Xiaomi is the envy of many a company trying to get started in their own industry. They were founded in 2010 and just sold 61 million smartphones last year through online sales, and that is three times as many phones as the year before. So when Xiaomi’ CEO Lei Jun said that their goal is to sell 80 – 100 million devices in 2015, there is no reason to doubt him. In less than five years, he has taken a startup company to one of the top five smartphone makers in the world and he sees no slowdown in sight.
Xiaomi held their Global Supplier Conference on Wednesday and Lei Jun said, “I hope you make sure to complete the production tasks, thus making it easier for the users to buy the phone.” According to predictions, the company may see a 23-54-percent growth in sales, and as popular as Xiaomi phones have become, finding buyers may not be the problem. However, the big question may be if Xiaomi has the facilities to manufacture 100 million smartphones.
Xiaomi continues to use the formula that has gotten then to where they are – producing a high quality device at an affordable price. Their new Xiaomi Mi Note Pro has top flagship-type specifications with a 5.7-inch QHD display with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels and a full 515 pixels-per-inch (PPI). It is using a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 quad-core processor with four cores clocked at 1.5GHz and four cores clocked at 2.0GHz. It packs 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage with no room for expansion. It sports a 13MP main camera with autofocus, dual-tone LED flash and OIS and a 4MP front-facing camera (FFC) for selfies and video chatting. Power is supplied by a 3,000mAh non-removable battery and you get all of this for about $532.
Xiaomi has done all of this and they have never really left Asia – just imagine what sales could be if they serviced Europe and the US. While Xiaomi’s has grown exponentially these past few years, so much so that they bumped Samsung as the number one smartphone in China and are the number one smartphone in India. Xiaomi will have to continue to build quality into those 100 million smartphones and offer them at a competitive price in order to keep this pace going.