China’s most valuable startup, Xiaomi, is aiming sky high in 2017. CEO Lei Jun said that despite struggling for the past two years, Xiaomi is targeting $14.5 billion in global sales this year.
“2016 was a year in which we took time to catch our breaths and slow our rapid pace to make essential adjustments to our business that will enable us to go further,” Lei Jun said in a letter to staff on Tuesday. The Chinese tech company breached triple digit growth figures in its formative years but has since fallen behind competitive rivals like Vivo and Huawei.
Xiaomi was reputed to be China’s equivalent of Apple after successive years of doubled revenue and a swift climb up the Chinese smartphone market. Xiaomi had set a $14.5 billion sales target for 2015 as well but the past two years have seen declining shipments. As of today, Xiaomi’s net worth is estimated to be $8.4 billion, down from a private valuation of $45 billion in 2014.
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Plans For Xiaomi Sales Revamp
In response to the stagnation in global sales, Xiaomi made changes in several business areas including offline presence and overseas sales. To increase its offline presence in China in 2017, Lei Jun said that Xiaomi plans to open 200 more Mi Home stores and a total of 1,000 stores over the next three years to strengthen its offline retail operations. The company has a large arsenal of electronics products such as robot vacuums, air purifiers, smart appliances, scooters and bikes. Xiaomi’s revenue from the sales of these products amounted to more than $2 billion in 2016.
China accounts for 90 percent of Xiaomi’s smartphone sales which clearly dictates that the company needs to move into fresh pastures – their global share of the smartphone market is only 4 percent. Ironically, the revenue from sales in India breached the $1 billion milestone in 2016.
“In the first few years, we pushed ahead too fast. We created a miracle, but also drew on some long-term growth. So we have to slow down, further improve in some areas, and ensure sustainable growth for a long-term future,” Lei said. We hope this innovative company catches up soon and regains its position in the top brass.
After the recent slump, do you think Xiaomi will be able to get back up and rake in the revenues?
Sure they can, but they really need to think twice before moving a finger. They’re still a big player, the one everybody look at, but they need to plan things beforehand: the infinite redmi 3 variants is something that shouldn’t happen again.
And also: hire someone to fix their cameras ?
Definitely this. I’m a Xiaomi fan. Very happy with my Redmi 4 prime. I would have gladly paid a bit more for it though if it offered honor 6x levels of camera performance. Cut back on the redundancy as in the Redmi 3 series, and focus a little more on the finished product. Their last few releases have been close to the mark, but left some somethinghing to be desired. Omitting gorilla Glass on the mi5s for example is unacceptable in a flagship phone. The mi note 2 screen quality is lacking, and camera performance throughout the line up could definitely use some attention. Making a few small changes would go a long way towards improving their overall product.
add to this all problems with Mi4i, bad amoled on Redmi pro, shitty OIS on mi5 (even when that should be one of it’s biggest pluses), then interducing Mi5s as succesor od Mi5 just a few months after,and instead of fixing problems of it, they added new ones….
They need to back to more affordable phones or LeEco will be the truly winner. I own a LeMax 2 and it’s much less expensive than the competitors and there is as well a great afterward support looking at the software fixes. But I hope they will do it in 2017, I really miss any surprisings at the moment and their phones could deliver the final movement into the next global standards e.g.with including the initiative sensor from the Chonghong 2.