NEW DELHI: Xiaomi once sold one in every four smartphones in India. By 2025, it had fallen out of the country’s top five brands. The reversal marks one of the steepest declines in India’s smartphone market, as rivals moved into premium devices and strengthened their offline retail networks.
At its peak in 2021, the company shipped over 40 million smartphones in India—the highest-ever annual tally for a single brand in the country, according to International Data Corp. (IDC). Samsung India, its nearest rival, sold 28 million devices that year.
Xiaomi led India’s smartphone market for five consecutive years from 2017 to 2022.
From peak to slide
By 2025, Xiaomi shipped just 13.7 million devices, according to data from IDC.
Electronics, retail and manufacturing consultants said the fall was driven by three factors—government crackdowns in 2022, leadership exits in 2023 and 2024, and failure to keep pace with premiumization. The latter, they said, also underscores how brand stickiness can determine long-term growth.
The April 2022 Enforcement Directorate-related crackdown was widely seen as affecting brand perception, along with the exits of India chiefs Manu Jain in January 2023 and Muralikrishnan Balakrishnan in November 2024.
In FY22, Xiaomi India reported ₹39,099 crore in revenue and ₹1,058 crore in net profit, according to filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs accessed via Tofler. This accounted for 10.2% of its parent’s global revenue of ₹3.8 trillion.
By FY25, revenue had fallen to ₹23,977 crore and net income to ₹262.5 crore, down over ₹15,000 crore in four years, reducing its share of global revenue to 3.8% of ₹6.37 trillion.
The premium problem
The biggest beneficiaries of this decline have been Apple and BBK Electronics-owned brands Vivo, Oppo and Realme—Xiaomi’s main rivals in India’s smartphone market.
In 2025, Vivo, Oppo and Realme held a combined 42.5% market share in India’s smartphone market, as per IDC data. Vivo led with over 29.5 million shipments, up from 25.1 million in 2021. Oppo rose to 20.2 million from 17.8 million over the same period. Realme fell from 24.2 million to 15 million, becoming the second major brand after Xiaomi to see sustained erosion.
Apple’s rise was the most pronounced, with sales increasing to 14.5 million units in 2025 from 4.5 million in 2021, reflecting a shift toward premium devices, said Navkendar Singh, associate vice-president at IDC India.
“Xiaomi’s flagships in the Ultra series are more for brand presence, and no one looking for phones in price ranges of ₹1 lakh or thereabouts would buy it over an Apple iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy flagship. In fact, Vivo and Oppo did well to push their premium-segment smartphones to brick-and-mortar retailers early on, while Xiaomi failed to keep up with this shift,” Singh said.
He added that nearly 70% of Oppo's overall sales come from physical retail stores. Xiaomi, for the longest time, was very online-dependent.
India saw 152 million new smartphones sold through 2025, with Vivo leading ahead of Samsung, Oppo, Realme and Apple rounding out the top five. Xiaomi dropped out of the top five for the first time since 2015 and ranked sixth with a 9% share, according to IDC India.
The impact extended to manufacturing, said Gopal Nadadur, senior vice-president for South Asia at The Asia Group. “While Xiaomi started its localization journey on the right foot, it did not ramp up its local manufacturing presence with the kind of tight-knit relations with contract manufacturers the way a fellow brand such as Vivo did with the likes of Dixon Technologies.”
“At the same time, Xiaomi’s India margins have remained super thin—close to 1%, showing that a potential play to develop an ecosystem of electronics could not quite mature into a long-term strategy for it,” Nadadur added.
In response to Mint’s queries, Xiaomi in an emailed statement said that India “remains a key market for Xiaomi globally, and our commitment here is strong and long-term.”
“This is evident in the increased level of engagement and focus this year—through global leadership presence in India, a stronger product pipeline, and closer alignment with global launches. In a maturing market like India, looking at growth through volume alone no longer gives the full picture,” the statement, attributed to a Xiaomi India spokesperson, said.
The company added its strategy “is aligned with the Group’s overall strategy” and expects “growth moving from volume-led expansion to a more value-driven phase.”
Rishi Padhi, principal analyst at Gartner, said Xiaomi’s position reflects a lag in adapting to India’s premium shift. “As consumers lengthened their upgrade cycles and opted for more expensive devices supported by easy financing plans, Xiaomi struggled to break out of its budget-centric identity, whereas Vivo and Oppo successfully elevated their brand prestige—and that matters to a great degree,” he said.
The Xiaomi reset
For now, Xiaomi appears to be stabilizing. In September 2024, it appointed Lenovo veteran Sudhin Mathur as chief operating officer to reset its India strategy.
“It’s unlikely that Xiaomi will exit India, for even a 9% market share in a market as large as India is a significant business. For now, Xiaomi will likely continue on a self-sustaining note, and in the long run, possibly look to bring its ecosystem of tablets and audio products back into India again,” Singh said.
Xiaomi itself has begun repositioning beyond smartphones.
“Smartphones remain an important category, but not the only one,” the company said. “Over the years, we have evolved into a broader technology and ecosystem company…This allows us to address a wider set of needs…We are confident this approach supports sustainable growth going forward.”
Gartner’s Padhi said the shift is already underway globally. “I would expect Xiaomi to continue shifting away from a volume-driven approach to focus on long-term financial sustainability, through a value-for-experience pivot. They have already begun this strategic shift in its domestic market in China, and will soon replicate in international markets including India,” he said.
