Madhav Sheth Drops Another Hint About Realme’s IoT Plans

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  • Realme, as per a Counterpoint Research Report, grew 255 per cent over the last year
  • Xiaomi has also been focusing on its smartphone+AIoT strategy since the beginning of 2019

Madhav Sheth, CEO, Realme Mobiles, took to Twitter to announce that Realme is aiming to make 2020 bigger. He specifically mentioned about the combination of smartphones, IoT and Realme UI in the tweet.

“From a market share of three per cent in 2018 to 10 per cent in 2019, we have grown a massive 255 per cent over last year! We are proud to be the world’s fastest growing smartphone brand with a speed never seen before in the industry. Smartphone + IoT + Realme UI, we will make it even bigger in 2020,” read his tweet.

Smartphone + IoT is becoming a trend

While many brands have been embedding smartphones with IoT aka smart connectivity features, Xiaomi was probably the first one to refer towards the same as a strategy. Interestingly, Xiaomi and Realme are competitors in the India’s smartphone market. Xiaomi had first talked about this approach in first quarter of 2019.

“The first quarter of 2019 was the first quarter after the launch of our dual-engine strategy of ‘Smartphone + AIoT’ and a series of key adjustments. Over the past year, we made significant improvements and adjustments in our core strategies, management structure, technology research and development system, product and brand development system, etc,” Lei Jun had noted at that time.

The China-based company had even made a big commitment about Xiaomi’s ‘Smartphone+AIoT’ strategy. The number of connected IoT devices (excluding smartphones and laptops) on Xiaomi’s IoT platform, till March 2019, were approximately 171 million units.

“At the beginning of 2019, we talked about going “All in AIoT”, and planned an investment of RMB 10 billion (~USD 1.43 billion) in this field over the next five years. After a year of verification, we are increasing our investment in this. We now believe we will invest at least RMB 50 billion (~USD 7.18 billion) over the five years in “5G+AIoT” to double down on our lead in the field. This is to ensure we win in this new smart era,” read an open letter posted by Xiaomi’s founder & CEO Lei Jun.

Realme has also extended its portfolio beyond smartphones back in China and here in India. The brand had recently launched Buds Air in India. It is also to be noted here that BBK’s other brands including Oppo and Vivo have also been talking a lot about IoT and 5G lately.

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