Where to buy Xiaomi Singapore?

Beijing based Chinese electronics company is quite popular with its mobile phones and tablets such as Mi series mobile phones, Redmi series budget mobile phones and Mi Note Series. Singapore is an important country in Xiaomi's history. When founded in 2010, Singaporean government-owned investment company Temasek Holdings was one of the institutional inverstors in the first round of funding. In 2014 Xiaomi announced its expansion outside China, with their first stop in Singapore.  Xiaomi's Redmi and Mi3 phone were released in Singapore on 21 February – 7 March 2014.

You can buy Xiaomi products in Singapore through several mediums. First, you can buy Xiaomi online through e-commerce companies. For example Lazada, a Singaporean e-commerce company, sells Xiaomi products online. You can check here : Lazada Xiaomi Mobile.

Xiaomi also sells its products online through MI Singapore page.

And last but not the least, Xiaomi also has a retail store which is located in Suntec City. This Xiaomi Singapore store is first full fledged retail store outside of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.  This store is not 100 per cent run by Xiaomi, It is a collaborative effort with Singapore's current go-to tech e-commerce site Lazada, which will manage the sales. This is a good place to get your hands on latest Xiaomi products but some cool products that is usually reserved for sale in China cannot be found here (such as Mi Drones, Notebook Air, 4K Mi TV and Mi rice cookers ).

Xiaomi Singapore store is first full fledged retail store outside of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Xiaomi MiPhone 3 (Mi-3) in Singapore on March 7

Xiaomi's flagship smartphone, Xiaomi MiPhone 3,  will be available in Singapore from March 7 for just S$419 (US$332). Xiaomi offers cheap but high quality smartphones which come with highly customizable MIUI software. Xiaomi Mi-3 was released in September 2013 in China and later in Hong Kong and Taiwan. This will be its first release outside Greater China (China, Hong Kong and Taiwan) region.

Xiaomi will open a service center for Singapore customers in The Centreal shopping mall. To commemorate the launch in Singapore, the company has created a software theme (see below) with Singapore-centric app icons and an image of the city's skyline for the wallpaper.

The Mi 3 TD features Nvidia’s quad-core Tegra 4 clocked at 1.8Ghz, along with a 5-inch 1080p display. The Mi 3 WCDMA version, on other hand, features Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 CPU.  Nifty ‘premium features’ include things like a 13MP dual flash camera with a Sony Exmor sensor, NFC, dual-band Wi-Fi, and all these components are encased in ‘three layers of graphite.’

Xiaomi Redmi sold out in Singapore in 8 minutes

Xiaomi's Redmi smartphomes are sold out in just 8 minutes in Singapore as it happened in its launches in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The company has released unadvertised number of Redmi midrange handsets today at 12:00 pm. "Dear Mi fans, we're sold out for #Redmi - in just 8 minutes!" said the company. "As this is the first time we're selling in Singapore, we wanted to learn more about the market behaviour, sales reaction, and optimise our business processes (e-commerce, logistics, customer support). We understand that many of you are eager to purchase a Redmi still, so we are working hard to bring in more products for you. We'll announce our next round of sales shortly. For those who have successfully placed an order, we are getting your orders fulfilled and you will be getting your #Redmi soon."

Xiaomi's S$169 Redmi offers exceptional value for its low price and provides a cheap Android smartphone without having to compromise on performance. The Xiaomi Singapore Facebook fan page is full of complaints about issues including messages like "order creation error" and those who managed to pay through PayPal but Xiaomi's Web site displaying the order as "unpaid".

Xiaomi is known to release very limited supply to create the illusion of high and crazy demand. According to CNet Asia, there are already Xiaomi Redmi listings on local auction sites.

M1, SingTel and StarHub will be offering the Xiaomi Redmi for sale in Singapore with plans for as low as S$0.

Xiaomi's Redmi smartphomes are sold out in just 8 minutes in Singapore

Xiaomi in Singapore

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi (小米科技 meaning Little rice in Chinese) has been a great hit in mainland China with its beautiful smartphones having very good specs but very budget prices. For example latest Xiaomi Mi3 smartphone is sold for only 2000 yuan (420 SGD) which is less than half what a typical high-end smartphone without contract would cost in Singapore.

2013 has been a great year for Xiaomi. The budget smartphone maker has sold 18.7 million phones in 2013 and is expected to overtake Apple's share in the market. In August 2013, they have announced that they were hiring Hugo Barra from Google where he served as vice president of product management for the Android platform. (A little tabloid news: This came after the revelation that Google co-founder Sergey Brin was in a relationship with Barra's ex-girlfriend).

And Mr. Barra gave the good news in his Google+ account: Xiaomi is planning to expand into Singapore so we would be able to buy Xiaomi phones here. Before a photo (see below) bearing the words "Hello Singapore" was posted onto their Hong Kong and Taiwan Facebook pages of Xiaomi.

"It's finally official — Xiaomi is coming to Singapore!  Details coming soon..." wrote Hugo Barra in his Google+ account.

Xiaomi Singapore Facebook page have been created in May 2013, three months before Hugo Barra came, so Xiaomi may be eyeing Singapore expansion for some time.[3] No Singaoire Xiaomi launch date details are given yet.

Xiaomi says "Hello Singapore" in a recent post to Facebook.

Singapore expansion, according to Tech In Asia [1], will test the company’s chops in a market in which consumers have higher incomes on average. It also will be branching out from exclusively Chinese-speaking markets into a multi-lingual market. According to Oo Gin Lee[2], Xiaomi's entry into Singapore market may be a potentially distruptive force for Singapore telcos. This is because Xiaomi is priced significantly lower than comparable high-end smartphones and will provide an alternative to those who would like to buy a nice smartphone without tying themselves up to a 2 years telco contract.

For those hanging on their old 3G data plans to not loose 12 GB plans of the past, Xiaomi will provide a great alternative. Anyway, Xiaomi Mi3 does not support 4G yet.

Xiaomi Mi3, the latest Xiaomi smartphone, sports Quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 4 (the world's first 1.8Ghz
Quad-core processor), 5-inch full-HD IPS Sharp/LG display (with standard 16:9 Full HD resolution), a 13-megapixel camera with dual LED flash and a 3050mAh lithium-ion battery.

Xiaomi Mi3, the latest model of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi. The company, which was set up just 3 years ago,
is known for selling top-notch handsets at bargain prices [3].

[1] - China’s Xiaomi confirms it will bring its smartphones to Singapore this year
[2] - Digital Life The Straits Times, I am waiting to tuck into some Xiaomi
[3] - China’s Xiaomi confirms it will bring its smartphones to Singapore this year