Xiaomi to focus on robotics, after failing to reach objective

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A few days ago, we were reporting the Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi failed to reach its 2015, which consisted in selling more than 80 million devices, and it seems that this had a big impact on the company’s upcoming plans.

According to Internet Retailer, citing Bloomberg, founder Lei Jun told employees that Xiaomi will start refocusing research efforts into “cool stuff”, like robotics or virtual reality.

You can’t always have it all…

The manufacturer was initially planning to sell over 100 million smartphones in 2015, but their mission was altered after China set its lowest growth target in the last years, as a significant market share started being taken away by vendors who sell copied devices.

A big part of the employees were affected by their miss. “We set a target of 80 million and, before we knew it, it became an obligation,” Lei Jun said. “We changed under this pressure, and everyone’s faces gradually lost all traces of humor.”

Xiaomi‘s market share wasn’t affected just by small vendors. Some of its most important competitors, like Xhawei and Meizu also played an important role in their failure to reach the objective, offering similar devices, maybe even better, in Huawei’s case.

Huawei, for example, shipped more than 100 million smartphones in 2015, thanks to their expansion in the United States and Europe, two of the biggest markets, and defying an industry slowdown.

Can the new products influence the growth?

Xiaomi is expected to register a 10% sales growth this year, says Jeff Pu, analyst at Yuanta Securities Co. “With sales growth slowing, Xiaomi’s valuation will be hurt,” he said. “It could even face a down round, as investors are less willing to pay.”

Over the past years, Xiaomi has been considered one of China’s most promising startups, being evaluated at $45 billion, a number which only Uber managed to surpass.

CATEGORY: Tech News
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