Redmi Note 9 Pro Max and Redmi 8A Dual to cost more

(Image credit: Xiaomi)

Xiaomi has announced an increase in the price of a couple of phones under the Redmi brand. The smartphones that are affected by the latest round of price hike are Redmi 9 Pro Max and Redmi 8A Dual.

The Chinese smartphone maker had increased the prices of various devices for multiple reasons including the hike in GST announced by the central government. Just a few days back we saw the prices of some variants of Poco X2, Redmi Note 8, Redmi 8, and Redmi 8A Dual going up marginally.

This time the company has decided to make the Redmi 8A Dual 3GB RAM and 32GB storage variant costlier by Rs. 300 while the Redmi Note 9 Pro Max 6 GB RAM and 64 GB storage variant will now retail at Rs. 16,999 and the Redmi Note 9 Pro Max 6 GB RAM and 64 GB storage variant will be sold for Rs. 18,999.

The new prices are as follows:

Swipe to scroll horizontally
ModelVariantOld PriceNew Price
Redmi 8A Dual2 GB RAM - 32 GB StorageRs. 7,499 No change
Redmi 8A Dual3 GB RAM - 32 GB StorageRs. 7,499 Rs. 7,799
Redmi 8A Dual3 GB RAM - 64 GB StorageRs. 8,999 No change
Redmi Note 9 Pro Max6 GB RAM - 64 GB StorageRs. 16,499 Rs. 16,999
Redmi Note 9 Pro Max6 GB RAM - 128 GB StorageRs. 17,999 Rs. 18,999
Redmi Note 9 Pro Max8 GB RAM - 128 GB StorageRs. 19,999No change

We have reached out to the company to understand the reason behind the recent price hike, however, till the filing of this report we have not received a clarification. According to a previous report, few Chinese smartphone brands were forced to import assembled devices from China. Though companies like Xiaomi and Oppo have their factories in India which are used to assemble their smartphones, however, due to restrictions post the lockdown, these factories were operating at reduced manpower.

Since the lockdown eased, the demands for smartphones went up and to fulfil these demand companies had to import the smartphones. As per the rules, importing of assembled smartphones comes with an additional 22% import duty, prices of smartphones were bound to go up. While some brand had decided to absorb the additional costs, Xiaomi, which operated on very thin retail margins, may have decided to pass this on to the customers.

If this is the actual reason behind this hike, then we can expect brands like Oppo and Realme to follow suit.

Via: NDTV

Jitendra Soni

Jitendra has been working in the Internet Industry for the last 7 years now and has written about a wide range of topics including gadgets, smartphones, reviews, games, software, apps, deep tech, AI, and consumer electronics.