A week after unveiling its latest flagship series Chinese vendor Xiaomi prepared to trim its workforce of more than 32,000 in China, as global and local demand for smartphones remains weak.

South China Morning Post, citing mainland sources, reported the vendor sent staff across multiple departments redundancy notices, with the cuts to reduce its payroll by up to 15 per cent.

The vendor’s smartphone revenue in Q3 fell 11 per cent year-on-year to CNY42.5 billion ($6.1 billion), with shipments declining 8.4 per cent to 40.2 million units. It booked a net loss of CNY1.5 billion, down from a profit of CNY788.6 million a year earlier.

Xiaomi was hit by anaemic domestic consumer demand due in part to widespread Covid-19 (coronavirus) restrictions in China, which also caused supply chain disruptions.

Globally, Q3 shipments across the industry decreased 9.2 per cent year-on-year to 297.2 million, marking the fifth consecutive quarter of annual decline, Strategy Analytics reported. China’s smartphone sales in the quarter fell 12.4 per cent from a year earlier, its sixth consecutive quarterly decline, data from Counterpoint Research showed.

IDC predicted in early December worldwide shipments in 2022 would decline 9.1 per cent to 1.2 billion units.