Related Articles
Aloysius Low/CNET
Xiaomi has announced that the company sold 26.1 million smartphones in the first half of 2014, a 271 percent increase over the last year in the same period. The company sold a total of 18.7 million phones in 2013, and it appears that Xiaomi is on track to more than double last year’s sales.
While smartphone shipments to China in the first quarter of 2014 slowed by 24.7 percent to just 100 million, according to China’s Ministry of Industrial and Information Technology, Xiaomi has managed to defy reports of sluggish smartphone shipments.
Xiaomi accounted for 11 percent of total smartphone shipments during Q1 2014 and is now the third largest smartphone manufacturer in China.
The company forecasts that it will ship 60 million smartphones by the year’s end, and as many as 100 million handsets by 2015.
In its latest announcement, Xiaomi claims revenues of RMB 33 billion ($5.31 billion, £3.1 billion, AU$5.6 billion) during the first half of 2014, a year-over-year increase of 149 percent. Xiaomi hasn’t revealed whether the company has generated any profit.
While its smartphone business accounts for the majority of Xiaomi’s revenue, the company’s extended catalogue of products also include its 4K-capable Mi TV 2, a router, the Xiaomi Box (similar to the Apple TV), miscellaneous accessories (including its infamous one-button Android controller copy of Kickstarter project Pressy), and more recently the Mi Pad .
However, just how much sales of non-smartphones account for its total revenue hasn’t been publicly revealed.
Xiaomi’s growing revenue can be attributed not only to its diversification with new product offerings, but more importantly this year the manufacturer has finally expanded to markets outside of Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan.
Xiaomi now sells its smartphones in the Southeast Asian nations of Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia, with plans for an Indonesian launch in August. Thailand is also on the company’s upcoming list.
The Chinese company also has plans for India, but reports indicate that any effort to sell smartphones there will only happen after launching in the aforementioned regions.
