India is a huge market for Xiaomi where it has sold over 800,000 smart phones since its arrival in July. Before the year is out, the aggressive Chinese brand was slapped by a court order to cease imports and sales of its smart phones until February 2015. This is due to Ericsson’s allegation that Xiaomi has infringed 8 of its patents on 3G, EDGE and AMR technologies.
Xiaomi and its online retail partner Flipkart were ordered to provide details of its revenues made so far. If the court’s outcome goes in favour for Ericsson, Xiaomi might possibly follow MicroMax’s predicament of paying 1% of its retail price royalty.
To date, Xiaomi has been doing quite well with its Mi 3 and Redmi 1S handset and they have already captured more than 1% market share in India. Unlike in Malaysia where 5,000 to 8,000 smart phones take a few minutes to sold out, Xiaomi India enjoys having tens of thousands being snapped up in just a matter of seconds. Most recently they had sold out 75,000 units of its Redmi Note in just 8 seconds. As result, Xiaomi had to move stocks from other markets just to fulfil the huge demand.
