Xiaomi gains share in Latin America, Japan, India amid heated smartphone rivalry in China

Xiaomi shipped 6.2 million handsets to Latin America last quarter, ranking behind market leader Samsung’s shipments of 10.2 million units

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Xiaomi has regained the top position in India, the world’s second-largest smartphone market. Photo: AFP

Published: 8:00pm, 12 Aug 2024

Xiaomi, mainland China’s fifth-largest smartphone vendor by sales, is taking big market shares in several regions and countries – including Latin America, Japan and India – as competition with rivals at home gets intense.

The Beijing-based company shipped 6.2 million handsets or 35 per cent more units to Latin America last quarter, making it the second-biggest smartphone brand in the region, consultancy Canalys said in a report. Samsung Electronics topped the ranking, after shipping 10.2 million handset in the April-June period.

The South Korean firm commanded a 30 per cent market share, while Xiaomi had 19 per cent, the report showed. Lenovo Group-backed Motorola Mobility, budget handset brand Transsion, and Huawei Technologies spin-off Honor had shares of 17 per cent, 9 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively. The broader market grew by 20 per cent, according to the report.

Aggressive pricing strategy by vendors who offered “compelling specs at low prices” helped fuel the market expansion, said Miguel Pérez, an analyst at Canalys. Still, he cautioned that concerns about market saturation and heightened uncertainty in the global economy could hurt smartphone demand in the region.

Xiaomi’s feat came days after the company also leapfrogged rivals to become the third-largest vendor in Japan’s smartphone market last quarter, according to a post published last week to the company’s official account on X, which cited data from Canalys.

Xiaomi’s 14 Ultra is an artificial intelligence-enabled smartphone. Photo: Xiaomi

“It’s very difficult to make breakthroughs in the Japanese market,” Lu Weibing, president of Xiaomi’s international business department, said in a post on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo. He also called for more efforts to “move forward” in the East Asian smartphone market in his post.