Xiaomi unveils MiPad tablet

Fast-growing Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Technology Co Thursday launched its own tablet in its home market where Apple's iPad has maintained the leading position in the tablet market since its introduction.

The company claimed on its official Weibo account Thursday that the 7.9-inch Xiaomi tablet, dubbed "MiPad," features better performance than the same-sized iPad mini with Retina display and costs less.

During the press conference held in Beijing Thursday, Xiaomi revealed that the price tag of the 16GB MiPad is 1,499 yuan ($239.99), compared with the 2,888 yuan of the 16GB iPad mini with Retina display.

Analysts, however, said that like many other peers, the Android-based MiPad can hardly attract a lot of users away from iPad.

"Even though Android-based tablets including Xiaomi's tablet can be equipped with the highest-end hardware, they would still lose the battle in terms of operating system. Apple's iOS is more optimized and stable than Android, which was developed by US Internet company Google, and offers a better user experience," said Xiang Ligang, chief executive of telecom industry portal cctime.com.

In the Chinese market, Apple's iPad maintained the top position with 61.5 percent of market share by sales in the fourth quarter of last year, followed by Samsung's Android-based tablets with 11.61 percent, according to data from Beijing-based market research firm Analysys International. Lenovo came in at third place with 5.68 percent.

"Apple's dominance in the market cannot be defied in the foreseeable future," especially given that Chinese makers have not been fully determined to make sizeable investments in the tablet business, Xiang told the Global Times Thursday.

The worldwide sales of Android-based tablets made up 61.9 percent of market share in 2013, far larger than the 36 percent held by the iOS-operating iPad, according to Gartner, while a report by US-headquartered Chitika Insights said that iPad accounted for 81 percent of overall tablet usage in North America in the third quarter.

At the conference, Xiaomi stated that its MiPad would be the best user-friendly Android-based tablet.

Compared with some other Android-based tablets, MiPad might feature more advanced hardware, but this actually cannot provide a significant distinctive experience at the user level, said Xiang.

"Therefore, price-sensitive Chinese consumers would likely turn to cheaper tablets developed by its rivals such as Lenovo. Generally speaking, a 16GB Android-run tablet costs from 800 yuan to 1,000 yuan in the Chinese market," he noted.

Cao Yujie, director at CCW Research, told the Global Times that it is hard to say whether MiPad is the best, but having amassed a lot of fans with its smartphone series and successful marketing, Xiaomi can get a big piece of the tablet market in the future.

Having begun as an Internet startup in the spring of 2010, Xiaomi has taken the mobile phone industry by storm since its announcement of the Xiaomi phone with its proprietary MIUI operating system in just two short years.

The sales of Xiaomi's smartphones hit 18.7 million in 2013, up 160 percent year-on-year, said Lei Jun, Xiaomi's CEO, in January.

Analysts are concerned that the tablet scenario is largely different from the smartphone roadmap. "The company still needs time to further optimize its Android-based MIUI OS, originally developed for its phones, to work well on its tablet. It also takes lots of efforts to develop sufficient applications for tablet," said Xiang.

According to the company, currently, 100 apps and 400 games are available for MiPad. The number of apps is expected to reach 1,000 by the end of this year.