Xiaomi Corp., whose investors include billionaire Yuri Milner, more than doubled its revenue in 2014, according to a blog posting by Chief Executive Officer Lei Jun, Bloomberg said.
The Beijing-based company’s sales before tax rose to 74.3 billion yuan ($12 billion) last year, Lei said on his microblog yesterday. It sold 61.1 million mobile phones, 227 percent more than in the previous year. Xiaomi plans to release its Redmi smartphone and will hold a press conference on Jan. 15 to discuss an “important flagship” product, according to the post, the report said.
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China’s largest smartphone vendor said on Dec. 29 that its valuation has risen to $45 billion following a $1.1 billion funding round that included investors such as Milner’s DST, Singapore’s GIC Pte and All-Stars Investment Ltd. The company is now the highest-valued IT firm yet to go public, Lei said
Xiaomi, which means “millet” in Chinese, was founded in 2010 to make software for mobile devices running Google Inc.’s Android system. The company subsequently released products including a tablet computer, a television set-top box and TVs that connect to the Web, Bloomberg said.
In the quarter ended Sept. 30, Xiaomi was the world’s third-largest vendor behind Samsung Electronics Corp. and Apple Inc. It aims to sell 100 million phones this year, the report said.
Xiaomi has the same potential as Facebook Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to reach a valuation of $100 billion, Milner, an early investor in all three, said last month, according to Bloomberg.
