Chinese tech significant Xiaomi on Monday stated it has partnered with Hyderabad-primarily based Radiant Appliances as it ramps up production of its wise TVs in the nation.
The move comes ahead of Xiaomi’s foray into the premium QLED Television segment in India.
Xiaomi India Category Lead (Smart Television) Eashwar Nilakantan stated when the business had launched its wise TVs in 2018, there had been two crucial trends – Internet tariffs had been receiving more affordable and speed was quicker, and there was a proliferation of content.
“Since then, we have already sold over 5 million smart TVs and continue to be No. 1 in the segment. Last year, we started with 4K TVs and that has also seen strong growth. In the pandemic, content consumption has gone up drastically and people are also looking for movie theatre-like experiences at home,” he told PTI.
With the QLED Television, Xiaomi desires to provide premium viewing expertise to consumers, he added.
While Nilakantan did not disclose specifics of the pricing, he stated the initial 55-inch QLED Television will be launched on December 16.
QLED (Quantum Light-Emitting Diode) TVs are like common LED TVs but provide far better colour and brightness than LED. Nilakantan stated the QLED TVs will be manufactured in India like its other wise TVs.
“We had Dixon as a contract manufacturing partner for our TVs and recently, we signed up with another partner – Radiant Appliances and this will further augment our capacity as we start offering our ‘Made in India’ QLED TVs,” he added. He, nonetheless, did not comment on the production capacity.
He noted that the QLED market place in India is at a nascent stage, accounting for about .5 per cent (about 60,000 units) of the 12 million units Television market place in India.
“The QLED TV for India has been built ground up here, keeping in mind the needs of customers here… We are hopeful that we will be able to double the market of QLED TVs in the next one year,” Nilakantan added.
A quantity of smartphone players such as Realme, OnePlus, Micromax and Motorola have added wise TVs to their item portfolios to compete against giants like Samsung, LG and Sony in the Television segment.
According to Counterpoint Research, shipments of TVs in India grew 15 per cent annually to attain the highest-ever 15 million units in 2019, and the development was primarily driven by price range wise TVs, with 32-inch TVs the major segment.
The report had noted that wise Television was the quickest-expanding segment, expanding 25 per cent year-on-year.
The wise Television market place in India was largely driven by brands like Xiaomi, Samsung, and emerging tail brands such as TCL, Vu and other folks, which are leveraging their expanding channel presence each on the internet and offline to target new customers and upgrade customers, the report added.