Xiaomi Intends to Become China’s Leading Smartphone Maker in Three Years

Lei Jun, Chairman and CEO of Chinese tech giant Xiaomi, issued a post to his official Weibo account on Tuesday regarding the firm’s first important meeting since the end of the country’s annual Spring Festival holiday.

Starting Tuesday, Xiaomi has formally begun to set up a high-end strategy working group. Driven by the goal of becoming “the world’s biggest smartphone maker within three years,” its products and user experiences should be fully benchmarked against the iPhone, wrote Lei Jun. In addition, Xiaomi is aiming to win the largest share of China’s domestic high-end smartphone market within three years.

At the Xiaomi 12 launch conference on December 28 last year, Jun said that the Beijing-headquartered company would officially benchmark its performance against Apple, ultimately planning to surpass it step-by-step.

According to data provided by Xiaomi, sales results for its Xiaomi 12 smartphone model appear promising. Shipments of the Xiaomi 12 and 12 Pro in the first month exceeded the sum of other smartphones equipped with a Snapdragon 8 chip. The Xiaomi 12 Pro gained the most orders among Android smartphones with price tag of over 4,000 yuan ($629) on leading Chinese e-commerce platforms JD.com and Tmall in January.

At the recent meeting, it was also made clear that the high-end direction is the only way for Xiaomi to grow, and that the firm will unswervingly implement a plan to invest 100 billion yuan in R&D over the next five years.

“Xiaomi‘s efforts in the high-end market have lasted for two years, achieving some success and also encountering setbacks. At present, at a new stage, we will adhere to the strategy of “fast and more stable,” and will also firmly deepen the core strategy of “smartphone x AIoT ” to create an intelligent ecology,” Lei Jun said.

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In November last year, after the number of Mi Homes – the firm’s offline sales channel – exceeded 10,000, Xiaomi Partner William Lu put forward a new goal of establishing 30,000 more stores within two to three years. Lu said that after this is accomplished, Xiaomi‘s smartphone sales in China will definitely surpass OPPO, Vivo and Honor. The sales scope of 30,000 Mi Homes will surpass that of the 200,000 stores operated by its key competitors, Xiaomi predicts.