Mi Band’s $15 Rival Surfaces From Little-Known Chinese Company Zeaplus, With Touch Display

Excitement on social media and geek sites about a new Mi band, the inexpensive fitness tracker wristband from Xiaomi Corp., toned down after it was revealed that it was actually a rival product from a little-known company called Zeaplus.

What was initially thought to be a Mi Band 2, turned out to be the Zeaplus Band, equally inexpensive at $14.99, supporting features such as counting steps and monitoring sleep time, but also equipped with an OLED touch display that shows notifications.

A quick search on India’s top e-commerce sites like Flipkart and Snapdeal as well as the India sites of Amazon.com and eBay Inc. didn’t yield any results for the Zeaplus Band or the Zeaplus M7, the Android smartphone that the Chinese company usually sells at home via flash sales.

The band, however, seems to match features offered by its Xiaomi rival, in addition to the display -- that shows steps counted on the go, for instance -- and a backlit touch button to switch from one task to another, set reminders and so on.

Meanwhile, the Mi Band is available for 999 rupees ($15.65) in an open sale on Flipkart.com, as part of Flipkart Internet Pvt. Ltd.’s three-day “Big App Shopping Days” sale that started Monday.

The wearables market is growing at an “absolutely astounding” rate, analysts at research firm IDC said on Monday, predicting that worldwide sales by number of units will rise 173.3 percent to 72.1 million this year from 26.4 million devices in 2014. Some 155 million wearable devices will be sold in 2019, IDC estimates.