Xiaomi Mi 10 / Pro To Benchmark Against Huawei Mate / P and iPhone

Yesterday, the Xiaomi Mi 10 and 10 Pro were officially released. For Xiaomi, this is the first product that really hits the high-end market.

The starting price of Xiaomi Mi 10 at 3,999 yuan ($573) is 1,000 yuan more than last year’s Xiaomi Mi 9. The Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro has reached the 4,999 yuan ($716) price tag, setting a new starting price for Xiaomi’s flagship machine.

Regarding pricing, Lei Jun believes that 3999 yuan is not expensive. He compared the pricing of the Xiaomi Mi 10 series with the same series of Huawei and iPhone. In the same configuration, Xiaomi still offers the lowest price.

Lei Jun said that the previous users of Xiaomi smartphones were young people. And after entering the high-end market, they should meet the requirements of smartphone enthusiasts as well as business-class users.

Business people have strong purchasing power and have many different requirements for product design. Xiaomi’s design and color matching on the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro are relatively stable. And it has also made a clamshell protective case that business people like most.

Chang Cheng, vice president of Xiaomi, said that after the Redmi brand became independent, the Xiaomi brand will go high-end. Xiaomi’s Pro series should be benchmarked against the Huawei Mate series. At the same time, the original Mi series will be benchmarked against Huawei’s P series. And at last, the MIX series will benchmark the iPhone.

It is reported that Xiaomi decomposed the smartphone into five major items three years ago, including screen, sound quality, camera, performance, experience, and began to benchmark rivals. Then, it began beating them one by one.

Xiaomi Mi 10 R$D Exceeds 1 Billion Yuan ($0.14 billion)

Behind this is a large amount of investment in research and development. The research and development costs of the Xiaomi Mi 10 series are as high as 1 billion yuan ($0.14 billion). It took Xiaomi three years to make a smartphone topping the DXOMark list. And it took another year to become the first at DXOMark in terms of audio.

Lei Jun revealed that in the future, the Xiaomi brand will focus on high-end products. Thus, it will not particularly pursue sales and will spend huge sums of money on high-end products every year. It is estimated that R&D investment will reach 10 billion yuan ($1.43 billion) in 2020 and 50 billion yuan ($7.16 billion) in the next five years.