Xiaomi Sees China Sales Improving
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp said on Tuesday that it was already seeing strong improvements in sales. China begins to return to normal following the lockdown due to COVID-19.
CFO Shou Zi Chew said, the Chinese market has entered a full recovery stage. The market has already recovered to 80 to 90% of the normal level, he added.
China fell in the first quarter due to the economic impact of the virus, but did not disclose by how much.
Chew expected demand for modern technology smartphones to be resilient globally even though the coronavirus was spreading worldwide. The company will take a hit in global sales during March and April, he said. However, he expects to see signs of recovery in May.
“If we take reference from China’s experience, I think smartphone demand is resilient,” said Chew. “It is a daily necessity in life. I think it will rebound quickly” he further added.
Xiaomi Corp Revenue
It has reported on Tuesday a 27% increase in revenue for October-December 2019, went above analyst expectations.
Sales in the fourth quarter increased to 56.5 billion yuan or $8 billion. That was from 44.42 billion yuan in the same quarter in its previous year. Moreover, that beat analyst expectations of 55.6 billion yuan.
The company derives roughly 60% of its revenue selling mobile handsets. It also sells online ads and other types of consumer hardware.
Revenue from the smartphones’ segment increased 23% in the fourth quarter to 30.8 billion yuan. Excluding one-time items, the phone-maker earned 2.34 billion yuan in the fourth quarter. It exceeded analysts’ estimate of 1.88 billion yuan.
For the whole year, the technology company’s profit attributable to shareholders fell by a fourth to 10.04 billion yuan.
Chinese Rivals
Its bigger rival Huawei posted an annual profit increase of 5.6% on Tuesday, its smallest rise in three years. Its overseas sales weakened amid U.S. campaign to restrict the company’s global expansion due to security concerns.
Overseas expansion has been a key strategy for Xiaomi in the past few years, as well as its Chinese rivals.
Meanwhile in technology news Xiaomi has announced the Redmi K30 Pro. It follows the footsteps of its predecessor in bringing a flagship processor, the Snapdragon 865 to a competitive price point.
Early this year, the company introduced the Redmi K30 lineup. It first unveiled with the standard Redmi K30. It then went on to launch in India as the POCO X2 and the Redmi K30 5G.
