Chinese tech company Xiaomi set a revenue target of 100 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) for 2017. For the first time in its history, the company refused to give out its annual smartphone sales figures, with the firm’s CEO and co-founder Lei Jun admitting that Xiaomi grew too fast for its own good over the previous years. This turn of events raised a lot of speculation in the public, with people wondering if the company actually registered a decline in sales in 2016 after several years of phenomenal growth that saw Xiaomi ship 70 million handsets in 2015.
In a letter sent to all Xiaomi employees, Lei admitted that the company had “pushed ahead too fast” in its first few years, which is why it now has to slow down and focus on sustainable growth. While the company’s CEO said that “difficult times are behind us,” he refused to give out a sales target for this year, only saying that his “humble goal” is to generate 100 billion yuan in revenue over the course of 2017. Even as Xiaomi registered impressive growth in 2016, the company still had to readjust its sales target during the year because of stiff competition from brands like Huawei, OPPO, and Vivo. While Xiaomi initially set a target of 100 million sold units for 2016, the firm later changed it to 80 million. However, Xiaomi also failed to hit that reduced target, thereby surrendering its preeminent position in China’s smartphone market. Xiaomi consequently ended the year as the fourth largest smartphone vendor in China as it was overtaken on the sales charts by all three companies mentioned above, with other brands like Coolpad and Meizu also catching up to it.
On the bright side, Xiaomi is believed to have taken over the number three spot in the highly fragmented Indian smartphone market with $1 billion in total sales, mainly due to the runaway success of the Redmi Note 3 phablet which reportedly broke all sales records in the country. Recent reports indicate that Xiaomi might have shifted close to 3 million units of the device by now, making it one of the best-selling smartphones in the country to date. However, even as Xiaomi made giant strides in India last year, China continues to remain the company’s primary market for now, and the market situation detailed above is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.