Xiaomi has confirmed that its Xiaomi 17-series smartphones—unveiled in China earlier this month—are headed to India, with launch planned for Q1. “We are now aligned to global launches… we will launch [Xiaomi 17] in India as well… we plan for Q1,” Chief Operating Officer Sudhin Mathur told BW Businessworld, adding that the company will “share more timelines” this week and stressing that India is now tied into Xiaomi’s global cadence. Mathur, who took over as Xiaomi India COO in 2024 after leading Motorola Mobility India and earlier stints at Sony Ericsson and LG, is steering a comeback built on premium devices, a tighter portfolio, and an upgraded after-sales playbook—an operator’s blueprint rather than a marketing slogan.
Sold-Out 15-Series Sets The Template
Mathur acknowledged that Xiaomi’s recent premium pivot proved its point faster than expected. “Xiaomi 15 actually sold more than we expected… it was completely sold out,” he said, arguing that the response validated a more assertive play in the Rs 20,000–40,000 and super-premium bands. He explained that the lesson for 2026 is simple: plan premium supply better and widen the Leica co-engineered experience across tiers so more users can feel the difference rather than merely read spec sheets.
Crucially, he admitted that the company could have moved earlier and more decisively upmarket—“We could have premiumised faster”—and detailed a second miss: “We probably should have planned more for the 15-series,” a planning shortfall that left Xiaomi 15 largely unavailable for Diwali. “It is not one of the key Diwali propositions,” he told us, proclaiming that Xiaomi will course-correct supply with next year’s launches and ensure premium inventory is ready when the market peaks. Counterpoint’s latest India snapshot underlines the opportunity: in Q2 2025, smartphone volumes rose eight percent year-on-year while wholesale value rose eighteen percent—momentum that rewards brands ready with higher-ASP stock.
Redmi 15: India-Informed Design Wins Diwali
Beyond halo flagships, Xiaomi’s “designed-for-India” bet has momentum lower down the price ladder. “Redmi 15… one of our largest-selling phones this Diwali… the proposition has stuck,” Mathur told us. He detailed why: in the roughly Rs 15,000 band, first-time upgraders—often college-goers in tier-2 and tier-3 towns—want a big screen for video and a much larger, faster-charging battery.
“Big-battery, big-screen was a recommendation from our local teams… even some battery technology came from India,” he said. That ground-up brief yielded the 7,000 mAh crowd-pleaser, which has anchored festive sell-through—exactly the sort of locally tuned win that a channel-hardened operator like Mathur likes to scale.
‘Deeper, Not Wider’—With Leica At The Centre
The 2026 playbook trims breadth and doubles down on depth. “Rather than going wider we will go deeper,” Mathur explained. In practice, that means fewer, sharper hero SKUs across phones, tablets, TVs and wearables—each with a clearer experience promise—and more Leica-branded models to hard-wire imaging as Xiaomi’s identity in India.
The organisational discipline behind that—unifying Xiaomi/Redmi/Poco at the back-end while keeping their front-end promises distinct—echoes Mathur’s multi-brand, multi-channel experience at Motorola-Lenovo.
On fashions like foldables and ultra-slim experiments, he was cool-headed: “Foldables… are more design innovations than tech… we haven’t seen great traction in India,” he said, hinting that Xiaomi will prioritise photography-first slabs here while the China line explores wider form-factors.
The Ecosystem Step-Up: Premium Watches And Buds
“We will go deeper into wearables and buds,” Mathur said, proclaiming that 2026 will include more premium smartwatches and true-wireless earbuds designed to pair tightly with Xiaomi’s premium phones and tablets—from acoustics and battery life to imaging-adjacent features such as camera shutter control and richer health/fitness telemetry that syncs across devices.
The strategy is to sell the phone, then lock in the daily experience with the watch and buds. The read-across to the market is clear: India’s wearable shipments fell nine percent in Q2 2025 as the budget smartwatch sugar-rush cooled, yet Xiaomi posted the fastest smartwatch growth—about 145.5 percent year-on-year—off a smaller base (IDC, Q2 2025). There is room for cleaner, better-specced wearables tethered to phones people actually buy.
Tablets & TVs: Experience Over Inches
“We also focused on tablets, display/TV premiumisation, and wearables,” Mathur said. The push is timely: IDC says India’s tablet market fell 32.2 percent year-on-year in 1H 2025 to about 2.15 million units as government and commercial buys slowed (IDC, 1H 2025). Within that slump, Xiaomi ranked fourth, leaning into consumer value and bigger screens.
The TV side is tilting QLED-wards, with 55- and 65-inch sets becoming the default in modern retail where demo experiences matter; hence Xiaomi’s heavier presence in chains like Croma, Vijay Sales and Reliance Digital, plus refreshed “touch-and-feel” zones in mom-and-pop outlets. The experiential bent echoes Mathur’s retail-transformation work from earlier roles, now repurposed for a more premium Xiaomi.
Service Becomes Strategy
If premium devices are the front line, premium after-sales is the moat. Xiaomi is rolling out 100 Premium Service Centres with friendlier lounges, standby phones, quicker turn-arounds and—in some locations—women-run “pink” centres, with Bengaluru already live. “When you are moving into premium, such experiences build a lot of trust,” Mathur said. The first wave spans Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kochi, Chennai, Kolkata, Jaipur, Pune and Ahmedabad, with more in the pipeline. The service-first pivot is straight from Mathur’s playbook: get the shop-floor and service-desk experience right, and premium buyers follow.
Make In India, Scale In India
Mathur explained that localisation is not a slogan but a lever. Xiaomi has extended Indian manufacturing beyond phones and TVs to tablets and wearables, and is stepping up local sourcing of sub-assemblies and spares—moves that should make premium service logistics easier and reduce time-to-repair amid New Delhi’s tariff tweaks on select components. It is also a hedge against currency and supply volatility, and a way to build trust through faster parts availability.
Where Demand Is Moving
Festival-season behaviour matches Xiaomi’s thesis. “In upper metros and tier-1/tier-2 towns, there is a clear trend of higher-ASP purchases… it is no longer about discount buying; it is about upgrades,” Mathur told us, pointing to EMI and exchange flows that keep users inside the fold—Redmi Note upgraders moving to the latest Note or even to Civi, and premium-curious users eyeing Leica-equipped 17-series models. Counterpoint’s eight-percent volume and eighteen-percent value growth in Q2 2025 backs that premiumisation arc). The former Motorola India boss reads the cycle as flat in units for the next two to three years but rising in value—exactly the pocket he wants Xiaomi to own.
Notes On What Xiaomi Would Not Say
On the mass-market bellwether, Mathur declined to reveal when the Redmi Note 15 would launch in India—even though last year’s Note launched in Q4. “The next Redmi Note, yes,” he said, stopping short of dates. The coyness suggests Xiaomi will protect channel hygiene and prioritise its premium cadence around the 17-series before flooding shelves with volume drivers.
What The Next Two To Three Years Look Like
Mathur was frank about the cycle and why Xiaomi is calibrating for value rather than volume. “The market will remain flat for the coming next two to three years as well,” he said, explaining that “people are not upgrading as much as they used to be” because device quality has improved and the old “spec-driven, price-driven purchase process has slowed down.” The implication, he detailed, is a market that is steady in units but richer in revenue: “The market is flat… but ASPs are growing… the revenue of the market is growing.” That is also why Xiaomi is pushing earlier and harder into premium imaging and ecosystem add-ons, instead of chasing breadth for its own sake. Financing and trade-ins are the accelerants in his view.
“I would hazard a guess that more than 50 percent of the people are buying on a EMI… zero-cost EMI,” he told us, adding that ease of exchange will keep users inside brand ecosystems as they climb price bands. He expects the pace of premiumisation to grow even faster, with innovation “now happening more in the premium category,” while sub-Rs 20,000 devices increasingly look like incremental upgrades.
The other lever is attachment. “Attach rates will grow; along with their phone [people] would also want to buy another device,” he explained, pointing to watches, buds and tablets that pair tightly with phones. It is a thesis he underlined with a global datapoint from inside the house: “More than [our] 20 million users have more than five Xiaomi products,” he said, arguing that brands with a real ecosystem will outpace single-category players as India moves to higher average spend.
Positive Road Ahead?
Xiaomi’s comeback bid is not a single-product moonshot; it is a new operating philosophy for India: ship flagships on time, keep Leica central, course-correct premium supply, narrow the SKU tree, pair premium watches and buds with premium phones and tablets, and win trust at the service desk. “2026 is about more than new launches—it is about rediscovering our rhythm. Our focus on India has never wavered—if anything, it’s sharper. We’ve built deep roots here, and next year is about scaling meaningfully,” Mathur said. If the Xiaomi 17-series sticks its landing—and the service promise scales—the company’s 2026 narrative could be less about nostalgia and more about momentum. |
