Xiaomi banks on retailers, dual camera to capture new users

Xiaomi, which once overturned China's smartphone market and gained world fame with its affordable and online-sold-only smartphones, is now catching up in boosting its presence in bricks-and- mortar stores.

The company launched a new handset named Redmi Pro featuring dual rear cameras on Wednesday in Beijing, which founder Lei Jun claimed could produce professional photos.

It also announced that the new smartphone will be available in more than 2,000 retail outlets, including Gome and Suning, across the country – a major departure for a company that once sold products exclusively online.

Di Jin, Research Manager of IDC China, said that there is an actual unmet need for better photos as smartphones are used very often to take photos in the country and this new Redmi Pro will help Xiaomi gain more customers.

But its dual-camera technologies are not mature enough and it's still to be seen whether people who want better photos will buy this kind of smartphone or go for Single Lens Reflex cameras, Jin added.

Rumors have been around for a long time that Apple will roll out dual-camera smartphones but there are no such products yet, which means the tech giant is more cautious, she added.

The rollout of upgraded Redmi products is in time as Xiaomi's high-end gadgets have failed to generate expected shipments in the first half year, resulting in last year's crown-holder being squeezed out of the club of global top five vendors, Jin said.

The company has sold 110 million units of Redmi smartphones since the brand was set up in August 2013 and could be labeled as a "national" smartphone, Lei Jun said at the launch ceremony.

"To put it another way, we sold 1.2 unit of Redmi smartphone in a second," Lei said.