A Chinese employee at a Xiaomi's Mi Home in Shanghai Photo: IC

China's leading digital device maker Xiaomi unveiled its new premium smartphone Mi 11, the latest flagship model in its Mi line-up on Tuesday. The move reflected the company's efforts to explore the high-end cell phone market, although there is still gap between the model with Apple, Huawei and Samsung devices, analyst say.

Equipped with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 chipset and featuring 2K AMOLED display with the impressive 120Hz refresh rate, the Mi 11 offers innovation in performance, display and entertainment.

The new model, which comes in five colors, starts at 3,999 yuan ($612.2) and will be sold on the first day of 2021.

Shares of Hong Kong-listed Xiaomi rose 3.05 percent at Wednesday's morning, and its market cap exceeded HK$800 billion ($103 billion).

As the world's first smartphone armed with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888, the Mi 11 has improved in key areas including performance, fast charging, screen, audio and video and systems, bolstering its overall market competitiveness, CITIC Securities said.

Strong market confidence and sufficient stock are expected to push the company to make greater breakthroughs in the premium phone segment, according to the investment bank.

Liu Dingding, a Beijing-based independent tech analyst, told the Global Times on Wednesday that the market could expect Xiaomi's strategic tilting toward the premium product despite the existing gap between Xiaomi and high-end products from Apple, Samsung and Huawei.

"Seen from the hardware and configuration of Mi 11, it can definitely compete with those players," Liu said, adding that it has become more important to ramp up efforts in integrating software and hardware and strengthening its ecosystem build-up.

According to an industry report by IDC, the smartphone market above $600 has a market capacity of 23.5 million units for the first half of 2020. Huawei ranked No.1 with a 44.1 percent market share, Apple came the second with 44 percent market share. Xiaomi came at the third place with 4 percent. Xiaomi's market share has steadily climbed this year despite the COVID-19 pandemic and the sluggish global smartphone market

Domestically, its market share rose to 13 percent from 9.8 percent last year, being the only company that has achieved positive growth among the top five domestic smartphone manufacturers.

In overseas markets, Xiaomi's smartphone shipments surpassed Apple, up by 42 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2020, returning to the third place after six years, IDC data showed.