Chinese electronics company Xiaomi proved that Asia is indeed a most viable market for electronic gadgets, especially smartphones.
On Thursday this week, the firm announced that it had sold 2.11 million phones within just 24 hours on a single online platform - and earned a Guinness World Record recognition as a result.
"Xiaomi sold 2.11 million handsets in a 12-hour online sale held on Wednesday - dubbed the 'Mi Fan Festival' - racking up a total of $2.08 billion yuan ($335 million) in sales revenue," CNBC reported.
"The Mi Fan Festival is an annual sales promotion event held around the company's birthday. A total of 1.3 million phones were sold at last year's event," the news source added.
Considering the figures, will the company sell 3 million units next year?
The said Fan Festival, which also covered India, Indonesia, and Malaysia, involved the sale of other types of electronic products, such as Mi TVs (38,000 sold) and smart appliances (770,000 sold), according to Tech Crunch.
Mashable added that the company also sold 247,000 power strips, 208,000 fitness watches, and 79,000 Wi-Fi units on the day considered to be China's version of Black Friday.
The 5-year-old Xiaomi's latest achievement is just one of the few milestones that the China-based gadget maker notched in the last few years. Just last year, it "leapfrogged Lenovo and LG to become the world's third largest smartphone maker in terms of shipments behind Samsung and Apple."
"The company sold over 61 million smartphones in 2014, up from 18.7 million in 2013, and expects to sell 100 million handsets this year," CNBC noted.
Tech Crunch observed that, aside from sales, Xiaomi's strategy in racking up revenues involved establishing a relationship with its fans via parties, invitations to launch events, and weekly software updates.
"All-in-all its relationship with its users is unique, and when you add the online commerce element to that, the recipe is there for big sales days like Wednesday," the site went on to say.
Currently, Xiaomi won't be dipping into the U.S. market just yet, although it will soon launch its Mi.com e-store in the U.S. and Europe. However, only accessories will be sold on the site. At least for now.
"We're only going to sell a small number of our hero accessories, things like the Mi Band, studio-grade headphones, in-ear headphones and the world's most popular power banks," Xiaomi's global VP Hugo Barra explained during the Mobile World Congress last month, according to CNET.
Would you buy a Xiaomi yourself?
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