Xiaomi is up against a steep drop in sales of its smartphones, but isn’t too concerned about the dip eating into its profits.
According to a report from Reuters, Xiaomi Vice President Hugo Barra said the company’s business model doesn’t hinge on smartphone sales. Barra told Reuters the company could “sell 10 billion smartphones and we wouldn’t make a single dime in profits.
Instead, Barra said, Xiaomi has focused its efforts on securing profit from a lineup of home appliances. Earlier this year, other Xiaomi executives said the company expects sales of smart home devices to hit around $1.5 billion this year.
The news comes as Xiaomi continues down a rocky smartphone road that saw the company miss its 2015 global smartphone target of 100 million devices shipped and smartphone sales in China drop 45 percent in the third quarter.
But the company’s struggles aren’t entirely surprising. Xiaomi is up against staunch competition from fellow Chinese smartphone makers, including Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo.
In the third quarter, Gartner and TrendForce both noted stellar numbers for Huawei and Oppo. The former reportedly increased shipments from 27.4 million in the third quarter 2015 to 32.5 million this year, while the latter more than doubled its third quarter shipments in 2016 to 25 million.