Xiaomi Mi 3: The Chinese electronics giant comes to India with its flagship phone priced at Rs 13,999

New Delhi: Xiaomi may be little known outside China, but the fast-growing smartphone maker challenging the dominance of Apple and Samsung with high-spec, low-price phones has announced its entry into the burgeoning Indian smartphone market with its flagship phone, the Xiaomi Mi 3 priced at Rs 13,999.

The Xiaomi Mi 3 will be available exclusively via online retailer Flipkart, with pre-orders starting today. The phone will go on sale from July 22.

The Chinese company says that the Mi 3 is the fastest Xiaomi phone ever with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 8274AB 2.3GHz processor, Adreno 330 450MHz GPU, 2GB LPDDR3 RAM, and eMMC 4.5 flash memory.

The Mi 3 has a 5 inch 1920x1080 display with up to 441 ppi. The phone has a 13 megapixel rear camera with dual-flash and a 2 megapixel front camera.

According to Xiaomi, the 3050mAh battery can deliver 21 hours of 3G Internet usage, 25 hours of 2G talktime, 50 hours of music playback and has a standby time of 500 hours.

The phone's 8.1 mm body houses an aluminum-magnesium alloy frame, coated in thermal graphite. The Xiaomi Mi3 runs on Android 4.4 with Xiaomi's MIUI V5 user interface.

The Chinese electronics giant also announced the launch of its Redmi 1S and Redmi Note smartphones in India. The phones are priced at Rs 6,999 and Rs 9,999 respectively. The company also announced its Mi Power Bank in the Indian market.

Unlike its giant rivals, Xiaomi has minimal advertising and no retail outlets which help keep costs down. Instead, it has gathered a cult-like following on social media, including China's Weibo. Most consumers - dubbed "Mi fans" by Xiaomi - buy their phones directly via its website during regular "flash" sales.

The Beijing-based tech upstart sold 18.7 million phones in 2013, and is targeting sales of 60 million this year and 100 million in 2015.

Xiaomi, whose name means millet in Mandarin, had poached former Google high-flyer Hugo Barra to lead its international expansion.

Xiaomi phones, boasting processors and sleek designs that rival top Samsung models and using the latest iteration of Google's Android software, are sold at a fraction of the price of a Samsung Galaxy S5 or iPhone 5s.