While admitting that supplies of an important component for TV production has suffered a blow due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the Chinese giant Xiaomi has just confirmed that the impact of the epidemic on the smartphone business in India will be minimal.
Coronavirus: The impact on Xiaomi smartphone production will be minimal in India
This is due to the "exceptional work" in supply management carried out by the supply chain team and the company's partners, Xiaomi Chief Operating Officer Muralikrishnan B told the Indian newspaper IANS.
Although there has been an impact on our supply chain, Xiaomi realizes that India is a very important market. That's why we make sure that the current conditions do not adversely affect us regarding smartphones, which is why we will continue to launch new smartphones in India.
Muralikrishnan B.
Among the uncertainties of the market, the brand has in fact just presented two new smartphones in India, the Notes redmi 9 Pro and 9 Pro Max. Two devices that support the navigation system developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), or the NavIC.
In January, the head of ISRO, dr. K Sivan had announced a partnership with Qualcomm to provide better navigation systems using the NavIC satellite system in India. At the Qualcomm event, the global vice president of Xiaomi, Manu Kumar Jain and the CEO of Realme India, Madhav Sheth, confirmed that they will "work closely" with the chipmaker to introduce phones with the new chips, starting with the Snapdragon 720G.
“For us, the addition of NavIC reflects our commitment to the Indian market in providing new technologies with better localization capabilities. NavIC technology is a feature built into the chipset and necessary for proper operation, "said Muralikrishnan.
Qualcomm chipsets with NavIC support will be the Snapdragon 720G, 662 and 460. These new chipsets also support WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1, along with faster 4G speeds.
Muralikrishnan B. also stated that “Different smartphones are made with a different target in mind and therefore each must choose the right balance between power, display quality and battery. It would be wrong for me to say that each device will support NavIC because it depends on the chipset that will be used. "
Finally, back to the TVs. Muralikrishnan B added that “However, there are some other categories such as televisions that have been affected due to the coronavirus epidemic, since the panels are imported from abroad. So since panels will take longer to arrive in India, this will have a big impact on production. "
