Xiaomi will start focusing on boosting its retail outlet sales in India, after focusing on e-commerce to revive its smartphone sales, after falling behind Samsung, said Xiaomi's India president, Muralikrishnan B., on Friday. E-commerce sales in India have shown an increase in the past years, which helped Xiaomi expand in the market, with 600 million smartphone users. Despite online smartphone sales in India reaching 44 percent, physical stores remain the biggest play and Xiaomi expects it to grow even more "Our market position in offline is substantially lower than what it is online, offline is where you have other competitors who have been executing fairly well and have a larger market share," said Xiaomi's India president. Xiaomi's unit sales in India from retail stores reached 34 percent, while the rest were online, while Samsung's retail sales on the other hand reached 57 percent. The company is planning an expansion to its store network, which is currently 18,000, and a partnership with phone vendors to offer other products, like Xiaomi's TVs and security cameras, Muralikrishnan added. Xiaomi also plans to hire more store promoters, who lure, pitch, and sell phones to prospective buyers at outlets, with a target of 12,000 promoters by the end of next year.
