Just a few weeks after hiking the cost of its power banks in India, Xiaomi has now decided to increase the rates of its popular Redmi Note 5 Pro and 55-inch Mi TV 4 as well. It announced the changes on its local community forum. Naturally, the post has generated many negative responses, with many declaring that this isn’t fair and accusing the company of cheating.
The Redmi Note 5 Pro is going to become Rs 1000 costlier, shooting up from Rs 13999 to Rs 14999 for the 4GB of RAM and 64GB of ROM variant starting from 1 May 2018. Anyone who’s placed a pre-order for it at the original Rs 13999 rate won’t have to pay extra.
Xiaomi says it’s been forced to do this because of changes in the tax structure on PCBA imports and the depreciation of the rupee by about 5% since the start of the year. It seems the company is ramping up production of the Redmi Note 5 Pro to 1 million per month and is importing a significant amount of PCBAs as a result.
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Local PCBA production is set to rise to 100% only by CY Q3 2018, hence the need for imported PCBAs. Xiaomi says there’s been a significant increase in costs because of these factors. The hike is in place to ensure that there is a steady supply of units.
Availability of the Redmi Note 5 Pro has been scarce so far, with units getting sold out in seconds during flash sales. Increasing production should ease matters, but the fact that it comes at the back of a price rise probably won’t sit well with people.
Xiaomi is also raising the 55-inch Mi LED TV 4’s rate by Rs 5000 to sell it at Rs 44999. The situation is pretty much the same here, with the combined forces of the recent import tax structure change and rupee depreciation leading to the shift.