Xiaomi enters water purifier market, while disrupting TV biz with 4 new models

18th September 2019
Xiaomi enters  water purifier market, while disrupting TV biz with 4 new models
From left Manu Jain (Managing Director), Raghu Reddy ( head of category sales) and Sudeep Sahu ( Product Manager), Xiaomi India, at the launch event in Bangalore on September 17 2019

Bangalore, September 17, 2019: Older readers may recall a classic Tata advertisement  whose catchline was "We also make steel",  pointing at the very wide categories of business carried out by the company.  
Maybe Xiaomi,  should do likewise and say: "We also make smartphones" -- because the  top selling phone brand in India is these days  into a number of consumer products  from  security cameras to  routers, to  air purifiers to health wearables to television sets. 
It has rapidly become the India’s number one smart TV brand , having sold some 3 million since 2018 when it launched sales in this country.
Yesterday in a national launch here,   Xiaomi  unveiled  4 new TV models, as well as a new edition of its Mi Band health wearable and an innovative new water purifier product...all  touting the Smarter Living mantra..
The  flagship television set is Mi TV 4X (65) is with a large 163.9cm HDR LED display with Xiaomi’s in-house VPE (Vivid Picture Engine) which upscales a  standard 24 Hz ( frames per second) to60 Hz, 'reading between the lines"..Also unveiled were Mi TV 4X (50), Mi TV 4X (43), both 4K TVs as well as  a 43 inch HD TV.These new Mi TVs come with a redesigned version of PatchWall --0 a collection of OTT channels,  based on Android 9 Pie,  that includes  Netflix and Amazon Prime. The series is also the first in the world to come with Google’s Data Saver Mode which effectively triples the amount of video one can watch with a given data package. The TV prices for all models are disruptive: Mi TV 4X (65): Rs 54,999, Mi TV 4X (50) Rs 29,999, Mi TV 4X (43)Rs  24,999and Mi TV 4A (40) Rs 17,999... all available at Mi.com and thro e-commerce  partners, Amazon or Flipkart from September 29.
Xiaomi also announced a category-first and India-only product - Mi Smart Water Purifier (RO+UV), thus marking entry into the water purifier category, with a starkly minimalist product, which for the first time monitors the input and output water quality with Total Dissolved Solids(TDS)meters  and makes replacement of the three filter cartridges a  plug-n-play, DIY cinch. It costs Rs 11,999 from September 29
Also launched yesterday,  version 4 of Mi Smart Band for Rs 2299 from September 19,with new features, including a full touchscreen colour AMOLED display, new smart actions and 5ATM water resistance.