Xiaomi has sold an impressive 34.7 million smartphones during the first half of 2015, but there are worrying signs for the Chinese manufacturer.
It’s been a meteoric rise for China’s favourite smartphone maker Xiaomi, which has grown to a position of prominence in the world’s biggest market in just five years of existence.
Almost 35 million phones sold between January and June sounds great, as does the fact that it represents growth of 33 percent year-on-year for the company. Such figures mean that it’s the world’s third biggest smartphone manufacturer.
However, there’s a more troubling statistic for Xiaomi. This sales figure is almost exactly the same as that of the previous six months. This means that the company’s growth has flatlined for the first time in its brief existence.
The reason behind this, as Quartz points out, is that the wider Chinese smartphone market itself has stopped growing.
Given that Xiaomi is largely a domestic company, its fortunes are closely tied to the purchase patterns of China’s consumers. With this in mind, the company has tentatively ventured out into other Asian territories in recent times, including India this time last year, as well as a number of Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia in the intervening months.
However, Xiaomi simply doesn’t have the dominant brand presence that it does in its home country. On paper, it might have the phenomenal sales figures to worry the likes of Apple and Samsung, but it simply doesn’t have the established brand or global clout of either.
Read More: Xiaomi Mi4 review
That could well change, with extra investment on the way and an expansion into Brazil – another fast-emerging economy – on course to take place next week. However, the company looks set to fall well short of its stated target of 100 million phones sold by the end of 2015.
Check out the competition from Xiaomi’s internationally established rivals in our smartphone round-up video below.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
