In this age of high-end digital devices and ‘Apple Tax’ it makes a refreshing change to hear a company who are willing to make a bit of a sacrifice to get their next generation phone on the market!
Lei Jun Xiaomi’s CEO spoke yesterday about how his Beijing based phone and software company will actually be making a loss on every Xiaomi M2phone they sell for the first few months of production!
According to Lei Jun the Xiaomi M2 with its Qualcomm 1.5Ghz quad-core cpu, 2GB RAM, and top of the range 8 mega-pixel rear camera actually costs the company 2350 Yuan ($370) however as he is expecting suppliers prices to drop over the course of the Xiaomi M2’s lifetime will be selling the second generation phone at 1999 Yuan ($313).
Gizchina News of the week
The high manufacturing costs are also due to some of the Xiaomi M2’s advanced voice recognition software which is licensed from China’s iFLYTEK which is supposed to be a much better voice assistant than Apple’s Siri for Chinese language users. Then there is Xiaomi’s new cloud storage platform which has boosted costs along with the development of MIUI 4.1 which is based on Android Jelly Bean.
So while we thought the Xiaomi M2 was an absolute bargain when it launched last week, we now know this amazing phone is actually one of the best buys for 2012!
While all of this is great news for Xiaomi fans and those hoping to by a Xiaomi M2 once it is available in October, this low price and the hope for supplier prices to drop could mean that the M2 will see its price sit at 1999 Yuan up until the launch of the Xiaomi M3 this time next year!
But i wonder who in online sales or pre-order would be willing to offer it for that price….
its already on pre-order at Fastcardtech… but the price is 369$. 🙁
You beat me to the FCT price comment @LucifeL. I think this phone will be better than the iphone 5. What do you all think? I can’t wait to get my hands on this, and one of the cheap dual core phones (once I make my decision).
Hopefully I can help you get hold of one at the Chinese RRP (plus shipping) but we’ll have to wait and see when the M2 will be available. The M1s it going to have the same lottery launch as the original M1….