Xiaomi’s second coming to the Philippines

It was three years ago when Xiaomi first entered the Philippine market. They were the crowd favorite for their innovative products and very affordable price points.

However, their online-only retail strategy did not pan out as the fast and competitive landscape in the Philippines meant they needed to release quick and sell fast every time they had a new announcement coming out of mainland China.

After a few attempts at putting pop-up stores to get people to know more about the brand and its products, the Manila operations quietly closed down and their very active Facebook fan page ceased posting updates.

Xiaomi devices are still available in the market but the service centers have slowly closed down as well and a few models are still being sold in stores, though none of them are the newer ones.

Any hope of having direct access again to an official Xiaomi product almost fizzled out when I met with Xiaomi representatives in Barcelona during MWC last February. A PR executive told me, however, that they’re coming back to the Philippines soon.

Little did I know that they’d been talking to a potential new distributor in the Philippines. This month, that partnership was officially confirmed by several sources.

The local group that will handle the brand has been going around, recruiting members for the marketing and PR team.

They’ve also put up a presence on Facebook and started taking orders for a few devices – the Redmi series, the Mi Note 2 and the gigantic flagship Mi Mix. There are also several other interesting gadgets like the Mi Robot Vacuum and the Xiaomi Ninebot Mini. 

There’s still very limited store presence at the moment since things are still being ironed out. The local partner is preparing to launch a concept store sometime in July or August.

There’s really no Xiaomi Philippines office like before but the local distributor will also be running the show and represent Xiaomi. And this time, the devices will be completely available in stores shelves and no more online-only exclusive sale. I’m also hoping that they’ll add more devices aside from smartphones. I’m sure people will love to get their hands on those Mi TVs and the electric scooter.

We should also expect them to bring in their latest flagship device which was announced last week, the Xiaomi Mi 6.

The Mi 6 is a mixed bag of goodness. It looks like the P10, and has a similar camera setup as the iPhone 7 Plus and the power of the Galaxy S8.

The Xiaomi Mi 6 starts at around P18,000 for the 64GB and P21,000  for the 128GB variant. There will also be a Mi 6 Ceramic model with a ceramic back panel and 128GB for P21,700. It will be available in black, blue and white.

Xiaomi Mi 6 specs

5.15-inch IPS LCD full HD display

4-sided 3D glass build (Ceramic model)

Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 2.45GHz  quad-core CPU

Adreno 540 GPU

6GB LPDDR4 RAM

64GB, 128GB internal storage

12MP dual rear cameras (wide-angle + telephoto)

8MP front-facing camera

WiFi 802.11ac

Bluetooth 5.0

Fingerprint scanner

Splash-resistant

4G+ up to 600Mbps download

GPS with aGPS Support, GLONASS

3350mAh Li-Ion battery with Quick Charge 3.0

Dual speakers

NFC with Mi Pay

Android 7.1 OS with MIUI 8.0