Dear Xiaomi colleagues,
I have some wonderful news to share with you: Canalys just published its Q2 global smartphone market share report. According to the report, Xiaomi achieved a 17% market share, surpassing Apple, and became the No. 2 globally. For the first time ever, Xiaomi became No. 2 in the world. It is a fantastic achievement, and also an important milestone in Xiaomi’s history. On August 16, we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Xiaomi smartphones, and I am ecstatic to receive such thrilling news at this very moment!
In 2014 Q3, we took third place globally for the first time in our history. Unfortunately, we ran into many difficulties subsequently and dropped out of the Top 5. Since 2016, we underwent a comprehensive review of our business, and after five years of self-improvement, we significantly enhanced our product capabilities, and paved our way in the premium market segment, and reinforced our position there. We regained our No. 3 position globally in 2020 Q3. Just two quarters later, we made another giant leap. We appreciate the unwavering support from our Mi Fans around the world; we appreciate the sincere help from all of our partners; and above all, we appreciate the tremendous efforts of all of our employees, not to mention the understanding and support from their families, for making this happen! Thank you all!
“The World’s No.2” is a major victory for our strategy.
Last August, we established our core strategy for the next decade — “Smartphone x AIoT”, once again affirming the core position of our smartphone business, and further promoting smart interconnectivity. Our AIoT business revolves around our smartphones and builds a smart living ecosystem, becomes the amplifier of Xiaomi’s values in letting everyone in the world enjoy a better life through innovative technology, and makes Xiaomi the true leader of smart living in the future. At the same time, we also established the “three guiding principles” that we will resolutely stick to: We will never cease to explore and innovate, to bring everyone the most innovative technologies; we will continue to offer products with the best price-to-performance ratio; we will seek to make the coolest products. In 2020, our R&D expenses were nearly RMB10 billion and for this year, we expect that to exceed RMB13 billion. We will further expand our R&D team by recruiting more than 5,000 engineers this year. We have already achieved a series of far-reaching developments in critical technology areas such as imaging, fast charging, AI, IoT platforms, etc. to date, and have firmly established a leading position in the global industry. We also launched and debuted the Surge C1 processor – a professional image processing chip – this year.
“The World No. 2” is the result of the hard work of our employees around the world
We have made momentous progress in our new retail pilot project in China: We have achieved early success in our integrated online-offline retail model in China, and we plan to cover every town with our “Mi-Home” in 2021. Meanwhile, the integrated online-offline business model has been proven successful. Our international business is also going very well and we have entered more than 100 overseas markets around the world. Our international business contributes close to half of our total revenue. We are No.1 in terms of smartphone market share across more than 10 markets. Xiaomi has become a truly globalized company.
We will continuously strengthen our core capabilities and keep striving towards our dreams.
Dear colleagues, the world’s No. 2 means greater challenges and responsibilities for Xiaomi. This is the first time we have reached this unprecedented level, and we will inevitably face many vicious and fierce battles ahead of us. Notwithstanding the celebrations now, I want to make sure we can maintain our second place steadily and firmly in the future. It is an honor for us to compete with the most powerful and innovative companies in the world at the peak on the global stage. We are still very young and thus have not accumulated sufficient experiences yet; we must keep calm and stay humble. Our peers are our role models and our whetstones. It is this fierce competition that has driven all of us to make progress mutually. And through this, we can continue to sharpen ourselves and get stronger.
In the past three years, we have recruited a group of energetic and experienced senior executives externally. At the same time, we also promoted several young senior executives and many young general managers internally. This energetic team will provide Xiaomi with a wise, open-minded, and solid leadership in the next decade. Recently, we revealed our “Incentive Plan for Young Engineers” by awarding 3904 outstanding engineers. We also launched a new 10-year incentive program to 122 technology experts, members of our new-decade entrepreneur project, and mid-to-senior executives. This best-ever Xiaomi team is marching proudly on its future journey with very high morale.
The mission of Xiaomi is “to build amazing products with honest prices so that everyone in the world can enjoy a better life through innovative technology”. This journey is destined to be long and tough, with more loneliness than revels, more tribulations than applauses. However, as long as we are moving in the right direction, we shall have no fear of the distance. Dear colleagues, please join me in rolling up your sleeves and working hard to strive towards our dreams with all our might. Full speed ahead!
Lei Jun