Between 2018 and 2020, one brand owned the Indian smartphone market with a grip that Nokia and Samsung could never have imagined. It came from China. It sold phones online for half the price of comparable rivals. It crashed Flipkart’s servers on launch day. And it built a community of fans who genuinely called themselves Mi fans.
That brand was Xiaomi. In 2018, its market share in India hit 29% — eleven percentage points ahead of Samsung in second place. It had already destroyed homegrown Indian brands like Micromax and Lava. It looked unstoppable.
Then the Enforcement Directorate came knocking. ₹5,551 crore was seized. India’s CEO resigned. Anti-China sentiment after the Galwan clash tore into sales. Competitors that Xiaomi had built — Poco, Realme, iQOO — started eating its own market share. By 2022, Xiaomi had slipped to fourth place in India, holding just 14% of a market it once dominated.
This is the complete Xiaomi story — the rise, the India conquest, the regulatory battles, the strategic missteps, and the pivot into EVs and AI that is shaping the company’s next chapter.
Submitted May 6, 2026 at 10:20PM by Old-Professional3481 https://ift.tt/AyiDWrU
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