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Xiaomi Revenues Were Flat in 2015 (fortune.com)
Scott Cendrowski, reporting for Fortune: Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone maker and second highest-valued startup in the world at $45 billion, barely grew sales at all last year. Revenue for 2015 reached 78 billion yuan ($12.5 billion), a 5% rise from 2014's 74.3 billion yuan. Taking into account the falling value of the Chinese currency, the yuan, sales rose 3% in U.S. dollar terms. Xiaomi has been mum about the 2015 sales total since founder Lei Jun gave a revenue target of 100 billion yuan ($16 billion at the time) at a government meeting in March last year. Flat sales growth represents a dramatic change of fortune for Xiaomi, which until recently appeared to be enjoying the momentum befitting China's hottest startup. It was coming off sales growth of 135% in 2014, and in early 2015 founder Lei Jun said at a press conference that Xiaomi's new smartphone was even better than Apple's iPhone. However the phone, the Mi Note, amassed early user complaints about hot temperatures and didn't become the mega-seller the company might have hoped.CNBC's Jay Yarrow said "The Apple-killer is dying." For the uninitiated, Xiaomi rose to fame in 2013-14 when the company took the world by storm with its cheap-priced handsets, TVs, speakers, power banks, and cameras. These devices offered top-of-the-line specifications for their respective echelon. The company has been called out before for allegedly copying Apple's iOS design in its MIUI Android-based operating system. In the past two years, Xiaomi has expanded its business to several Asian regions, and intends to sell a number of gadgets in the United States and Europe among other regions starting later this year. The company has also expanded its product portfolio, making weighing scale, rice cooker, suitcase and a range of other items.
If anybody can destroy what little trust and honesty remains in the financial markets, it will be China. As crooked as they come they are. It's the perfect setup.
45 Billion... how izzat possible? What a load!
Seriously - can at least one tech journalist out there look beyond the stockbroker/analyst/IPO hype and actually, you know, *look* at the company's performance? Even with as little history as Xiaomi had, its officers have had to have at least some experience elsewhere...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I like quite a few of their phones, but unfortunately they've never support the proper LTE bands to allow them to be used with TMobile here in the US. Please put Band 12 support in Xiaomi!
Funny, that's not what they say when I ask for a raise.
sales rose 3% in U.S. dollar terms.
the US is perhaps the only company in the world that expects quarterly and yearly earnings to approach 15% in order for performance of a company to be assured. its asinine, and partly why the US was forced to gut their manufacturing sector.
Flat sales growth represents a dramatic change of fortune for Xiaomi
but not a bad one. Remember, this is still the second most valuable tech company were talking about. pump your brakes and realize that sales in the #1 also failed to reach targets.
It was coming off sales growth of 135% in 2014
which one might expect would temper the childlike consternation of Forbes, until you realize these are americans, and their concept of investment and growth as constituents of capitalism lies somewhere between a 1952 hygene PSA and mad max.
CNBC's Jay Yarrow said "The Apple-killer is dying."
He also endorsed a conspiracy theory about the egypt air crash. who fucking cares.
The company has been called out before for allegedly copying Apple's iOS design
whos been copying everything from early microsoft innovation to the design notes for the movie minority report. but lets ignore that and the fact that copyright law is wildly variant from the jackbooted cartel force we know and love in the states.
and intends to sell a number of gadgets in the United States and Europe among other regions starting later this year.
if you had to shit on this company for anything --and it be relevant to slashdot -- then it should be this. Xiaomi has dragged its feet supporting 4g LTE bands in the US. every other year the company that insisted it would have something for the country that has everything, inevitably turned out to disappoint everyone. Maybe its regulatory, maybe its just disinterest, but the lack of a US offering from such a company seems to imply theyre happy with flat revenue and servicing the rest of the world instead. Some companies can be content with stability, just not American companies.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Will the rice cookers be Bluetooth enabled?
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
what is with the retarded notion that if you aren't making significantly more money than you made last year that you are somehow not being profitable enough? i feel like everyone started plotting only profit increases from last year on logarithmic charts and declaring every company but their favorite unicorn is going under.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Was really the industry maturing?
Guess the smartphone manufacturers are a bit depressed that most of their innovations haven't driven more thirst for sales? Maybe sad that Apple hasn't come out to save the industry's bacon? j/k
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A good device is more than a list of specs and features.
Not saying Xiaomi devices aren't great but what do they bring to the table in an already crowded market? And what I really mean by that is, to an average consumer, why get one of these instead of a Samsung?
Samsung's the premium brand to have. Everyone else is pretty much either niche or 'the one you get because it's cheap'
HTC is pretty much dead. Motorola is also dead. LG makes free-on-plan shit phones. Nokia no longer exists. Yes, they make windows phones. This is the same as no longer existing.
Nexus devices are cool but they pretty much don't exist in the eyes of most consumers. Don't fool yourself. Stock android is niche. No joe average ever considered "Wow, I really love the stock android experience and that's going to drive my device choice"
Know what would get me to switch to android away from my old 5s? - A consistent experience and a phone that won't be abandoned in less than 12 months. Sure my 5s is boring.. But it always works, and it always works the same way, and when I get a new one (Probably a 7) all my stuff will come over and it will continue to work the same way. Only with a better screen and camera. Might look in to contactless payment too. Or maybe I won't upgrade at all. Because my 5s will probably still be working well in to 2018.
As someone deeply invested in researching and using Xiaomi devices, and having felt their quality over the years, I believe this news to be utter bull. Sources are all american. Xiaomi did a lot in 2015, its doing a lot in 2016, and that affects revenue. If someone told me they made less profit, I would be totally OK with that because they launch products like rabbits, but whoever believes Xiaomi isn't growing in revenue must be dumb or attempting to influence the market with speculation. Xiaomi has it all: it as a very decent brand, a great product line up, amazing pricing AND availability, even despite not making its devices available internationally (sites like gearbest take care of that high cost for them, and we, the final consumer use them indiscriminately). It is flat out impossible this brand made less revenue than in 2014 - they launched the Mi4, but the OnePlus killed its market for most of 2014. The S6 came right after. If they managed to make 135% revenue with the low season of 2014, considering those 2 very successful devices came right before or during prime season, I highly doubt the very uneventful 2015 (for most other brands) could have killed them. I mean, they released about 6 of the most interesting devices for the low-mid range: Redmi 2 and 3, Redmi Note 2 and 3, the Mi4 cheap variants 4s and 4c (this one being one of my favourite devices ever on the market as it matches a N5x for half price at launch, and still gives it a run for the money despite de N5X price cut). And this is just the mobile side of the thing. I am sure they are making gazillions with the old and new Mi bands, and I don't even have to mention the weird products they launch in the market, from water purifiers, passing through wifi routers, smart TVs, smart TV boxes, to audiophile-graded headphones like the Piston 3 or the hybrids (seriously, they're praised in places like head-fi forums, it has to mean something). I don't believe they are even making less profit, let alone less revenue. Prove me wrong, I dare you internet
Hearing this news I simply shrug my shoulders. The government sanctioned mafia probably decided the startup was big enough to start laundering money through and extorting from.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
12.5 billions in sales mean "flat"? I guess they would call Apple having "gone flat" if they had not tricked people into buying the Apple Watch last year. Xiaomi makes high-quality products at affordable prices, and with 12.5 billions in sales, investors would be wise to invest.
what is with the retarded notion that if you aren't making significantly more money than you made last year that you are somehow not being profitable enough?
Because investors don't invest in a company to maintain the status quo. Investors expect a return on their investment and that means you either have to kick off a lot of highly predictable cash at a rate substantially above inflation or you have to grow the company. Furthermore the returns (growth) you generate need to be higher than alternative investments of a similar risk profile or else investors will invest their cash elsewhere. If an investor can get a 10% return on their investment with Company A and "only" a 5% return from Company B, why would they ever invest with Company B if the risk profile was similar?
Yes this means that growing a large company is a LOT harder than growing a small one in many ways. For Apple to grow by just 5% next year they would have to create enough new business to build a company the size of eBay from scratch. In ONE year. That's really hard to do. The investor does not care however. They want a return on THEIR money. The difficulty of providing that return is the problem of the company, not the investor.
It is a chinese company. If there is nothing new to rip off, what value other than cheaper do/did they have to offer. China companies needs to emulate Samsung for the proper way to pirate and then innovate (sort of).
The company has also expanded its product portfolio, making weighing scale, rice cooker, suitcase and a range of other items.
There's the problem, identified right there in the summary - they're only making one of each thing. If they want to take advantage of economies of scale, they need to start making products en masse.
#DeleteChrome
And what is "Xiaomi" exactly?
This is the way to write articles.
You don't think Chinese investors demand growth? I expect all of my stocks to perform. Flat quarters are not the end of the world. Flat quarters in an expanding are. Try capitalism, you socialist. It works.
See? That's what the same breathless stories about Apple amount to.
Xiaomi only grew by 3%, Xiaomi is dying!
Apple was revenue neutral, Apple is dying!
PC's shrank by 3%, PC's are dying!
Tablets shrank by 5%, tablets are dying!
There's this parable of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Maybe they ought to read it sometime. In it, some sheep actually die. Also, it contains a lesson in there somewhere...
That's what you get if you compete on price. Lower revenues.
last time i checked, /. isn't marketwatch.com, so fuck the investors because they are parasites on society.
Everybody, including you, is an investor. So basically you are saying fuck yourself and everybody else too. Investors aren't some abstract class of rich people. Everybody invests their money in something. Everybody. Including people who read slashdot. Believe it or not some of us are engineers who also find financial markets interesting. Smart people invest their money in companies and assets that will generate a return on that investment. To generate a return those assets need to grow and become more valuable. You wondered why companies are forced to grow every year and I answered your question. You seem uncomfortable with the truth but it is the truth nonetheless.
I use xiaomi product from 3 years, phone, plugs, speakers, headphones, they were all good. But lately they increased their prices and they cost as much as nexus or samsung, so fuck em. The customer service is non existant, their forum is run by retarded indians on a power trip (you must never let an indian run anything, they are subhuman shits). Xiaomi only sells in countries with non existant consumer rights so they can fuck them however they like