Photo credit: Tencent Tech
Xiaomi’s best known for its smartphones, but the company has also been in the smart TV game for several years now. Its most obvious rival there is fellow internet company LeEco, which has bested Xiaomi in terms of unit sales numbers for several years now.
To be clear, neither company is close to overtaking the big electronics brands like Sharp and Hisense that dominate China’s flatscreen TV market. But because they’re operationally so similar – internet-oriented smart gadget companies with a focus on online sales – the two are often compared. And in terms of sales, Xiaomi just doesn’t stack up.
In a recent interview with Tencent Tech, though, Xiaomi co-founder Wang Chuan fired back at critics who suggest Xiaomi’s TV is doing worse just because it isn’t shipping as many units:
The Xiaomi TV has always been profitable. We aren’t chasing sales numbers, because once you say we have to sell so many, that often leads to financial losses. It’s my understanding that LeEco’s losses on its TVs are obvious, and they’re running a huge deficit. They’ve burned so much money there’s no way they can earn it back.
He also said that while Xiaomi’s content offerings had initially lagged behind LeEco’s TVs, “now we have completely surpassed them.”
Tech in Asia has contacted LeEco for comment on this story and will update it if we hear back.
Wang’s remarks come on the heels of Xiaomi’s latest TV launch; the 55- and 65-inch Xiaomi TV 3S went on sale for the first time just this morning. The 4K behemoths run from US$524 up to US$900 depending on the screen size and speakers chosen. Wang said that Xiaomi does hope to overtake LeEco gradually, but that for this year the company wasn’t worried about specific sales targets.
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