Xiaomi is planning to expand its business in Israel. Through the Hemilton group, Xiaomi's official importer in Israel, the Chinese brand today opened its first store located in Dizengoff Center in Tel Aviv. 100 of the brand's products are being sold there, including kick scooters, smartphones, mobile computers, headphones, backpacks, sunglasses, and umbrellas.
The company plans to hold a launching event on August 22 at which it will provide what it calls "one-time discounts" for its most popular items.
Xiaomi has 234 brand stores worldwide (excluding China, where it has 2,000 branches). 103 of the stores are in the planning stage. The company has one store in Israel at this stage, but intends to open more.
Xiaomi, a private company, discloses figures about itself as it sees fit. The company says that its sales turnover grew 67.5% in 2017 (for all of its products). Growth in sales of smartphones was impressive. Xiaomi's 2.4 mobile devices in Europe put it in fourth place on the continent with a 5.3% market share, behind Samsung in first place with a 33.1% market share, Apple in second with 22.2%, and Huawei in fourth with 16.1%.
Xiaomi is taking aim at new markets. The most challenging market for the company, where it is not a player, is the US market (the company may be planning to penetrate it with Pocophne, a new sub-brand the company is planning to launch).
Xiaomi has a wide range of items in its new Israeli store, including a series of models in its prominent category of smartphones including the Mi 8 (priced at NIS 2,099). Mobile devices quantitatively account for 15% of all of Xiaomi's products. The next biggest category includes electric kick scooters (NIS 2,000) and the company's robot vacuum cleaner (NIS 1,450 - to be sold for NIS 1,000 at the launch event).
Xiaomi's new story also sells BMI smart scales that monitor people's data (NIS 150-200), a variety of headphones priced from NIS 70 to NIS 220, computer mice, smart selfie sticks, cameras, Mi notebook mobile computers (NIS 3,200-4,500), backpacks, smart watches, etc.
The Xiaomi brand is eight years old. Its logo is an combination of the words for mobile and Internet, with the price engraved on its flag. Israel is its third largest market. According to figures published recently by GFK, Xiaomi has an 11.3% market share in the smartphone category, an impressive increase since 2016, when its market share was less than 5%.
Hemilton asserts that this figure has already increased to 14% and that Xiaomi is now the third most popular brand in Israel. Xiaomi has devices in a fairly broad price range for smartphones (NIS 500-2,000). The market shares include all the devices sold in Israel, including through parallel imports and through the importer, Hemilton, which manages the brand's commercial activity in Israel.
Another plan by Xiaomi is to augment its activity with the mobile phone operators and market supplementary products through them together with the mobile devices. "The goal is to strengthen and establish the brand in Israel, among other things through the store. Here we can have a direct connection with the consumer and test his or her preferances," says Hemilton commercial manager Eyal Aharoni.
Aharoni says that the prices in Israel "are close to the prices around the world (except for the prices in China)," adding, "Most of the Israeli public knows Xiaomi as a company that makes excellent smartphones at low prices, but this is a company with a portfolio of hundreds of products in a wide range of areas, most of which we will bring to Israel."
In addition to the robot vacuum cleaner, which will be sold at a 30% discount at next week's launch event, Hemilton promises an attractive discount on kick scooters, the Mi Box Streamer, and one of the smartphones that is a bestseller. Other discounts include a smart Mi Bank 2 bracelet with a backup battery charged with 5,000 amperes for NIS 29 (instead of NIS 204).
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 14, 2018
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