Xiaomi has revealed its total sales revenue in overseas markets over the past seven years. The total amounted to $15 billion while Xiaomi also found itself on the top in the Spanish phone market, Wang Xiang, the company’s global business head and senior vice president, at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona on Sunday. Prior to that, the company had only revealed audited revenue figures for the past three years in its IPO prospectus.
Despite its flagging sales in the domestic market, the Chinese phone manufacturer witnessed a rapid surge in sales revenue in internationally. In the third quarter of 2018, it reached RMB 22.3 billion (around $3.33 billion) with an 112.7% year-on-year increase, making up 43.9% of its total revenue over that period.
“We spent 15 months becoming the Number One in the open [channel] market in Spain,” Wang said, adding that he expected Xiaomi’s global sales to quickly overtake its performance in China in terms of revenue, as globalization has been one of the company’s “major driving forces.”
Chinese phone manufacturers are upping their global efforts amid a slowing smartphone market. Huawei, Oppo, and Xiaomi all released their first 5G handset models at MWC over the weekend. Huawei’s first foldable Mate X pits it against Samsung’s Galaxy Fold, with a starting price of €2,299 (around $2,600) targeting the first wave of high-end 5G users.
Oppo, on the other hand, is expected to ship its first batch of 5G smartphones to European consumers ahead of Chinese buyers this year, as the company has “made the fastest progress” in Switzerland (in Chinese) with local telecom service provider Swisscom.
At the launch event for its latest flagship model Mi 9 last week, Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun said the company’s main overseas target this year would be Europe, adding that “the US market could wait.” It is also looking to expand its business in Africa by forming an Africa-focused business unit at the beginning of this year.
Figures from research firm Canalys show that Samsung and Apple remain dominant in the European smartphone market with shares of 28.7% and 26%, respectively, in the fourth quarter of 2018. Market share for Huawei and Xiaomi were 23.6% and 6%, respectively.