By BLOOMBERG

TOKYO • Xiaomi Corp, the world’s fourth-largest smartphone maker, is entering Japan and taking on Apple Inc with a budget-friendly smartphone and a connected fitness tracker.

The company is making the Mi Note 10 Android smartphone available in Japan for immediate pre-order to be shipped on Dec 16, according to a statement yesterday. Priced from ¥52,800 (RM2,041), the handset has a high-resolution 108-megapixel camera, a 5,260mAh battery rated to last longer than two days and a 6.5-inch OLED display with curved edges.

Alongside the Mi Note, Xiaomi also introduced its Mi Smart Band 4 wearable for ¥3,490, a portable battery pack for ¥1,899, an induction-heating rice cooker for ¥9,999 and a premium all-metal suitcase for ¥17,900, all aggressively priced for the Japanese market.

The top Chinese smartphone vendor after Huawei Technologies Co Ltd is looking eastward to help offset declining share in its home market. Xiaomi’s China shipments took a 30% dive last quarter, while hardware sales in India and Europe grew.

It faces an uphill battle in Japan, however, where the smartphone market has been shrinking, is dominated by Apple and features unique consumer preferences that have kept domestic brands like Sharp Corp and Fujitsu Ltd relevant.

Apple shipped about 45% of all the smartphones in Japan in the fiscal first half to Sept 30, according to a report by MM Research Institute Ltd Sharp, Samsung Electronics Co and Sony Corp followed, none of which exceeded 13%.

Over the long run, Xiaomi is betting the worldwide commercialisation of 5G wireless technology will juice demand for mobile devices capable of hosting ultra-fast video and game streaming.

The company plans to introduce at least 10 5G-enabled smartphone models next year as state-backed carriers in China spend billions of dollars constructing networks. Japan’s smartphone shipments will probably shrink about 10% to 27.6 million units for the full year ending March, before rebounding the following year when 5G models will contribute about two million units to the total, according to MM Research.

Xiaomi is also expanding its product portfolio beyond smartphones to encompass everything from electric scooters to smart door locks, part of an effort to build an Internet of Things ecosystem.

It’s continuing to build out Internet services in pursuit of a strategy billionaire co-founder Lei Jun articulated before the company’s 2018 Hong Kong IPO.

The stock is trading at less than half the price of its peak in July 2018. — Bloomberg