Xiaomi sold a total of just over 61 million phones in 2014, up 227 percent from a year earlier, the firm’s chief executive Lei Jun said on his official microblog account on Sunday. Xiaomi was founded in 2010 to make software for mobile devices running Google Inc.’s Android system. The company subsequently released products including a tablet computer, a television set-top box and TVs that connect to the Web.
Last year, Xiaomi became the world’s No.3 smartphone maker and is now challenging Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.Fast-growing Chinese tech firm Xiaomi Technology Ltd Co booked 74.3 billion CNY ($11.97 billion, roughly Rs. 75,710 crores) in pre-tax sales last year, up 135 percent from 2013, Lei added in a post on his Sina Weibo microblog account.
Lei added that growth in China’s smartphone market would ease in 2015 and that the firm would look to focus on innovating new products and pushing into more overseas markets.
Last week Xiaomi raised $1.1 billion (roughly Rs. 6,999 crores) in a round of funding that valued the firm at $45 billion (roughly Rs. 2,84,454 crores), from investors including All-Stars Investment, DST Global, Hopu Investment Management, and Yunfeng Capital, as well as Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC.
Earlier today, Xiaomi announced its Redmi 2s smartphone in China, which will go on sale later this month. It already promised to unveil its next flagship smartphone at an event later this month. Today it said that the event will happen on 15th January.
Xiaomi has invested in more than 20 hardware companies, including home appliances giant Midea group. It entered into 7 countries last year as it planned, but it slowed down its expansion few months back. It sold 1 million smartphones in India within the first five months of its entry. It is expected to expand to Vietnam, Russia, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico in 2015.
