Ever since Xiaomi[1] began its journey into the smartphone industry, the company has been breaking records and achieving huge milestones in a very short span of time. Announcing a new achievement, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun confirms that the company has managed to ship 23.16 million smartphones in Q2 2017, a 70 percent increase from the previous quarter, marking a record high for quarterly smartphone shipments in the company's life span. Jun further notes that revenue in India in the first half of the year is up 328 percent year-on-year and Xiaomi is now the number two brand in the overall Indian smartphone market.
In commemoration of these milestones, Jun sent out a letter to his employees marking all the achievements the company has made in the last year. He particularly stated that the shipments milestone is particularly significant because of the declining sales Xiaomi had suffered recently. Talking about India, Jun also cited IDC to reiterate[2] that the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4[3] has become the highest shipped smartphone in the country.
He attributed the company’s revenue growth to Xiaomi’s investments in R&D, improvements in product quality and customer care, the launch of their in-house chipset – Surge S1[4], and smartphone launches like the Xiaomi Mi 6[5] and the Xiaomi Mi Max 2[6]. Xiaomi even boasted of applying for 7,071 patents globally last year. Of these patents, 2,895 were granted, and half of these are international patents.
Jun also claimed that much of the shipments were because of their dual online and offline strategy that the company adopted in the recent years. It now enjoys 123 Mi Home Stores in China, with 14 more opening on July 8. Jun...