and over a million units of the newly launched Redmi 3S and Redmi 3s Prime smartphones. The Chinese company claims that a unit of Redmi Note 3 is sold every 7 seconds in India and that one out of every nine smartphones shipped online is a Redmi Note 3.

Expansion into offline retail 

An expansion into the offline retail market has greatly helped boost Xiaomi's sales as well as brand awareness in India. The company has partnered with distributors such as Redington, Innocomm, StoreKing and Just By Live to reach more than 8,500 retail stores across the country.

Soon after its Diwali sale, Xioami announced that it sold half a million smartphone in just three days.  While Redmi Note 3 was the best-selling smartphone of Amazon's Great Indian Festival sale, the Redmi 3S and 3S Prime were the top-selling product on Flipkart during its Big Billion Days Sale.

From the early days where Xiaomi smartphones were only available on Flipkart, Xiaomi has expanded its reach in India and now the products can be found on Amazon, Snapdeal, Tata CLiQ as well as retail stores.