Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi eyes growth in overseas markets as coronavirus lockdown measures ease
- Company said its global smartphone shipments have rebounded to near pre-pandemic levels
- Revenue from overseas markets accounted for half of the total in first quarter
Xiaomi Corp said it will continue to tap into the growth potential of international markets after seeing smartphone shipments rebound to near pre-pandemic levels as countries around the world begin to relax lockdown measures.
“Lockdown measures are being relaxed in many European and Asia-Pacific countries. Our smartphone shipments have resumed to about 90 per cent compared to pre-pandemic levels,” Wang Xiang, president and acting chief financial officer, said in a conference call on Wednesday. “This will lay a strong foundation for the recovery in the second and third quarters.”
Xiaomi, the world’s fourth largest smartphone vendor after Samsung, Apple and Huawei, is seeing increased importance from international markets with revenue from Europe, India, Latin America and other overseas markets accounting for half of total revenue in the first quarter of 2020, the company said in a statement accompanying its March quarter financial results.
In Latin America and Africa, the company said smartphone shipments in the first quarter grew 236 per cent and 285 per cent year on year respectively, although it only entered those markets in 2019.
Xiaomi brand smartphones captured market share of about 31 per cent in India, its most important overseas market, and made inroads into European and Latin American markets, according to Wang. The gains come as global smartphone shipments saw an 11.7 per cent drop in the first quarter due to supply chain and logistics disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Globally, Xiaomi expanded its smartphone market share to a company record of 10 per cent in the first quarter, up from 8 per cent in the same period a year ago, according to a report published by Strategy Analytics last month.