Xiaomi’s Hugo Barra speaking at Startup Asia Singapore 2014
China’s marathon 24-hour online sales event – Singles Day is certainly endearing to millions of online shoppers. To give a snapshot, global vice president for product at Xiaomi Hugo Barra posted via his Google Plus account that Xiaomi clocked RMB 1 billion (US$163 million) in 12 hours by selling 720,000 phones.
Xiaomi is quite proficient with flash sales and now should be on cloud nine with its sales performance at the half-time mark on Singles Day. Last year, the company made sales worth RMB 550 million (US$89 million) through the Singles Day sale and the company surpassed that figure this year in a mere four hours.
The Singles Day is similar to the biggest online shopping event “Cyber Monday” in the US. Though Alibaba has trademarked the Singles Day term, it hasn’t stopped other sites from using the term.
A recent IDC report stated that Xiaomi was the third-biggest smartphone vendor, but got pushed to fourth place after Lenovo announced the completion of Motorola’s acquisition. The strong smartphone market leadership and boost from Singles Day sales will aid Xiaomi in its quest to raise funds for its global expansion.
Editing by Terence Lee
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