Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi reported that its pre-tax revenue last year increased 135 per cent to CNY74.3 billion ($12.1 billion), while it sold 61 million phones in 2014 – up 227 per cent from the previous year.
Chairman and CEO Lei Jun, commenting in his Sina Weibo account yesterday, didn’t share profit figures. But a regulatory filing last month in China showed the privately-held company had a net profit in 2013 of just CNY347 million ($56 million) – ten times less than media expectations.
The four-year-old firm reported CNY26.6 billion in revenue in 2013 and an operating margin of just 1.3 per cent. A Xiaomi representative said earlier that the filing did not cover its entire business.
The revenue announcement comes just a week after the company raised $1.1 billion in a round of funding from new investors as well as existing shareholders, which it claims values the firm at $45 billion.
But the fast-growing firm has faced questions about its profitability after the filing was reported, as well as a ban on the sale of its smartphones in India for infringing on essential patents (it has since been given a reprieve by the Delhi High Court).
The company, which briefly was the world’s number three smartphone maker before Lenovo acquired Motorola Mobility last quarter, has said it plans to sell 100 million phones this year as it expands outside of China. But those plans have been slowed as it struggles to keep pace with growth in the new markets it has already entered.
Ahead of CES is Las Vegas this week, Xiaomi has released a low-cost LTE smartphone for developing markets. The Redmi 2 is priced at just CNY699 ($114) and has a 4.7-inch screen with a 720p resolution. The Android device has 1GB of RAM and a quad-core SnapDragon 410 processor that runs at 1.2GHz.
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