China's Xiaomi Internet services revenue up 150%, but misses US$1bil target

In trouble: Xiaomi missed its global shipment target by 12%, selling 70 million handsets last year, when domestic rivals such as Lenovo and top player Huawei countered in China with similar Internet-only device sales campaigns.

HONG KONG/BEIJING: Xiaomi Inc, China's second-biggest smartphone vendor, more than doubled Internet services revenue in 2015 to about US$564mil (RM2.39bil), an internal document reviewed by Reuters showed, but still fell well short of an internal target of US$1bil (RM4.25bil). 

Lei Jun, founder and chief executive of China's most valuable startup, had set the US$1bil (RM4.25bil) target last year. Like peers such as Apple Inc, Beijing-based Xiaomi is trying to sidestep a slowdown in the world's largest handset market by coaxing smartphone buyers to also purchase Internet services.