Update: Xiaomi India has officilly confirmed to us that Xiaomi will continue to sell the Mi 11 Lite 4G in India and the below report is false. Further, the company has also confirmed that if/when the 5G variant of the Mi 11 Lite comes to India, it will not discontinue the 4G model of the smartphone.
Xiaomi’s Mi 11 Lite, an upper mid-range smartphone that was launched just over a month ago, appears to be heading towards its grave already. Dubbed to be the ‘Slimmest smartphone of 2021’ when launched, the Mi 11 Lite comes with a 90Hz AMOLED display, a Snapdragon 732G chipset, and a triple-camera setup with a 64MP primary sensor.
A report from a tipster Abhishek Yadav suggests that the world’s second-largest mobile maker, Xiaomi has already halted the production of the Mi 11 Lite in India. He also goes on to claim that the company intends to launch the 5G variant of the device in India soon.
Xiaomi is yet to officially announce this in India, the Mi 11 Lite can still be bought from online channels. If Xiaomi is planning to introduce the 5G variant, discontinuing the 4G device seems to be an extreme move as the Mi 11 Lite recorded some great sales numbers.
The Mi 11 Lite is Xiaomi’s costliest device in its category, while its competitors are looking to introduce 5G smartphones under 7000 INR, the Mi 11 Lite is a 4G only device, at least for now.
In the price category just a little north of 20,000 INR, most brands including Xiaomi are focusing on offering 5G connectivity as default, the launch of the Mi 11 Lite raised a lot of eyebrows due to it featuring only 4G support.
Xiaomi has launched both the 4G and 5G variants of the Mi 11 Lite in China. Discontinuing the 4G variant in less than two months of its launch and rumors of the 5G variant being released instead may hurt users who have already purchased the 4G variant of the Mi 11 Lite. Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 10 Lineup is also a 4G-only lineup and is available at a much lesser price which just makes matters worse.
There were rumors that Xiaomi may be forced to discontinue the Mi 11 Lite variant in China owing to a chipset shortage as the Snapdragon 780 that powers it is in short supply.
Assuming Xiaomi does bring the Mi 11 Lite 5G to India, we can expect it to retail at a price point of 26,500 INR for the 8GB+128GB variant and 29,900 INR for the 8GB+256GB variant.
If Xiaomi plans to go with an aggressive approach with the pricing and replaces the 4G variant with the 5G variant without tinkering the pricing much, it could not only irk the current users but also will end up competing with the Mi 10T, a 5G device that launched 6 months ago.
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