It is not exactly a secret Xiaomi has been growing incredibly fast. This China-based smartphone manufacturing company was founded back in 2010, and has managed to become China’s number 1 smartphone manufacturer last year, in less than 5 years of existence. Xiaomi has also managed to persuade a lot of companies / people to invest in them at the end of 2014 (they raised $1.1 billion), which certainly helped the company push their limits even more.
That being said, Xiaomi has sold around 70 million smartphones last year, which is their record, but unfortunately that wasn’t enough it seems, Xiaomi was expecting to ship between 80 and 100 million units in 2015. The company did not release their Mi 5 flagship last year, it was announced last month during MWC, and that quite probably influenced their sales quite a bit. Either way, Xiaomi has no plans for an IPO anytime soon, the company’s exec more or less confirmed recently. He has also said that Xiaomi has plenty of cash at the moment (around $1.5 billion), though reports suggest that Xiaomi will have to turn to investors again soon. Now, investors started doubting Xiaomi after they failed to meet their sales goal in 2015, and considering the fact that the smartphone sales in China are slowing down, this will certainly going to be an interesting year for the company. Xiaomi will not only be required to re-assure investors, but also find a way how to expand to other markets and sell more devices.
According to the latest report, Xiaomi is actually looking to raise about $110 million in equity investments (for a 0.45% stake in the company). Now, it is expected that the company will be valued at around $24.4 billion if that actually happens, which doesn’t seem all that bad at first, but keep in mind Xiaomi was valued at $45 billion at the end of 2014. Now, as already mentioned, Xiaomi is not looking for financing rounds, at least according to the company’s CEO, Lei Jun. Either way, it will be interesting to see what happens next for Xiaomi, things certainly don’t seem as great as they were at the end of 2014, but Xiaomi is still growing, and we’ll see if they’ll be able to overcome the obstacles which are coming their way.