In 2018 Xiaomi became the #1 smartphone vendor in both India and Spain. Today Xiaomi launched two new smartphones during their MWC keynote with one that will launch in Europe in May with 5G. Like Huawei's keynote yesterday, Xiaomi just couldn't resist hitting Apple. They laughed at the iPhone XS Max's high price, its crazy slow wireless charging and low DxOMark camera scores for photos and video.

Xiaomi's new Flagship smartphone is called the Mi 9 and the price chart below shows that Xiaomi is lowest price for a premium smartphone. Their 64GB version sell for 449€ (US$510) and their 128GB version sells for 499€ (US$566). At the bottom of the list is the iPhone XS Max 64GB version for 1259€

Every year as students enter the smartphone world, price for a quality smartphone is going win out over high priced iPhones in Europe, Canada and Asia.

Apple rudely woke up to this factor last quarter and Apple went into high gear to discount their new iPhones by offering higher than usual trade-in values in December and moved like lightning right out of the gate in January in China.

Apple's COO Jeff Williams briefly spoke at North Carolina Elon University on Friday. During the Q&A session one student asked whether Apple had any plans to reduce its prices, and cited a report claiming the iPhone X costs as little as $370 to make but retails for just under $1,000.

In-part, Williams replied that "Analysts don’t really understand the cost of what we do and how much care we put into making our products."

The "how much we care" aspect of the reply was an odd one in context to justifying high consumer pricing. Whether that answer really satisfied many of the student's resentment to sky high prices is unknown.

Xiaomi understands the frustration that many Apple and Samsung fans are having around the world with never ending higher prices. So they presented a slide, as shown below, that showed the company's priorities and value structure with #4 being honest pricing and Value for your Money.

The Mi 9 Camera

Cameras are one of the most important features in smartphones and everyone at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow is focusing on delivering more cameras and special features to their respective cameras.

Xiaomi showed two DxOMark Mobile score slides (as shown below) so that there was a solid basis for their stating that their camera is one of the top five in photos and #1 in video. Both scrores where higher than Apple's scores.

Wireless Charging

In our Huawei MWC keynote report posted yesterday we presented two slides with Huawei proudly showing off their new wireless SuperCharge feature that they claim is 600% faster than charging an iPhone XS Max.

Today, Xiaomi pounded home that same message of how far behind the iPhone XS Max is in contrast to Xiaomi's new Mi 9 with the world's first 20W wireless fast charger.

Xiaomi's Mi Mix 3 – 5G Smartphone

Xiaomi, who has only been in business for 8 years, according to Wang Xiang, SVP Xiaomi Global Business, will have the jump on Apple with 5G as expected. This will strengthen the company's position in Europe and Asia in 2019. Their new Mi Mix 3 will be launching sometime in May as noted below for 599€ (US$680).

Full Xiaomi MWC 2019 Keynote

The full MWC 2019 keynote from this morning is presented below where Xiaomi introduces themselves to Europe and their first keynote at MWC. Other things that you'll find is Qualcomm making a brief presentation talking about 5G and Machine Learning in their processors that fuel Xiaomi's new smartphones. Xiaomi also announced that they've teamed up with IKEA in Europe to sell their IoT products. Xiaomi is going to make a big push into products for smart homes fueled with 5G.

Xiaomi also spent some time talking about a new holographic finish on the Mi MIX3's back panel which, in my opinion, is the ugliest blue rainbow color effect that seems to be crazy popular in China.

Lastly, there was no official word of when Xiaomi could be coming to the U.S. as it's pretty clear that they're currently focused on widening their footprint in Europe.  

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