Xiaomi India breached $1 billion in revenue in 2016


Xiaomi may have had a bit of a scare in their home market of China mid-2016, but the second home for the company — India — seems to be accommodating enough.

According to the company, they crossed the $1 billion mark in revenues in 2016, which is certainly no joke. This, especially when you consider that it’s only been a bit over 2 years for Xiaomi in India.

Besides that, Xiaomi also created some other moments worth looking back at, namely:

Gizchina News of the week


  • Became the #3 smartphone vendor in Q3 2016 (as per smartphone shipments)
  • Crossed 2 million smartphone sale for the first time in Q3 2016, achieving ~150% year-on-year sales growth from Q3 2015 to Q3 2016
  • As per IDC, Redmi Note 3 was the highest shipped device in the history of online smartphones industry, with more than 2.3 million devices sold in 6 months

While we’d like to congratulate Xiaomi for achieving this feat, it remains to be seen whether Xiaomi will be able to recreate similar numbers or anything close with higher-end phones, which haven’t really received the same amount of love.

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11 Comments

  1. dref
    January 5, 2017

    Its very hard for a company that is producing entry level & mid range phones such as xiaomi (which is still a startup) to raise their game because they are not “equipped” to. They need to really comit huge investments, so far they did not, there is no mystery in the HW business, they also most probably lack a good leader that can execute. MI5 lol, Mi mix nice engineer work but not durable and confidential sales, and probably too soon on the market.

    • balcobomber25
      January 5, 2017

      $1 billion in revenue in the second biggest (and fastest growing) smartphone market suggests otherwise.

      • dref
        January 5, 2017

        Xiaomi operate like as a start up with a low cost structure which is why they are so competitive on price, they cut corners and in the end cannot offer the quality of other major brands. its a low margin business model, therefore even if they make huge sales they don’t generate enough margin and cash flow to invest it in higher end devices, i don’t think any body can argue against that…

        • balcobomber25
          January 11, 2017

          Xiaomi doesn’t cut any corners they offer the same quality as Samsung, Apple or LG. I have used and owned multiple Xiaomi phones, all of them are sitting in my “phone drawer” and all of them are still working to this day and still get updates.

          • dref
            January 11, 2017

            Xiaomi doesn’t cut ANY corners? same quality? How do you explain MI5 disaster?
            Owning multiple Xiaomi device doesn’t make your argument more convincing either… quite the contrary.

            I’ve owned Samsung, Apple, Huawei and Xiaomi. Their HW is good but the build quality…i have always passed… i preordered the MI5 from a reseller in march 2016 and cancel it when i saw the reviews… At the time they were selling it at 450 eur (Italian reseller no tax/custom duties to pay)
            Not even 5 months later they dropped the price 10%, and now you can find it now for 200 Eur…

            I guess i wasn’t the only one not trusting their build quality…discounting is not a good buying signal most of the time, do Apple / Samsung / Huawei need to heavily discount their product to sale? Give it a though…

            • balcobomber25
              January 11, 2017

              How do you explain the Note 7? How do you explain the iPhone 6 Plus? Every company has a device in their history which hasn’t lived up to expectations. You’re using prices from a country where Xiaomi doesn’t officially sell and using that as your basis? If they were selling it at 450 euro that it is close to 160 euro over the retail price of it. Of course, they dropped the price, not many people are going to pay that much over retail for a brand most in Italy have never heard of.

            • dref
              January 11, 2017

              its the second year in a row they fail (mi mix/mi5)
              I get that you love xiaomi, and for many people they do great phones. But great phones compared to what?
              They can manage to get the latest components but they fail to build a good phone around it. I mean they operate like a shenzhen factory…they are just bigger… and their communication… claiming each year that they are launching THE flagship killer, Apple/samsung/huawei/oppo/vivo are laughing about it.

            • balcobomber25
              January 12, 2017

              Mi Mix was a niche phone, it was more of Xiaomi showing what is possible. But it hasn’t exactly been a failure, they even launched a new white version at CES.

              Flagship killer is OnePlus, Xiaomi has never used that phrase, at least get your companies right. OnePlus btw is part of Oppo…

  2. Adam Irvine
    January 5, 2017

    Do these figures also include the high numbers of Redmi Note 3’s sold via online re-sellers to the west?

  3. Wolvie
    January 5, 2017

    The one that sell the most is always the mainstream model. Not the low end model (Spec too damn low), also not the very highend (too expensive).

    So the recipe is simple, give medium good spec (real) hardwares and provide good software support, and (reasonable) cheap price. Sure can sell like peanut.

    But again the one that always being ignore by Xiaomi is the stock availability of this mainstream model. Xiaomi only focus on the the low end model (mi series) and the highend model (Mi Mix,Mi Note, Mi series)

    • balcobomber25
      January 5, 2017

      Mi series isn’t a low end model, it is their flagship model….

      The Redmi is the low end.

      But companies sell more budget and midrange phones than they do flagships. The only exception to this is Apple who has no budget phones and Samsung whose budget phones have never been good.