China's Xiaomi Aims Its Priciest Phone at Huawei and Apple

(Bloomberg) -- Xiaomi Corp. really wants to shed its down-market image. China's No. 2 smartphone maker is counting on its most expensive device yet to face off against Huawei Technologies Co. and Apple Inc. at home while carving out a bigger footprint in Europe.

The Chinese smartphone maker on Thursday unveiled the MIX 3, the fourth generation of a series introduced in 2016. Xiaomi's latest effort to acquire a premium gloss features a bezel-less 6.4-inch screen, Qualcomm Inc. processors and slick ceramic body. It now sports front-facing cameras on a sliding structure nestled behind the screen, doing away with the notch popularized by the iPhone.

The device will go on sale from November starting at 3,299 yuan ($475) and going all the way up to 4,999 yuan for a “Forbidden City” special edition. It marks Chairman Lei Jun's effort to make greater headway into a more profitable premium market dominated by Apple, Samsung Electronics Co. and -- to an increasing extent -- Chinese rival Huawei. That's where customers have deeper pockets to pay for services such as music and games that Xiaomi deems the future of its business.

Beijing-based Xiaomi is trying to steal market share from Huawei, the leader in China -- especially in the 3,000 yuan-plus market thanks to its P and Mate series gadgets. It also wants to build a bigger presence in Europe, a stepping stone to the U.S. Both are vital to sustaining its pace of revenue growth. Xiaomi disclosed Thursday that phone shipments for the year had surpassed 100 million units -- overtaking 2017's total -- but much of that would have come from cheaper models in India and elsewhere.

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“We've been focusing on our internal capabilities this year, in preparation for future competition,” Lei told reporters and industry executives gathered within the Forbidden City, the centuries-old former imperial palace at the heart of Beijing. “The biggest brands are heavily invested in cameras and AI. It's those areas that will decide the top-tier vendors and smaller players.”

The MIX 3 will sport the usual AI-powered bells and whistles, such as auto-background blur for selfies. Xiaomi's marquee device also sports an AMOLED screen, Snapdragon 845 chipset and 24-megapixel front-facing dual camera. But it may have a ways to go to wrest interest from Apple's and Huawei's latest models -- Lei on Thursday mostly pitted the MIX 3 against the older iPhone X and Huawei's P20.

Regardless, Xiaomi needs the MIX 3 to be a hit. The smartphone vendor wrapped up a $5.4 billion initial public offering in July, only to find itself under intense scrutiny from investors over valuations comparable to higher-growth internet giants such as Facebook Inc. Pressured further by the uncertainty surrounding U.S.-Chinese tensions, Xiaomi has lost roughly $13 billion or about a quarter of its market value since its debut.

“It's something worth looking out for even if the MIX range is not going to bring in meaningful revenue for a long time,” said Nicole Peng, senior research director of Canalys. “It is to showcase how much R&D capability Xiaomi has got in its pocket.”

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Gao Yuan in Beijing at ygao199@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Robert Fenner at rfenner@bloomberg.net, Edwin Chan

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With assistance from Editorial Board