Xiaomi hails ‘return to rapid growth’ as it targets 100m phones in 2018

Photo credit: Xiaomi.

Xiaomi had a terrible 2016 as Chinese consumers turned their backs on the budget phone brand. That led to it falling from first to fifth in the cut-throat China smartphone market. Only India seemed to still be in love with the upstart phone maker.

But things might soon be different. Xiaomi today hailed record phone sales in the April-June quarter, hitting 23.2 million. Xiaomi spokesperson Donovan Sung said on Twitter that the figure was “marking our return to rapid growth” after a rough year.

Encouraged by this Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun this week said to staff in a letter, “let’s just add another humble goal: to ship 100 million smartphones in 2018.”

Chasing Samsung in India

Although India is a fast-growing smartphone market, it’s multiple times smaller than China in terms of annual sales, meaning that growth in India is usually not enough to offset a company’s abysmal China performance. But Sung today hailed 328 percent growth in India revenue from January to June, indicating that India might – soon – be able to save Xiaomi all by itself. No geographic breakdown is available in Xiaomi’s data.

#Xiaomi strategy: befriend our users, produce best products with accessible pricing, stay true to our core values of sincerity and passion

— Donovan Sung (@donovansung) 7 July 2017

Xiaomi was India’s second biggest smartphone seller in 2016, just behind Samsung.

In order to get closer to India’s consumers, Xiaomi has opened its own stores and service centers in the nation, and this month doubled down with its second local phone factory, playing up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s desire to see more things manufactured in India.

“We expect to create a total of 20,000 jobs in three years,” said founder and CEO Lei Jun, this week talking of the India market at an event in New Delhi.