UPDATED 22:48 EST / JANUARY 04 2015

NEWS

Xiaomi shipments surge 227% as it releases new Redmi phone

xiaomiXiaomi Inc., has posted pre-tax revenue of 74.3 billion yuan ($11.97 billion) in 2014 on the back of its mobile shipments increasing 227 percent to 61 million for the calendar year.

The Chinese mobile manufacturer became the world’s third largest smartphone maker in October 2014, behind Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd and Apple Inc., and was named the world’s most valuable startup after raising $1.1 billion on a $45 billion valuation in December.

The company has previously said its goal was to ship 100 million phones in 2015, well up from its figure of 18.7 million in 2013.

The news comes as the company has launched a new phone, the Redmi 2, a follow-up to its popular and high selling Redmi phone, which led Xiaomi’s surge in sales last year.

The phone offers a Snapdragon 410 1.2GHz quad-core 64-bit processor, 4.7-inch 720p LCD screen, 1 GB of RAM, and a 2200mAh battery.

Users get 8 GB internal storage with the ability to expand via microSD card, an 8 megapixel camera, and the phone runs on 4G networks including FDD-LTE and TDD_LTE, and has support for dual simcards.

It’s not clear which version of Android it will run, but it will likely ship with KitKat 4.4.

The phone will go on sale for 699RMB ($112) January 9th, and will be available in five colors: white, black, yellow, pink, and green.

The new sales figures are remarkable for a company that was founded in 2010 and didn’t sell its first phone until 2011. It also remains a relatively unknown company in the West, as it focuses primarily on selling its mobiles in Asia, and in particular its native China, where it is the number one selling phone manufacturer.

Xiaomi plans in the year ahead to enter new markets, including Brazil, Turkey, Mexico, Thailand, and Russia, and it has been suggested that Xiaomi may become China’s “first global consumer brand.”

Image credit: Xiaomi. 


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