SHANGHAI – Xiaomi Corp posted a 13.6 percent increase in first-quarter revenue on Wednesday, beating expectations as Chinese smartphone manufacturers sold more phones and benefited from sales of their high-priced 5 G devices.
Given the effects of the coronavirus, which disrupted supply chains and dampened overall demand for smartphones, the company continued to raise revenue.
“Our production in mainland China has largely resumed, and demand for smartphones has boomed rapidly,” the company said in its earnings release for the first quarter.
Xiaomi’s optimism contrasts with rivals Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, both of whom have warned of a tough year ahead.
Sales rose to 49.7 billion yuan ($7.00 billion) in the first quarter of 2020 from 43.76 billion yuan in the same year-earlier period, exceeding analyst estimates of 47.86 billion yuan.
The company has attributed the jump to rising prices in China for its just-released 5 G phones, as well as growing sales abroad.
Profits fell by about one third because of a fall in the value of Xiaomi ‘s investments in other companies.
By selling online ads and other types of consumer hardware, the company gets most of its revenue from selling mobile handsets but also makes money.
Over the last few years, Xiaomi has faced heavy rivalry from bigger domestic rival Huawei in China. Also, China’s domestic smartphone market has shrunk and has concentrated on overseas growth to offset this Xiaomi and other smaller Chinese rivals.
Xiaomi’s first-quarter shipments to Chinese consumers dropped more than a quarter from a year earlier, market research firm Canalys said, compared to an 18 percent drop in smartphone sales in the country.
After weeks of lockdown to stem the coronavirus outbreak, the company said in March it was seeing signs of sales recovery in China.
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