Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun today announced that Xiaomi has shipped 23.16 million smartphones in Q2 2017, up 70% from the previous quarter, which is a new record high for the company in a quarter. This comes after a slight decline in sales for a year. The company said that this was due to two instances of supply issues, each one hampering its chain for several months.
The company took this time as an opportunity to recalibrate many aspects of its business. It said that its latest shipment results reflect the improvements it has made in relation to the supply of its products.
It said that it has been improving its online sales on Mi.com as well as direct offline sales through Mi Home Stores. Till date it has 123 Mi Home stores across China. On July 8, the company expects to open 14 more stores.
Xiaomi also said that revenue in the first half of the year is up 328% year-on-year in India. Redmi Note 4 has become the highest shipped
smartphone in the country. It said that it is seeing great results in Indonesia, Russia, Ukraine, and a number of other countries.
Xiaomi set revenue goal of 100 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) for the year. After seeing the growth, the CEO said that he is now confident that the they can achieve this goal. He also said that the company plans to ship 100 million smartphones in 2018.
Regarding the R&D and the investment, Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun, said:
Over the last few years, we have consistently increased our investment in R&D. Today, these investments are bearing fruit. In February, we launched Surge S1, our proprietary chipset designed and developed in-house, marking a breakthrough in our chipset technology capabilities. Last year, we applied for 7,071 patents globally; we were granted 2,895, of which half are international patents.
In the next 12 months, we will need to hire thousands of R&D talent for our smartphone business and further bolster our innovation capabilities.