Xiaomi sold record 119 million smartphones despite market decline

In a year that saw the global smartphone market shrink, China’s Xiaomi defied the odds by selling a record 118.7 million phones around the world in 2018, according to data just published by the company.

Here’s how that stacks up to Xiaomi’s previous annual figures, including a reportedly disastrous 2016 in which the company refused to reveal a number:

Some more money shots from Xiaomi’s earnings report for 2018:

• US$26 billion total revenue, up 52.6 percent from previous year
• US$16.9 billion from phone business
• US$6.5 billion from smart gadgets
• US$878.5 million from web services, of which US$402 million is from gaming
• 40 percent of total is from markets outside mainland China, up from 28 percent in 2017

Basic bitch?

As for profit, Xiaomi churned out US$478.4 million in operating profit, up 46.4 percent from the previous year.

Xiaomi’s India head Manu Kumar Jain at the Mi Home in Bangalore / Photo credit: Xiaomi

Revenue was boosted not just by sales volume but also by the rising average price tag of the phones people bought, Xiaomi said. Its average selling price last year was US$143, up from US$131 in 2017. But that figure reveals that Xiaomi is still stuck in the basic, budget-brand sector, where consumer loyalty is low and profit margins are microprocessor-thin. That’s despite a raft of high-end phone launches in the past year designed to tackle demand for iPhones and blingier Huawei models.

Xiaomi is India’s biggest phone brand ahead of Samsung, while it’s in fourth place in China behind Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo. In Indonesia, it’s second behind Samsung.

Converted from Chinese yuan. Rate: US$1 = RMB 6.72.