Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corporation wants to become the No.1 smartphone brand in Europe in the next few years, surpassing rivals such as Huawei Technologies.

In an interview with state-owned news agency China News Service, Xiaomi’s founder and CEO Leijun set the goal for the company, adding that Xiaomi has been dealing with a complicated macroeconomic and geopolitical environment amid rising tensions between the U.S. and China.

Lei said domestic market growth is still the top priority for Xiaomi and would use different localization strategies based on different cultures when expanding overseas.

According to data compiled by Counterpoint, Chinese smartphone companies held 35% of the Europe market in the second quarter. Huawei took the lion’s shares with 16%, followed by Xiaomi and Oppo with 13% and 3% respectively.

Samsung and Apple are still leading the market with 35% and 17% respectively.

Xiaomi and Oppo managed to grow Europe sales by 55% and 41% respectively in the second quarter as they filled the gap left by Huawei, which suffered a 46% percent decline in year-on-year sales mainly due to US Sanctions.

According to Canalys, Xiaomi shipped over 28.8 million smartphones around the world in the second quarter of 2020.

“With their attractive specs at affordable prices, managed to woo some potential Huawei users to gain share at its expense,”

said Abhilash Kumar, research analyst at Counterpoint in a report.

Xiaomi has a variety of products in its ecosystem of products, ranging from smartphones and laptops to hair trimmers and vacuum cleaners.

The smartphone business is still the largest revenue contributor among that business, it contributed 60 percent of Xiaomi’s total revenue of CNY205.8 billion last year.

According to Lei Jun, half of Xiaomi’s smartphone revenue came from overseas markets.

Leijun added that Xiaomi would allocate CNY10 billion to research and development in 2020.

Xiaomi released better-than-expected financial results for the second quarter of 2020.

For the quarter that ended in June this year, its revenue hit CNY53.54 billion (USD7.7 billion), which is higher than the market expectation of CNY51.4 billion (USD7.4 billion). Revenue was up from CNY51.95 billion in the same period a year earlier.

Overall revenue from the company’s smartphone business, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of its revenue, fell 1.2% to CNY31.6 billion (USD4.59 billion). Xiaomi sold 28.3 million handsets in the quarter, down from 32.1 million units a year earlier.

However, sales of premium phones in overseas markets were up by 99.2% year on year, with average selling prices rising 11.8% in that period.

The company’s high-end phone saw “explosive growth” in Europe, where smartphone shipments were up by 64.9%, according to the company’s acting CFO Wang Xiang.  No.1 Smartphone Brand in Europe

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