Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi launched its first set of internet-based services in India on Wednesday by bringing in Mi Music and Mi Video.
Mi Music is Xiaomi’s pre-installed music app which offers an integrated music streaming service along with the ability to store offline music. Mi Video is Xiaomi’s pre-installed video app which provides integrated video streaming across platforms.
“Globally we have announced that we’ll cap our hardware profits at 5 per cent and distribute the rest to our fans. In terms of profitability our focus will be on services,” Manu Jain, Vice President, Xiaomi and Managing Director, Xiaomi India, told
Jain acknowledged that it is challenging to get Indian consumers to pay for online services but insisted that tides are turning already. “India is a very price conscious market but I do believe India is changing and will change over next 5-10 years, which is similar to any other market. Average ASP of smart phones is going up over the years. And similarly we are seeing paid subscriptions for content providers is increasing. The online music industry in India has already grown 50 per cent in the last one year and is expected to grow even more going ahead,” Jain said comparing India to where China was 4-5 years ago.
Mi Music and Mi Video are the first Internet services that Xiaomi has brought to India. Mi Music in India has nearly 7 million Daily Active Users. But with the launch, these users will not only be able to listen to their own music but a large library of online music stream.
Jain said this is only the first set of services and the company is already discussing proposition of bringing Mi Wallet to India, which is a digital wallet similar to Paytm. “We are considering bringing multiple services to India but not all services in China are suitable for the Indian market,” Jain said.
Mi Music now comes with Hungama Music, South Asia’s largest digital entertainment organization with more than 400 content partners across geographies and languages. Mi Music offers more than 10 million freemium tracks across 13 Indic language choices. The music service provides unlimited lifetime free music streaming service and the app allows users to integrate local music on the device. It also consists of new interesting features such as Dynamic Lyrics which offers users a “karaoke” song experience wherein users allow the lyrics to follow the song in a ‘Karaoke’ fashion and scroll through songs via lyrics. Users can also download music offline with Hungama Pro package within Mi Music, at Rs 899 per annum.
Speaking on the occasion, Neeraj Roy, Managing Director & CEO, Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. said, “We are committed to delivering the best of content with unlimited playlists to the highly engaged Mi Fan community and with this launch we take our partnership with Xiaomi to the next level. In the coming months we will bring more exciting features including gamification and continue to build on the rich user experience.”
Mi Video acts as an extension of what Xiaomi brought with its smart TVs. The 7 lakh hours of content that was made available on the MiTV will now also be available on the mobile through Mi Video, which is designed to be a platform for video content aggregation and a powerful local video player.
Mi Video content is powered by Hungama Play, SonyLiv and Voot currently, with more partners coming onboard soon. Currently, Mi Video offers more than 500,000 hours of content with nearly 80% free content. The service currently offers more than 12 video formats such as AVI, MP4, MOV, MKV, and MKA, MPEG, M2TS amongst others. It also supports multilingual subtitles, private folders, and multiple audio tracks. Mi Video also offers one tap cast to any Smart TV with DLNA and Miracast support.