Xiaomi is one of the fastest growing smartphone manufacturers in the world. This company was founded in 2010, which makes it a relatively new company, and yet this Chinese smartphone manufacturer was able to sell almost 60 million devices this year, compared to 19 million they sold last year. Xiaomi has really optimistic plans for 2015, including selling 100 million devices and expanding to several markets across the world (Latin America, India, Russia…). Those plans might have to wait though, it seems like Xiaomi infringed on Ericsson’s patents and the New Delhi High Court has ordered Xiaomi to stop selling their devices recently. The good news is that they can still sell the Snapdragon-powered handsets in that Asian country until January 8, but they are banned from selling anything else until at least February 5th. Xiaomi might resolve this issue with Ericsson soon, but it will cost the company none the less.
That being said, company’s CEO, Lei Jun, has announced that Xiaomi will have to change its revenue target for 2014. Xiaomi targeted 80 billion Yuan ($12.9 billion) revenue in 2014, but it seems like Xiaomi’s revenue will be closer to 70 billion Yuan ($11.2 billion). Which seems like a significant difference, but considering Xiaomi’s revenue in 2013 was 26.5 billion Yuan ($4.3 billion), these are actually great results for the company. Lei Jun also announced that company plans to earn over 100 billion Yuan ($16.1 billion) in 2015, which are quite optimistic predictions from Xiaomi’s CEO.
Xiaomi is definitely growing at an amazing rate and if they keep this up, they’ll have no problem turning 100 billion Yuan in revenue in 2015. We have to keep in mind that this injunction will cost Xiaomi some cash, so that might be the reason they altered their revenue predictions, as well as some competition in China from the likes of Meizu and other Chinese OEMs. It remains to be seen if Xiaomi will be able to solve this Ericsson patent issues soon and will the company be able to dodge some other lawsuits as soon as they leave the Asian market, it seems like world’s leading smartphone manufacturers are ready to pull the trigger and sue Xiaomi as soon as that happens.