The meteoric rise of Xiaomi in the last few years is far from showing any sign of a slowdown. The world’s fourth largest smartphone maker is constantly keeping itself on tows to scale new heights with each passing quarter. This year is no exception. According to the latest announcement made by the company’s Chief Lei Jun on his Sina Weibo account, Xiaomi has achieved the target of selling 100 million smartphones set for 2018 two months before the year-end.
Xiaomi Smartphone Sales 2018
This is indeed impressive as its the second year in a row when Xiaomi has achieved its year target months before the year-end. Last year, Xiaomi aimed to sell 70 million units of smartphones but achieved the milestone in 10 months only.
Xiaomi’s performance becomes more impressive considering the company’s smartphone shipments has increased 43% in 2018. The Beijing based smartphone manufacturer has been growing leaps and bounds in all the major markets, especially in India, to keep its growth rate intact in each passing quarter.
While the figures of global smartphone shipments in Q3 2018 is yet to be released by all the leading research firms, it’s expected that Xiaomi will continue replicating its impressive second quarter performance in the following quarter as well. In Q2 2018, Xiaomi shipped 31.9 million units of smartphones to stand behind only Samsung, Huawei and Apple. Despite global smartphone shipments slow down of 1.8% in Q2 2018, Xiaomi surprised industry experts with 49% YoY growth. It had put Xiaomi at number 4 position in the list of top smartphone vendors by shipments Q2 2018.
“Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo are all slowly pushing their customer base upstream at a price tier slightly lower than the top three. This is an area they should all watch closely as the builds in this segment are getting increasingly more advanced,” Ryan Reith, vice-president with IDC’s Woldwide Mobile Device Trackers, said in a report.
But the road ahead is going to be tough for Xiaomi; Competitors like Huawei and Samsung has employed an aggressive approach to capturing the lion’s share of entry and mid-segment smartphone market – Xiaomi has been dominating for long. Consequently, Xiaomi has set its eye on the high-end smartphone segment. Besides POCO – the sub-brand focused on the high-end segment, Xiaomi has also launched Mi Mix 3 to compete with Huawei and Samsung in the high-end segment.
Last week Lei Jun, CEO – Xiaomi, targeted Huawei by claiming that Mi Mix 3 camera performing better than Huawei’s flagship P20 Pro. However, Richard Yu Chengdong – CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, was quick enough to refute the claim and mocking Xiaomi by claiming that no existing smartphone can surpass P20 Pro Camera performance in short time. He also added that only Huawei can beat Huawei.
But, not everything is falling in the favour of Xiaomi at the moment. Despite the unprecedented growth in smartphone shipments globally, the company’s share value tanked 30% since it got listed at Hongkong Stock Exchange (HSE). The saturating smartphone market in China has made the company highly dependent on India – the world’s second largest and currently the fastest growing smartphone market. It’s important to note that unlike Huawei, Samsung and Apple, which has a wide reach and presence across the globe, Xiaomi is yet to capture a sizeable share of the smartphone market beyond the APAC region.
Xiaomi’s Growth In India Smartphone Market
In India, Xiaomi has been growing by leaps and bounds, largely dependent on the online channels. In Q2 2018, nearly 64% of Xiaomi’s smartphone sales came through online channels alone. In contrast, competitors like Vivo, Oppo, Huawei and Samsung have been apparently leveraging on the mix-market strategy to penetrate offline and online market equally. Besides, the rise of Realme and Honor brand in the entry and mid-segment has also fueled the competition in the Indian smartphone market.
In Q3 2018, Xiaomi has recorded its highest ever smartphone shipments in India in a single quarter. During the quarter, the smartphone shipments share of Xiaomi increased to 27%, an increase of 5% point compared to 22% during the year-ago quarter.
So far so good for Xiaomi. But with rising competition, saturating the home market and the need for diversification has been changing the market equations. It will be interesting to see what would be the next year target for Xiaomi and, if the company stay aggressive with its plans, what would be the strategy Xiaomi will employ to make its competitors run for their money.
