On Thursday, China’s Xiaomi put Apple directly in its crosshairs when it unveiled its new Xiaomi Note, which it said is a lighter, thinner, cheaper phone than the iPhone 6 Plus.
Chairman Lei Jun, clad in jeans and a blue button-down shirt, touted the new phone’s 5.7-inch screen, 13-megapixel rear camera, curved glass front and back, and weight of 161 grams. Behind him on screen, Mr. Lei repeatedly put the Note’s specs next to Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus. “We are thinner and lighter,” he said to a cheering crowd of more than 1,000 people.
An Apple AAPL, -0.99% spokeswoman in China didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The price point demonstrates why Xiaomi has been able to grow from zero to China’s largest smartphone vendor in a brief four years.
The 16-gigabyte phone will cost less than half of an iPhone 6 Plus at 2,299 yuan (about $372), and a 64GB model will cost 2,799 yuan. There will also be a Pro version of the Note available, which will include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor and 4GB of RAM for 3,299 yuan. The phone will still run Xiaomi’s customized version of Google’s Android mobile-operating software.
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