It recently became the third largest smartphone vendor in the world, it has easily got the “people’s favourite” tag, and now, Xiaomi is planning to raise funds, at a whopping, $40 Billion valuation.
Forbes has reported, that the Chinese smartphone “giant” is now planning to raise a fresh round of funding, which will see it valued at a staggering $40 Billion. This valuation, if proves correct, will make Xiaomi, world’s most valuable privately-owned technology firm.
Sony, with a market cap of $19.5 Billion and Lenovo, with a market cap of $15.6 Billion, even if put together, still come short of roughly 4 to 5 Billion as compared to Xiaomi.
Let’s forget about the market capitalisation, instead, let us look at some recent market shipment numbers, released by IDC. In the third quarter, Xiaomi shipped 17.3 million units, up more than 200% from the same period last year according to a recent report from IDC. For comparison, Apple, which was the second-largest smartphone maker last quarter behind Samsung, shipped 39.3 million units, a 16% increase from the third quarter of 2013.
Xiaomi, in the first half of 2014, reported sales to be about $5.31 billion–up about 150% from last year—and those inside the company expect revenue to be more than $11 billion for the whole year.
