The country director of Xiaomi in Portugal has said in an interview with Lusa that his ambition is within two years to generate as much revenue from the broader tech ecosystem, including all other branded devices, as the smartphone business itself.
Currently, the smartphone business accounts for 60% of Xiaomi Portugal’s revenue, while the remaining 40% relates to wearables, robots, televisions and scooters, among other products.
“Our ambition over the next two years is to reach fifty percent, that is to split the turnover” between smartphones and the ecosystem, said the Xiaomi Portugal director, Tiago Flores.
In other words, he said, by 2025 “we want to equalise the turnover of the two large families: smartphones and ecosystems.”
Currently, within the ecosystem, which accounts for 40% of the Chinese technology company’s turnover in Portugal, wearables (which include watches and earphones) account for 22%, followed by robots (vacuum cleaners) with 20%, followed by televisions with Android TV with 15% and electric scooters with 15%.
“Then there are all the smart devices, cameras, air fryers, all of which account for twelve percent,” Flores explained.
In the ecosystem segment, wearables are the best-selling products, followed by robot hoovers and electric televisions and scooters.
Compared to 2022, in terms of the number of smartphones, he said, Xiaomi is currently seeing growth of between 15% and 20% and the ecosystem business as a whole is enjoying growth in double digits.
Business in Portugal overall has been going “well” and, according to data from consultancy IDC, “we continue to grow above the smartphone market” – which is “slightly stagnant” in terms of units, the head of Xiaomi Portugal added.
“We’ve been able to show growth in units compared to last year,” he stressed, saying that the technology company reached the end of the third quarter with a 30% share of the domestic market for smartphones.
This performance, he said, “has two axes of development” with the first being “that, unlike many brands that were on the market, we haven’t abandoned any segment” but “we’ve even strengthened it.”
In addition, “in our mid-range we’ve gained a lot of ground, we’ve maintained price competitiveness and we’re offering more and more technology,” he said.
Xiaomi currently ranks second in the smartphone market in Portugal.
“Our main goal is to continue to offer consumers the best smartphone experience, together with our connected ecosystem and to help consumers in this digital transition,” Flores emphasised.
He recalled that the brand ran two “very strong” campaigns this year: in the first half, a “campaign with local creators” in which they went to “very iconic places in Portugal” and invited two content creators to work on this, as part of the partnership between Xiaomi and Leica in smartphones.
In the second half of the year, with the arrival of the Xiaomi Master Class in Portugal, they invited photographer and photojournalist Rui Caria to take part in the project.
These are “two local investments we’ve made this year,” Flores stressed, without giving any figures.
“We’re committed to creating more local content, Portuguese content, produced in Portugal, with Portuguese agencies, with Portuguese creators, to really boost and showcase our technology in a very localised way,” he added.
For 2024, he said, “we want to bring a more competitive smartphone portfolio and continue to be consistent in terms of fair price and technology” and in the ecosystem “we want to bring more equipment and new categories.”
Xiaomi Portugal maintains its goal of achieving 5 million connected devices in Portugal by 2024.
“We’re well on our way,” Flores said.
As for fifth-generation mobile communications, he said, this is a segment “that is starting to penetrate lower-value devices [and] we believe that next year this trend will intensify.”
As for artificial intelligence (AI), this “has already been present” in Xiaomi’s technology “for a long time” and in 2024, through the new operating system, it will “allow for greater interconnection between the smartphone and the ecosystem,” he said.
Xiaomi currently has 623 million smartphone users connected globally and 699 million IoT (Internet of Things) devices connected worldwide.
“We have a very significant growth in users who have more than five” Xiaomi devices, who total “more than 10 million worldwide,” he said.
