A year after slipping down the smartphone vendor rankings while overhauling its business, China’s Xiaomi targets sales of more than 100 billion yuan (US$14.47 billion) this year.
“The worst is over,” chief executive Lei Jun told the company’s annual meeting in Beijing, describing 2016 as a “make-up year”.
Seven-year-old Xiaomi was briefly the world’s most valuable startup, reports Reuters, but it fell out of the top five in China for smartphone vendors last year after reaching No. 2 in 2015.
Xiaomi says it made adjustments to several business areas last year, including increasing its offline retail presence and pushing for more overseas business.
Lei said Xiaomi was ranked among the top three smartphone vendors in India with sales of more than $1 billion, and that revenue from its smart hardware ecosystem exceeded 15 billion yuan. He also said online revenue doubled.
Xiaomi plans to open 200 more Mi Home stores this year and a total of 1000 outlets over the next three years. It presently has 54 Mi Home stores, said Lei.