BEIJING: Chinese tech giant Xiaomi has said it aims to overtook South Korea’s Samsung to emerge as the world’s largest smartphone brand by shipments in three years.
The comments by the Beijing-based firm’s boss came after it recently overtook Apple to become the second largest mobile brand. South Korea’s Samsung Electronics currently holds the number one spot.
Xiaomi’s founder and chief executive Lei Jun was speaking ahead of the launch of the company’s new Mix 4 handset. “Our current task is to cement the number two position in the global market,” Mr Lei said, adding, “We aim to become global number one in three years.”
Mr Lei’s speech came ahead of the launch of a wide range of new Xiaomi devices, including the Mix 4 smartphone, its latest television, tablet computer and smart speaker.
It also unveiled a ‘CyberDog’ four-legged robot, which it described as its “first foray into quadruped robotics for the open source community and developers worldwide.” The company invited robotics enthusiasts and “other like-minded Xiaomi Fans” to help develop the project.
Industry figures released last month showed that Xiaomi had for the first time overtaken US rival Apple as the world’s second-biggest smartphone brand.
“Xiaomi accounted for almost 17% of the global handset market in the April to June quarter, topping Apple’s 14.1%”, according to research firm IDC. For the same period Samsung saw its market share shrink to 18.8% but held on to the number one position.
Analysts said Xiaomi has posted substantial growth in overseas markets after Huawei Technologies Co’s smartphone business was crippled by US government restrictions.
