Hangover mood at Xiaomi: the Chinese smartphone manufacturer has soared in recent years, now followed by a crash. Xiaomi is struggling with a dramatic drop in sales. As a consequence, masses of employees are now being laid off.
Actually, Xiaomi’s way to the top was already mapped out. After US sanctions heralded Huawei’s decline in the smartphone market in 2019, Xiaomi was long expected to fill the big gap. Three years later, however, there are doubts as to whether Xiaomi can meet this expectation.
Lower smartphone sales: Xiaomi is laying off more than 900 employees
A look at the shows that Smartphone sales down more than 26 percent in the second quarter (Source: South China Morning Post). Xiaomi cites macroeconomic headwinds and the resurgence of Corona in mainland China as the reasons for the crash. The People’s Republic is pursuing a hard ZeroCovid course, which leads to the shutdown of public life at the slightest occurrence of the corona virus. This affects supply chains worldwide.
It went even further downhill for Xiaomi if you look at the Sales from the smartphone business looks: Here is a big one minus 28.5 percent compared to the same period last year on the books. The bottom line is that Xiaomi was able to achieve sales of the equivalent of 6.17 billion euros with its smartphone sales.
As a consequence, Xiaomi is now laying off employees. In the last three months, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer cut more than 900 jobswhich is nearly 3 percent of the entire current workforce.
Xiaomi sells more than just smartphones:
Things aren’t going well for Xiaomi in Europe either
A worry patch for Xiaomi: Europe. In the second quarter of 2022, the Chinese market share fell from 27 to 19 percent. Xiaomi was only able to grow in Russia. There, the smartphone giant benefited from the gap left by Samsung and Apple. And also in India, traditionally a strong market for Xiaomi, there is a risk of adversity. Cheap smartphones costing less than 150 euros could be banned in the 1.3 billion country. That would hit Xiaomi hard.