Xiaomi plans to make 18-month warranties a standard for its smartphones

Xiaomi normally offers 12 months' worth of warranty with its new smartphones. This is typical practice in markets such as China, although customers in others such as the European Union may have access to 2 years of this support. The company's CEO, Lei Jun, has announced that it may raise the minimum warranty period for the next generations of its smartphones, however.

Lei reportedly made remarks to this effect at the “2019 Quality Service Year” event, which took place recently in China. This apparent plan may be connected to Xiaomi's intentions to increase its focus on higher ends of the smartphone market going forward. An extra 6 months' worth of warranty could help build value in this space.

Other OEMs with different profit profiles and business models may not thank the company for trying to set this trend, however. In addition, it may backfire in some ways. The first phone sold under this new warranty policy, the Note 7 marketed by Redmi, incorporated the offer in order to highlight its build quality. However, a recent durability test may have proven that Xiaomi may end up with a lot of owners calling them on their new game in the future.