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When Xiaomi entered India, it teamed up exclusively with Flipkart to sell all of its products via flash sales. They also had an official website for India, but it was more of a placeholder with just a link to Xiaomi India’s Facebook page. The website has since evolved, with specs and details of all the product launches, and the latest development is that the company has now begun selling accessories on the website as well.

This falls in line with previous reportage indicating that the company plans to sell all its products through its own online store in the future. Currently, Mi.com/in is selling earphones, back covers and flip covers for all its smartphones that have been launched in India. Additionally, the company is also selling its Mi Power Bank via its official website.

At the time of filing the story, the accessories were simultaneously on sale via Xiaomi’s India website as well as Flipkart. It has yet to start selling smartphones via its own website, and for now they are only available via Flipkart.

Speaking of which, next week the Xiaomi Redmi 2 will go on sale via Flipkart for the first time, priced at Rs 6,999. Registrations for the March 24 sale are underway, and to be able to grab the device, it is imperative to register on Flipkart. Furthermore, the company will also start selling its Mi Pad on Flipkart next week, but you won’t need to register for the tablet.

Leading Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is to set up an independent e-commerce channel in India and may partner with Foxconn to launch an Android One smartphone, reports our Chinese-language sister paper Commercial Times.

Though Flipkart also cooperated with other handset makers such as Motorola and Huawei, Indian users have to register in Xiaomi's official website before buying Xiaomi smartphones from Flipkart. It shows that Xiaomi has certain control over users in India, the report said.

Besides selling its Hongmi 1S for about US$100 and Hongmi Note for US$145 in India, Xiaomi will join the Android One project initiated by Google and launch more models in the near future, said Hugo Barra, Xiaomi's vice president of international.

To solve capacity problems, Xiaomi said they were in talks with manufacturers there who are said to be Foxconn.

India with its population of 1.2 billion people is the third-largest smartphone market in the world with a smartphone penetration rate as high as 32%. The country is forecast to see 100 million smartphone shipments in 2015. As the Chinese market is getting more saturated, India has emerged as a promising market for handset makers including Huawei, Lenovo, Asustek and Xiaomi.

Xiaomi ranked in the top six in market share in the third quarter this year while Taiwan-based Asustek sold monthly 200,000 ZenFones and is expected to enter top ten in the Indian market before 2015.

Market analysts said Xiaomi's major moves in sales channel, product and manufacturing will impact Asustek, which has ambitions to break he top five in the Indian market next year.

source: wantchinatimes