Watch out, Malaysia: Xiaomi has just officially announced its arrival in the country, bringing high-quality products at prices that promise to shake the industry. Starting with its high-end smartphone, the Mi 3, and its high-capacity Mi Power Bank, this marks the start of only the second international market Xiaomi has entered.
For the most part, the launch event here for members of the media is largely more of a formality: Xiaomi have already announced plenty of information as early as two weeks ago, before periodically providing more information in the lead-up to today’s launch event. We already know that the Chinese company is bringing in two products – the Mi 3 flagship and the 10,400mAh Mi Power Bank – for its initial sales tomorrow. We also know that the Redmi was coming soon, while Xiaomi has plans to bring in other products in the future.
Thankfully, there were at least more information that Xiaomi had to share earlier today. Chief among them is that the Redmi 1S – the updated variant of the hugely popular Redmi, with a Qualcomm chip – will be coming to Malaysia in June. On the other hand, the flagship Mi 3 will also be coming to the Big 3 of local telcos – DiGi, Maxis and Celcom.
And then, there are the other products. Xiaomi co-founder Bin Lin and Xiaomi Global VP Hugo Barra both reiterated that Xiaomi is working “super hard” to bring in the company’s other products, including the Redmi Note, the Mi Pad and yes, even the non-mobile products: the Mi Wi-Fi Router, Mi Wi-Fi Router Mini and possibly the Mi Box and Mi TV 2, too – though logistics and content rights issues could scupper any hopes of that happening.
In the meantime, judging from the reception and intense interest Xiaomi has gotten since its arrival here two weeks ago, you can expect that both the Mi 3 and the Mi Power Bank to sell out in record time once more. Any predictions on how many seconds it’ll take for the devices to sell out here?
