Against the backdrop of excellent sales, Xiaomi CEO in Germany Alan Chen Li announces a significant expansion of the company's activities.
Πobviously the situation could not have been worse. Amid the pandemic, Chinese manufacturer of mobile phones and other electrical appliances Xiaomi opened its first department store in Germany last July. A few months later and due to restrictive measures, the emblematic delegation in the old town of Dusseldorf had to close.
The evolution did not discourage the plans of the rising giant. On the contrary. Against the backdrop of excellent sales, Xiaomi CEO in Germany Alan Chen Li announces a significant expansion of the company's activities. "We are building our headquarters in Düsseldorf, Europe", Said the manager speaking to the financial newspaper Reuters.
Due to the pandemic there is no exact schedule yet. "We will be present with hundreds of partners", However, assures Chen Li, clarifying that in the future logistics, finance, customer service and marketing will "run" from Düsseldorf. The choice of the beautiful city of the Rhine is of course not accidental, since it is located in the "heart" of Europe.
Growing market share
Just a year after its "landing" in Germany, Xiaomi has already become the third most important mobile phone brand. According to the consumer research company Canalys, the market share is already at 10%, with the Samsung and Apple, to naturally occupy the lion's portion. Compared to the corresponding period last year Xiaomi device sales up 140%.
It is noteworthy that in other European countries such as Spain, Poland or Croatia, the Chinese company already records the largest sales of mobile smartphones. Overall, Xiaomi also managed to increase its sales in the last quarter of 2020, selling 43,4 million devices (+ 31% compared to the third quarter of 2019).
Absolute rulers in mobile phone market remain the Apple and Samsung. "The iPhone 12 sells like crazy", Says her analyst Canalys Vinsan Tilke. Xiaomi is followed by two other Chinese manufacturers, the competitors Vivo and Oppo, which also have their European offices in Dusseldorf.
Golden jobs
For the derived from Zhongguancun (Beijing Silicon Valley) Xiaomi things are going great. The third quarter of 2020 managed to increase its turnover by 35% at 72 billion yuan (approx. 9,3 billion euros), with net profits rising to 530 million euros (+ 18%).
The company's Miui software counts 370 active users per month, 26% more than last year. In the field of networked devices, such as robot brooms, it was 290 millions of active users.
A key reason for Xiaomi's strong growth is the competitor's weakness Huawei affected by US sanctions. Based on these, the company can no longer sell mobile phones with services Google, such as maps or youtube. Xiaomi's manager, however, argues that the success of his company is primarily due to it. "We managed to convince our customers with good products".
However, Xiaomi is not involved in the raging technological war between the US and China. In mid-January, the US Department of Defense, which was still under Trump administration, listed the company on "communist-chinese military operations"And called on investors to sell their shares by November. Xiaomi is taking legal action against the American decision. The controversy had a direct impact on the Chinese manufacturer's share price, which fell slightly.
Huge range of products
It is worth noting that in contrast to Huawei's also manufacturing equipment for critical infrastructure, such as mobile networks, Xiaomi focuses on end-user devices. From now on, of course, the company intends to invest more in Germany in areas other than mobile telephony and to expand the range of products offered. These mainly concern networked household appliances, such as rice cookers, scales and drones, travel bags and children's toys.
"Many customers do not even know how many different products we have", Says manager Chen Li. Xiaomi already has an independent online store for Germany. At the same time it cooperates with large chains of electrical and electronic items but also with discounters, such as Aldi.
The issue of personal data protection has an important role for the company, assures the director of the company in Germany. "Our principle is to keep the data in the market where it comes from. We store European user data in the EU in collaboration with major cloud service providers such as Amazon, Microsoft and Alibaba Cloud“. The company was the target of criticism last year when it became known that every page that opens with the Xiaomi browser is sent to its server Alibaba in China. A little later the company proceeded to upgrade the software.
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